Building TA operations that scale to 10,000+ employees

In this series, we covered what TA might look like from 0 to 10,000 employees. Along the way, we’ve discussed the TA team and business reporting structures, as well as the programs and data points these teams follow to improve. Now, in our final article on this journey, let’s build on what we have already discussed as we go beyond 10,000 employees.

A little about companies with over 10k employees

Once a company reaches 10,000 employees, it’s essentially a small town. At 50,000+ employees, it’s a city. Because of its size and how that size was achieved (e.g., organic product growth or a merger and acquisition), the company may choose to split into sub-brands or business units, with leaders reporting to the parent company. 

Examples of these two different models look like:
As a separate brand:

• Proctor & Gamble (with brands like Tide, Gillette, Pampers)

• LVMH (with brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior, Moët & Chandon)

• Alphabet (with Google, Waymo, and Youtube) 

As separate business units/hierarchical:

• Apple (e.g., retail, hardware)

• Disney (Parks/Experience, Entertainment, Consumer Products). 

What is the benefit of each approach?

Companies opting to use the separate brand model can diversify their product offering, divest/sell unprofitable units, and control their public image a little better because if one brand is getting pummeled, the others aren’t likely to feel the same impact. Additionally, during M&A, they can continue to build on the brand they acquired’s name.

For companies that use the separate business unit/hierarchical model, there tend to be stronger corporate controls and more efficient lines of communication/integrations, but a risk that there are hits to the brand if one product doesn’t do well.

How does this structure impact TA?

This structure's impact on TA will largely depend on how the company is organized. 

For example:

• If the subsidiary is structured like a separate company, it will build its own TA team and use its own tools (with some centralized like a Human Capital Management (HCM) system to allow for company-wide reports).

• If they remain as a central company, then TA might align to business verticals but still flow into a central team using the same tools.

This decision will likely be the determining factor for the size of a TA. However, as we’ve discussed in the past, you are likely to see the following ratios, which are changing as processes and tech become more available: 

• 6:1 or 7:1 ratio of Recruiters to Recruiting Coordinators

• 7:1 or 8:1 ratio of Recruiters to Sourcer

• 10:1 or 15:1 ratio of TA Team to RecOps

How does this impact the roles within TA?

At this size, two elements are often overlooked. The first is that beyond the full-time employee population, you are likely to see larger contractor populations. Programmatically, this means that your RecOps team might be in charge of contingent workforce management. 

Team chemistry-wise this means that certain members of the broader TA team might not get access to information or resources FTEs do. While not impossible to overcome, this type of division might be difficult for those who are used to navigating teams that are all FTEs. 

The second element often overlooked is that, depending on how the company is structured, TA teams from separate brands might compete against each other for the same talent rather than sharing. This can generate some level of confusion for candidates.

When a company has over 10k employees it is massive. But do the problems change if the company is 100k?

The short answer: not as much as you might think.

The long answer: At 10k, the TA team is likely to still have a scrappiness to it, less specialization, and less of a budget. At 100k, the team likely has more access to highly specialized resources because of bigger budgets, specific team roles, and cross-functional partners. As a TA team, though, you are still focused on streamlining and standardizing processes to produce at scale.

What does your tech stack look like?

• Custom-Built ATS (or, if not custom, you have worked with your in-house team to configure and maintain a more widely used enterprise one).

• Sourcing tool

• Multiple job boards

• Texting

• Scheduling

• Survey

• Analytics/Dashboarding Tool

• Employer of Record

What data’s important here:

Building on new metrics, companies above 10,000+ are starting to look more closely at the following metrics:

Internal mobility rate

• Definition: The percentage of hires coming from within the organization.

• Why is this important? While we’ve mentioned Internal Mobility programs in earlier articles in this series, if your company has hit this stage and isn’t tracking its performance, it really needs to start now.

Recruiting funnel conversation rates by source

• Definition: Conversion rates at each stage of the recruiting funnel (e.g., from application to interview, interview to offer) by the source (e.g., job board, sourcing, etc)

• Why is this important? If you’ve been following the previous articles, you have likely already started doing this earlier. However, once a company is over 10K, this analysis takes on a whole different usage. Using longitudinal data, you likely know not only the pipelines that produce your strongest candidates but also how long those candidates stay in the process.

Predictive analytics

• Definition: Using historical data, aided by machine learning, to forecast hiring needs, including talent shortages or surpluses.

• Why is this important? The larger a company is, the more likely it is to have access to higher-quality data sets or tools that will help clean the data. When combined with historical HR data, these can help TA teams understand and anticipate their capacity plans at a higher degree of accuracy.

Longitudinal data (e.g. Quality of Hire)

• Definition: Using data on performance, promotions, and engagement to build out the precise profile of a candidate for a role.

• Why is this important? It is one thing to build an ideal candidate profile (ICP). It is another to be able to build that ICP with data. Companies above 10k have the historical data to build out the profiles that they know will succeed.

Global compliance and risk metrics

• Definition: Tracking hiring compliance metrics, including visa status, background checks, and adherence to local labor laws.

• Why is this important? Most companies with over 10k employees are not purely domestic. As multinational groups, they add a level of complexity to recruiting and onboarding (if TA owns onboarding).

Real-time global talent supply and demand insights

• Definition: Using real-time data on the availability of talent in a specific region, roles, or industries.

• Why is this important? When combined with the global compliance and risk metrics mentioned above, this data can also be used to anticipate when the types of hires that fit your ICP will become available.

Who are the strategic partners here?

Building the partnerships here that will allow TA to continue to be viewed as strategic will likely depend on how the company is structured. If the company operates as separate brands, then it will be important that TA across the board work together to maintain a specific standard and closeness. 

If all the groups splinter, then it will be easy for teams to move into transactional roles. If the companies split hierarchically, then instead of thinking at the massive scale, look at your individual part and build the necessary relationships to create champions.

Automation and AI

Automation and AI are no longer nice-to-haves but must-haves, especially after 10k employees. At this size, sophisticated automation helps ensure consistency in process, experience, and data by keeping everything on rails and preventing deviations from going unnoticed until it is too late. By doing this, companies are able to hire at scale with fewer to no hiccups. 

The tools and automation these companies use beyond what we have mentioned in previous articles in this series might include:

• Offer letter management

• Cross-tool or custom-built workflows

• Onboarding

In closing…

As this series comes to a close, we hope you’ve seen how a Talent function builds on itself and can partner with multiple business groups. We also hope you see that just because a bigger company is tracking a specific metric or starting a specific program, it doesn’t mean a smaller company can’t also do the same. TA evolves with the business as a strategic partner.