CRM CASE STUDY
A CRM for Recruiting & Hiring
L’Oréal uses Avature CRM
How L’Oréal Unlocked Hidden Talent With Internal Mobility
L’Oréal worked with Avature to develop technology that could bring recruitment activities together while remaining flexible enough to work across different countries and business environments.
Avature describes the platform as allowing recruiters to consolidate activities such as candidate sourcing, interview scheduling, feedback and reporting within a customized environment. L’Oréal also focused heavily on usability for both recruiters and applicants.
But technology was only one part of the solution.
L’Oréal’s recruitment strategy focused on three important areas.
1. Creating a Better Candidate Experience
L’Oréal recognised that candidates increasingly expect the recruitment experience to feel as thoughtful and personalised as the customer experience.
The company developed a tailored career site that could show regional opportunities, suggest positions based on previous searches and personalise communications according to candidates’ interests.
The goal was simple: engage candidates earlier and communicate with them more effectively.
2. Treating Recruitment Like Marketing
L’Oréal also recognised that attracting talent requires engagement.
Rather than simply publishing vacancies and waiting for applications, the company used technology to communicate with prospective candidates and strengthen its employer brand.
This is an increasingly important CRM principle: relationships matter before the sale, the application or the transaction takes place.
3. Bringing Data Together
Another challenge for large organisations is information becoming trapped in separate systems.
Avature’s platform approach was designed to allow data to flow across talent processes, from sourcing candidates through to employee engagement. This gives HR teams a broader view and reduces the problem of information disappearing into disconnected systems.
The Numbers Tell the Story
One of the most impressive parts of L’Oréal’s transformation is what happened when the company looked inward.
81%
of job openings were first posted internally.
75%
of positions posted on L’Oréal’s career site were filled by L’Oréal employees.
40%
increase in roles filled by internal candidates compared with external applicants.
42%
of vacancies where a successor had been identified were eventually filled internally.
37%
of internal applicants were identified as active job seekers.
The tool and the technology we use are crucial. They need to be convenient for the recruiters and helpful for the applicant. – Jean-Claude Le Grand, Senior Vice President of Talent Development, L’Oréal
POP: Putting Employees in the Driving Seat
A major part of L’Oréal’s internal mobility strategy became POP, or Positions Open Portal.
The Avature-built platform launched in August 2018 across 70 countries.
POP gave employees greater visibility into available positions and allowed them to apply for opportunities, share vacancies with colleagues and make referrals. Employees could also receive notifications about opportunities matching their professional interests and goals.
The result was a shift in responsibility.
Instead of waiting for HR to tell employees about every possible opportunity, employees could take a more active role in managing their own careers.
At the same time, HR gained better visibility into the organisation’s existing talent pool.
What Can Small Businesses Learn From L’Oréal?
L’Oréal operates on a completely different scale from a typical small business. Yet several lessons from this case study are highly relevant to smaller organisations.
1. Relationships start before recruitment
Whether you’re hiring an employee or winning a customer, the relationship begins before the formal transaction.
Good communication and timely follow-ups matter.
2. Don’t overlook the people you already have
Before searching externally, look at the talent and relationships already within your organisation.
A CRM can make valuable information easier to find.
3. Keep information in one place
Spreadsheets, email inboxes and separate databases can make it difficult to see the complete picture.
A CRM provides a central place for managing contacts, interactions, follow-ups and important information.
4. Use data to make better decisions
L’Oréal’s experience demonstrates the value of turning recruitment data into useful insights.
For a small business, the same principle applies to sales leads, customers, prospects and business relationships.
5. Make technology work for your business
One of the strongest themes in L’Oréal’s experience with Avature is flexibility. The technology was adapted to different markets and requirements rather than forcing every team into the same process.
The Avature platform gives them a faster way to experiment, try things out, fail quickly, and figure out what works. To do this and be competitive requires a very different relationship with a technology vendor. – Dimitri Boylan, CEO, Avature
The Bigger CRM Lesson
L’Oréal’s experience with Avature shows that a CRM is ultimately about relationships and visibility.
The technology helped L’Oréal connect recruitment activities, communicate more effectively with candidates and give employees greater visibility into their own career opportunities.
For a global organisation, this meant managing talent across dozens of countries.
For a small business, the principle is much simpler:
Know your contacts. Understand your relationships. Follow up consistently. And don’t allow valuable opportunities to disappear because the information is scattered across your business.
That’s where CRM technology can make a real difference.
Interested in Avature?
We were attracted by the idea of the parallel between the candidate and customer experience, and we liked that Avature weren’t traditional players. – Jean-Claude Le Grand, Senior Vice President of Talent Development, L’Oréal
Avature is designed primarily for complex, enterprise-level recruitment and talent-management environments rather than typical small businesses. However, L’Oréal’s story provides an excellent example of what a well-designed CRM strategy can achieve when technology, data and relationship management work together.