Case Study: Major Project Recruitment - LNG

Our customer

Our customer, a global leader in the oil and gas industry and has delivered two of the largest natural gas projects in Australian history with a combined value of approximately $70 billion.

Our customer’s first project in Australia, Gorgon comprised a three-train, 15.6 million tonnes per annum LNG facility and a domestic gas plant. At its peak, the project employed more than 10,000 workers.

As a new market entrant to Australia, our customer needed an experienced recruitment partner to support its Australian plans for growth, with an anticipated need for more than 16,500 hires during the construction phase.

Harrier was awarded an initial four-year RPO contract with full accountability for delivering the required people capability to facilitate the design, execution, construction interface and to operate the production facilities of the $29 billion dollar LNG project.

Key challenges:

• Little local employer brand awareness or compelling employee value proposition

• No preliminary market mapping, sourcing or talent pooling,

• No in-house recruitment capability

• Requirement to increase permanent workforce from 600 to 3,000 in five years

• The resources industry was booming, yielding unprecedented demand for labour, acute skills shortages and escalating labour costs

• Location was not attractive to prospective employees due to extensive travel time and harsh environmental conditions

Approach:

Harrier designed a model that would flex to meet our customer’s changing requirements, deliver a high touch experience to help establish a strong employer brand, reduce agency spend and utilise innovative sourcing techniques for niche and hard to fill technical roles.

Diversity of experience from projects around Australia was critical; Harrier delivered roadshows across Australia and New Zealand to reach passive candidates that may not have considered our customer as an employer.

As a new entrant to a booming and talent-scarce market, exceptional candidate experience was identified as a key differentiator; effective talent pooling, an efficient and fair process, and our teams’ authentic passion for our customer’s brand and project were all critical to success.

Key outcomes:

• Delivered over 20,000+ applicants with 3,000+ placements

• 16% reduction in time to hire

• 52% reduction in cost per hire

• 90%+ stakeholder satisfaction in external surveys

• 15 graduate and vacation programs successfully delivered

• Dedicated indigenous recruiter to support diversity hiring requirements

• All projects delivered on time and 10% below budget expectations

• Reduction from 100% agency usage to a pure permanent direct hire model.

Our initial 4-year contract was extended multiple times, with our team embedded in our customer’s business for more than 8-years.