by Debbie Hatke, MA, SPHR
It's the new year and HR managers everywhere are asking "what can we do differently this year…"
- how can we cut costs?
- how do we boost our staff's productivity?
- how can we pare down that hiring list?
- what can we do to impact turnover?
There is one very good answer to all these questions...Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). It's the hottest trend and it isn't just a fad. Some businesses have been utilizing RPO for the last five years or more, but others are just learning about it as recruiting gets tougher and tougher and the demands on HR resources get tighter and tighter.
In today's hiring climate outsourcing the recruiting process is a solution that makes sense for many reasons. With each new requisition it seems as if there is greater competition for skilled talent and dwindling numbers of experienced applicants. In the last few months the unemployment rate has been at its lowest since the year 2001 and forecasters in-the-know say the aging of the Baby Boomer workforce is going to have devastating effects on employers in the very near future. How will this effect recruiting? Will Baby Boomers retire in droves? Will your HR department have to learn how to recruit retirees? Will retirees want to work full-time? Will there be enough skilled candidates in the younger generations to replace the retiring Boomers' vast knowledge, experience and skills? While some of these questions don't have answers yet, RPO can be the answer to how to prepare for the unknown.
Just how does RPO combat all these dilemmas? The key is flexibility. Most organizations that provide Outsourced Recruiting solutions flex to work with their clients to help them manage the ebb and flow of recruiting demands. They can offer to fill short-term hiring needs (such as high volume positions or filling that elusive hard-to-fill job) AND are a great solution for long-term strategic partnerships - one where the recruiter, although not a member of your staff, acts as an extension of your staff. An Outsourced Recruiter can work on-site or off-site, often in a seamless and transparent manner, so much so that the candidates they talk to on your behalf often don't realize that the recruiter they are speaking to isn't an employee them self. This partnership builds overtime so that the recruitment solution is there when you need it and incurs no cost when you don't need it.
How does this benefit you? Using an Outsourced Recruiter can reduce operating costs, increase the speed of hiring and improve the quality of your hires. An Outsourced Recruiter focuses on only recruiting which enables them to better target their efforts, be innovative in their recruiting strategy and have access to specialized expertise and technology. The quality of your candidates can be significantly improved through the recruiter's use of networking and extensive pre-screening. Having higher quality candidates to select from can result in better hires, reduced turnover and in-turn reduced costs. Outsourced Recruiters also rely on a variety of tools that might not be available to some HR departments - such as resume banks, selection assessments and applicant tracking software. Using these tools they can provide you with powerful metrics that can not only be used to prove your HR department's worth, but to prove the value of Outsourced Recruiting.
In addition to being flexible in how they work, Outsourced Recruiters can be flexible in the tasks they perform. While contingency recruiters often focus on just sourcing and providing candidates, a full-service recruiter can handle all aspects of the recruiting function: sourcing candidates, managing applications, screening / interviewing candidates, conducting background and reference checks, making offers and initiating the on-boarding process. If a position is in the development stages a recruiter might even interview managers and create a job description. They can and will do as much or as little as is required for your particular situation - leaving you and your staff free to tackle other HR issues.
While RPO is a great solution for today's hiring needs, there are some things to consider when contracting with an Outsourced Recruiter. How will your staff work / interact with this contract employee? What types of communication do you need from the Outsourced Recruiter and in turn what do they need from you? In order for this solution to provide you with optimal results, the Outsourced Recruiter needs to be considered an "insider" - like a regular employee. They need to have copies of hiring documents that you typically use, have access to job descriptions and salary data for the positions they are filling and have direct contact with the hiring managers of those positions. The Outsourced Recruiter will rely heavily on communication with the hiring manager to gauge the needs of the department and to keep the recruiting process going smoothly from screening, to in-person interviews to hiring. Getting good feedback on candidates from the hiring manager is vitally important. Without proper feedback a recruiter will not know if they are on the right track or completely off the mark, which can lengthen the time it takes to fill the position and cost you more money. And since reducing your recruiting expenditures is a likely goal of using an Outsourced Recruiter you will want to have an open line of communication to discuss any changes in your needs and to get the data required to track hiring costs.
The next time you need to hire a new employee, think of the three E's: expense, effectiveness and efficiency and consider establishing a partnership with an outsourced recruitment solution provider.
Debbie Hatke, MA, PHR is a Human Resources Management Consultant with Strategic Human Resources, Inc. If you have questions or comments about this article, you can contact Debbie at Debbie@StrategicHRinc.com.
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