Case Study: British American Tobacco achieves faster, higher-quality hiring with IBM Kenexa

Finding the business leaders of the future with analytics-driven recruitment

British American Tobacco (BAT), a leading global tobacco company, faced a challenge in building a strong talent bench for future leadership. Their reliance on over 70 third-party recruitment agencies resulted in inconsistent candidate quality and hindered their ability to identify the best performers. To support its long-term competitiveness, BAT partnered with IBM to implement an analytics-driven recruitment transformation using IBM Kenexa BrassRing on Cloud and IBM Kenexa Skills Assessments on Cloud.

The IBM solution established a new, intelligent direct hiring process that used predictive analytics and custom assessments to identify top candidates. This allowed BAT to consistently find high-performing individuals. The results were significant: 70% of new leaders are now hired directly, saving $1.5 million annually in agency fees. These direct hires also achieved substantially higher six-month performance scores (3.5 vs. 3.3 for agency hires) and contributed to a 25% reduction in time-to-hire.

British American Tobacco

Roberto Blanda

Head of Global Talent Acquisition