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"Companies that are focused in pursuing and securing passive candidates, companies that are global and geographically dispersed...once they see this technology, they’re driven to use it. It sells itself."
-Lee Ashton Vice President & Director of International
HR & Global Talent Acquisition, Brown-Forman Corporation |
About Brown-Forman
For 140 years, Brown-Forman has produced some of the world’s finest quality beverage alcohol brands. One of the largest American-owned spirits and wine companies and among the top 10 largest spirits companies globally, its brands are sold in more than 135 countries. The organization has offices and 4,120 employees in cities worldwide.
Challenge Faced
“Many talent acquisition firms tend to take a fairly short-sighted view of the best way to save costs in the recruiting process,” said Lee Ashton, V.P. and Director of International HR and Global Talent Acquisition at Brown-Forman. “They rely on metrics like cost to hire and time to fill; but we’ve found this drives bad practices. We don’t want our people worldwide taking less than optimal talent because they’re being measured by metrics. We’re committed to finding the very best talent for every one of our jobs. We want people who will thrive – not just survive – in this environment.”
Ashton was interested in a tech-savvy methodology to bring candidates to the company in a “more personalized, rich and robust environment where personality and skills could be captured and assessed” quickly and realistically...something that doesn’t happen with traditional telephone screening.
Montage Solution
Brown-Forman was an early and active adopter of Montage’s video interviewing solution and has been a client for many years. “Some people approach Montage as a cost-savings methodology because it saves on airplane tickets, which is a very valid reason to use it, particularly for a global organization like ours,” Ashton said. “If you’re a company that uses behavioral-based interviewing – a big component in effectively evaluating coaching, persuasion, communication skills – then the extended value of Montage is in getting to that information and the right person much faster...even before a face-to-face meeting.”
Montage Interview enables one-on-one or panel interviewing via the Internet. “For us, it absolutely facilitates the global interviewing and assessment process in a very effective way,” Ashton said. “With three times as many openings outside the U.S. than inside, the technology is a big plus because 7 or 8 of our people can participate in an interview from different places all over the world.”
The technology also has the advantage of extending candidate reach, according to Ashton. “If I want to fly a person in from South Africa, it’s at least a day to get here, a day to interview and a day to fly back,” Ashton noted. “Passive candidates aren’t likely to make that sort of commitment. But, after work, they will fire up their cameras at home and interview with us or create a recording answering our job-specific questions. It’s an easy way to connect with them.”
Candidates use Montage View to create video responses to job-specific questions. According to Ashton, “Montage is certainly more economical than using a video conference and provides a much broader, more effective – and branded – solution than Skype or similar offerings.”
Brown-Forman has a reputation for its employee quality and longevity. “It’s because we work very hard to focus our assessment and talent acquisition process on fit...that dictates a person’s ability to thrive in our culture,” Ashton said. “With Montage, we can quickly see if this is a person who will be jazzed about coming to work here every day, be engaged and likely to stay that way.”
Brown-Forman’s approach is obviously paying off. A global HR consultancy recently evaluated its employee engagement and gave Brown-Forman one of the highest engagement scores the consultancy had ever seen.
Maximize quality of hires > Generate immediate, significant cost savings > Connect the right candidates to the right opportunity
Montage video interviewing solutions connect great talent with great companies. Designed by recruiters and delivered by software experts, montage provides hiring teams, recruiters and candidates an all-inclusive solution that is branded, secure, scalable, and configurable. montage drives faster decisions, minimizes travel and improves quality of hire through a unique focus on candidate engagement.