Case Study: Colliers International achieves €1M year‑one cost savings and 47% more hires with SmartRecruiters

€1 Million Year One Cost Savings Through Data-Driven Recruiting

Colliers, a Vancouver-headquartered global real estate firm with 18,000+ employees, faced a decentralized EMEA hiring model that relied heavily on external agencies and manual selection processes. This approach drove up costs, reduced productivity, produced inconsistent practices across countries, and left candidate data fragmented — so the EMEA talent team needed to take ownership of recruiting, standardize selection and compliance, and attract higher-quality candidates to meet growth targets.

Colliers implemented SmartRecruiters’ Talent Acquisition Suite in a phased, country-by-country rollout across 11 EMEA locations, centralizing data, automating workflows, and improving sourcing, candidate engagement and analytics. In year one agency dependency fell from 80% to 5%, annual hires increased 47%, hiring velocity rose 41%, and the program delivered ~€1M in cost savings while producing 15,000 applicants, 1,000 interviews and 230 hires — enabling a shift toward employer-brand-driven recruitment marketing.

Colliers International

Mo Karim

Head of EMEA People