Strategic RPO delivers competitive edge for Boehringer Ingelheim

Solutions

Refreshing TA to achieve business goals

As the world’s largest family-owned global pharmaceutical company, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), has been committed to improving patients’ lives for more than 130 years. But to deliver on its vision of finding value through innovation it needed a more sophisticated recruitment strategy.

The company chose to partner with Cielo for Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partnership in early 2012 to evolve talent acquisition for greater business support. The close partnership enabled BI to successfully deliver on its vision. In the dynamic global life sciences market, Cielo’s strategic support allowed Boehringer Ingelheim to stay ahead of the competition through new product launches and business unit transformations.

Solutions

One TA model, one TA team

Through years of cultivating trust and credibility, Cielo’s dedicated team built a centralized recruiting model that supports Boehringer Ingelheim’s major job functions – scientific, R&D, manufacturing, production, operations, sales and marketing, legal and various other enabling functions. Cielo’s tech-enabled team is made up of specialized groups that allow for niche sourcing and screening to cater to each of these unique categories.

The relationship between Cielo and BI is a true partnership where we work as one team to be adaptable to changing business needs. This included a large investment in R&D, acquisition of a new business unit, and the divestiture of an entity.

“Our partnership with Cielo has positioned us to provide the best talent across all of our businesses with top tier recruiting expertise. We consistently hear from new hires and our hiring managers how great the experience is with our talent acquisition team, and I could not be more thrilled with how Cielo truly honors their commitment to BI. They continue to go above and beyond to do whatever it takes to innovate and accomplish great things with us every day,” said Corry Loli, Executive Director of Talent, Learning, Leadership & Organizational Development for Boehringer Ingelheim.

Results

Continuous improvement and innovation

As Boehringer Ingelheim’s strategic direction has shifted, Cielo keeps pace to support the changing demands for life sciences talent. Together, the partners have:

• Delivered on a sizable sales force expansion to meet BI’s aggressive market launch of the first-ever FDA-approved treatment for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, a debilitating and fatal lung disease. The team filled 110 sales consultant roles prior to product training and launch.
• Hired more than 100 oncology sales consultants and oncology nurse educators to launch Boehringer Ingelheim’s new Oncology Therapeutic area.
  • 41% of hires were directly sourced by the talent acquisition team.
  • 82% of the new hires were top-ranked sales consultants at their previous company with 11 years of relevant experience.
• Scaled resources to complete a large transformation process for Boehringer Ingelheim’s Human Pharma business, maximizing an important investment in their R&D function with highly skilled talent.
  • Flexed to fill more than 1,100 positions in less than a year, up from the initial estimate of 400.
• Partnered with the Boehringer Ingelheim’s HR business partners and talent management department to conduct a first-year calibration on all sales representatives, tracking first-year retention, performance ratings, and results to sales goals. This data was cross-referenced against the candidate profiles to establish a targeted hiring profile for skills, experience, and competencies that yield the greatest results.

Boehringer Ingelheim and Cielo’s close partnership continues to provide pivotal benefits, including improved candidate quality, accelerated response times to candidates and hiring managers, improvement on key SLAs and greater operational efficiencies – all carried out by a program designed with an eye toward maximizing valued recruitment tactics such as referrals and ensuring a positive experience for both external and internal candidates. The team’s tireless and thoughtful work keeps talent acquisition a distinct advantage for BI in the pharmaceutical marketplace, allowing the organization the ability to innovate and flourish in the changing landscape.