Business Person of the Month, June 2019: Rosaleen Blair continues to drive global growth at Alexander Mann Solutions.

Pictured: Rosaleen Blair, Founder and CEO, Alexander Mann Solutions.

After selling Alexander Mann Solutions for USD$1.1 billion in 2018, Rosaleen Blair continues to drive growth as CEO of the global talent acquisition and management services firm.

Rosaleen Blair founded Alexander Mann Solutions in 1996, with a mission to revolutionise and professionalise the way companies hire people. This drive continues today with the company’s latest acquisition set to incorporate cutting edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions. The firm’s current focus is to continue its ambitious growth trajectory in the United States. 

Recent Performance

In May 2018, Alexander Mann Solutions, a private limited company, was acquired by OMERS Private Equity, the private equity investment arm of OMERS, the defined benefit pension plan for municipal employees in the Province of Ontario, Canada, in deal worth USD $1.1 billion.

The company is a global market leader, serving some of the world’s leading brands, in more than 80 countries and 30 languages. It employs over 4,000 talent acquisition and management experts and partners with more than 100 blue-chip organisations.

Alexander Mann Solutions team photo.

This year already the company has picked up a host of awards, including Dream Company to Work For at the Best Employer Brand Awards 2019 at the World HRD Congress and Top 4 Contingent Labour Breadth of Service Leader, Top 8 Overall and Size of Deal Leader from HRO Today Baker’s Dozen Customer Satisfaction Ratings 2019, adding to the 2018 honours roll which saw it awarded Number 1 Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Provider Globally, among the many other accolades the company won. This marked the 12th consecutive year that the company finished in the top four of the global list, a track record of success that is unmatched by any other provider in the industry.

The Baker’s Dozen rankings are based solely on feedback from buyers of the rated services, and Ms Blair commented:

 The Baker’s Dozen rankings are particularly important to us as they demonstrate the direct value our clients are noting through our work and it truly demonstrates that Alexander Mann Solutions is a global leader in RPO.”

Leadership

As founder and CEO of the company, Rosaleen Blair is no stranger to awards herself, having won UK Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year in 2007, beating stiff competition in a year where the other finalist was Natalie Massenet, Founder of Net-a-Porter, the top luxury fashion retailer.

Rosaleen Blair, Founder and CEO, Alexander Mann Solutions.

Ms Blair is currently navigating the company through some of the most important issues faced in today’s business landscape, leading the way in Corporate Social Responsibility, with its support of The Valuable 500 Campaign (#valuable), in recognition of the importance of disability inclusion. Launched at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Summit in January 2019, #valuable is seeking 500 global businesses to place disability inclusion on their board agenda. 

Ms Blair, commented:

We are in the business of helping organisations grow while helping talented individuals express their fullest potential. The Valuable 500 Campaign is about inclusion and enabling all members of society to make a valuable contribution, and we are proud to be one of the pioneering organisations to put disability inclusion on our board agenda.”

Innovation 

Since founding the company in 1996, it has always been Blair’s mission to transform the way in which companies recruit. This drive continues apace today with the latest acquisition, of HR technology company Karen HR Inc. in June 2019, geared to allow Alexander Mann Solutions to offer the most cutting edge AI solutions to streamline the recruitment process. 

It extends the global engineering capabilities of the company with teams now based in both Canada and Poland, and further supports the company’s aggressive growth plans and commitment to extending its footprint in the Americas.

Karen HR uses Karen AI, a ‘cognitive recruiting assistant’ which integrates with existing applicant tracking systems and harnesses leading-edge technology to enhance recruitment processes and boost candidate engagement.

Karen AI has the capacity to rank hundreds of resumes against jobs per second and can be deployed to engage with jobseekers via chat or SMS, while the platform’s ‘shortlisting and conversion’ capability allows hirers to gain a deeper insight into a candidate’s personality and team fit. Karen Frontier, is a digital assistant that takes care of inbound employee inquiries delivering a simple and powerful way to provide answers to common HR-related queries to an enterprise’s workforce.

Regarding the acquisition, Ms Blair commented:

Whilst we have previously built and successfully deployed Robotic Process Automation and AI capabilities into our existing client solutions it is crucial that we are continually innovating and investing in technical expertise.”

“Alongside the expertise and capabilities that our valued technology partners already deliver, this move will accelerate efficiencies for our existing clients and will enable the rapid launch of exciting new digital products within Alexander Mann Solutions.”