The Faststream Recruitment Group
Even During the Lockdowns, Faststream Recruitment Found RingCentral Got the Job Done
We placed our RingCentral order on a Wednesday, received our licenses that Friday, and got everyone migrated the following Monday. It was a pleasure working with the RingCentral team.
Josh Jeffries
Head of IT
When the pandemic led to economic shutdowns around the world and put millions out of work, job placement services became more important, to more people, than they’ve ever been.
The Faststream Recruitment Group has been placing job-seekers with employers all over the world for more than 20 years. The international market leader in shipping and maritime recruiting, the organisation works with many of the biggest names in industries as diverse as ship management, shipbuilding, cruise, aviation (through its GOOSE Recruitment division), and architecture (through its FRAME Recruitment division).
As Faststream Recruitment grew in recent years to become one of the dominant names in job placement for many of these industries, the senior management team began scrutinising the company’s IT infrastructure. They recognised the need for a global business to have more flexible and cost-effective solutions than the legacy systems that their business had accumulated over its two-decade history.
One of the final steps in the company’s digital-transformation initiative was to upgrade its communications infrastructure. And when country after country began locking down, the global cloud solution the team selected proved invaluable—both for Faststream’s own operations and for the job candidates and employers who needed its services more than ever.
A phone system no longer up to the job
For years, Faststream Recruitment’s staff communicated with clients, candidates, and colleagues in other locations using a legacy on-prem phone system consisting of desk phones and standard lines. But as the company added international locations and took on more clients globally, keeping everyone connected became increasingly difficult for a number of reasons.
Josh Jeffries, the company’s Head of IT, explains that the global nature of Faststream Recruitment’s business meant that its recruiters, and other team members needed to be in regular communication with people in other parts of the world.
“The old phone system wasn’t up to the international-calling demands we were placing on it,” he says. “For our recruitment consultants to call candidates, and even for our staff to speak with colleagues in other offices, those were often international calls. And they were becoming very expensive.”
In addition to the rising costs, Faststream Recruitment’s phone system created another challenge, which became more pronounced as the company grew. “Because our consultants were tied to their desk phones,” Josh says, “they’d have difficulty speaking with candidates in other time zones. They’d have to come to the office early or stay late, or they’d need to have those conversations on their personal cell or home phones. Neither was a good option, either for the recruiters or for the business.
After a search for a global communications partner, RingCentral earns the role
After researching many phone solutions, both on-prem and cloud-based, Faststream Recruitment’s IT team found RingCentral to be the best solution to support the company’s global communication demands, and to provide the feature-set they needed at the right price.
“Right from the beginning, using RingCentral was so simple and made our communications so much easier,” says Nic Jones, the company’s Group Marketing Manager. “We just downloaded the app onto our mobiles, and immediately we started receiving work calls through the app.
RingCentral also made it easy to connect with anyone in the business, in any office, because everyone’s contact information was in this new system that we all had right on our phones.”
As Josh points out, the entire company is benefiting from the added mobility and flexibility they’re now enjoying thanks to RingCentral. “They’re no longer tied to their desks. And this goes beyond everyone’s ability to work from home. Even when our employees come into the office, they’re still able to be mobile—to visit with colleagues, to go for a walk—and know they won’t miss an important call.”
Additionally, because Faststream Recruitment is now moving its entire organisation onto the Global RingEX system, the company is already seeing a considerable reduction in its telecom costs. “We’ve saved quite a significant amount of money per month with RingCentral, particularly with international calls,” says Josh.
It was truly gratifying to be able to help candidates and support our clients in such a difficult period. RingCentral played an important role in making that happen.
Nic Jones
Group Marketing Manager
INDUSTRY
Professional
Services
HQ
Southampton, UK
YEAR FOUNDED
1999
EMPLOYEES
100+
Helping job-seekers and employers even through the pandemic
When the lockdown forced Faststream Recruitment to start remote working, the company identified two major priorities. As Josh notes, “One of our key goals was to make sure everyone in the business was able to keep working.” And as Nic recalls, “We knew we’d have a lot of people contacting us looking for work, and we wanted to be there for them.”
As they explain, RingCentral helped the company achieve both of these aims. Using the work-from-anywhere cloud solution, Faststream Recruitment’s entire staff was able to continue working, being productive, and staying accessible from home. The company was also able to use RingCentral’s call-traffic reporting to identify those industries that were experiencing a spike in demand for candidates—and move its recruitment consultants over from the industries that had slowed down.
And finally, the company was able to continue placing job-seekers in roles throughout the pandemic. As Nic explains: “You’d be surprised at how many businesses needed employees during that time.”