By outsourcing recruitment, organisations benefit from expertise that offers valuable market insight and talent intelligence, to facilitate informed decision making.
Introduction
How do you build the business case to outsource recruitment? Outsourcing recruitment is a decision many organisations are reluctant to take until they have tried other avenues. Also, it is still a significant cost commitment for most organisations.
That said, right now, TA teams are constantly being asked to achieve more with less. When business demands overwhelm resources, time, and focus, exploring alternative solutions becomes challenging.
How do you build confidence in the business that RPO is the right next step?
The benefits of outsourcing recruitment
Organisations often have a natural reluctance to outsource. A part of that is the cost commitment. Additionally, there is also the idea that RPO providers may not be closely aligned with your company culture. Talent Acquisition teams are unwilling to give up control of processes as that may affect the quality of candidates sourced.
Modern RPO providers are working hard to change the perceptions that outsourced recruitment is purely process-driven. Evidently, there is a stronger focus on the candidate quality, hiring manager and recruiter experience. A modern RPO can offer employers:
- A candidate-centred model: Placing candidates at the heart of the experience is changing the perception around how a modern RPO supports employers.
- Technology expertise: In a world where HR and recruitment technology is ever-evolving, RPO providers can bring a new level of expertise to help you build your tech stack.
- Scalable resources: Flexibility on resource means that costs are more manageable, and growth is more sustainable.
- A partnership approach: RPO providers have the agility to work in partnership with in-house teams to manage parts of the process and achieve shared objectives.
- Additional market research & insight: RPO providers that have invested in talent intelligence are able to offer their clients a deeper understanding of their market, audiences and candidate expectations.
Enhanced market research & insights
Here, we focus on three types of research you could conduct that help you decide whether outsourcing is the best way for you to spend your recruitment budget. Research provides a deeper understanding of candidate availability and perceptions, and potential barriers to hiring. This further helps evaluate how to move forward with your talent acquisition strategy.
#1 Competitor audit
Review and evaluate what your competitors offer. If you are considering an RPO prior to entering a new market or scaling fast, understanding what you are up against gives a good indication of the challenges you face in cutting through the noise.
Salaries and benefits:
Conducting a review of how your closest competitors remunerate talent helps to benchmark your own rewards and understand what else you need to do to attract the right calibre of talent.
EVP and employer brand:
Is your message differentiated and your brand consistently appealing? Review and evaluate how your competitors communicate what makes their organisation a great place to work.
Attraction strategies:
Diversity of talent is important. Where are your competitors advertising, how are they targeting talent and what are their key criteria/role requirements?
#2 Talent mapping
The aim of talent mapping is to create an up-to-the-minute picture of the talent landscape for your senior leadership roles. Gaining insight into the market at a senior level can help you to see what talent is available and how effective your RPO might be.
Organisational structure:
Understand the organisational structure of your key competitors and how they are set up to deliver success for their clients.
Roles and responsibilities:
Identify the roles and responsibilities within that structure. See who the leaders are, their backgrounds and credentials, and identify rising stars.
Succession planning:
Retain the details of potential candidates within your talent map so that you can build shortlists and be ready to make confidential approaches. It can help to fill senior leadership roles much faster if a key figure in your organisation leaves.
#3 External surveys
A sophisticated talent attraction solution is now an integrated element in most modern RPO services, providing automated digital marketing and high-quality candidate management. Understanding the candidate perception of you as an employer is a vital element in helping to reach the right candidates and breakdown any engagement barriers. Running external surveys is a quick way of taking the temperature of the market and evaluating how successful your recruitment activities could be moving forward.
Candidate perceptions:
Gain guaranteed responses from a highly targeted group of candidates who are selected by their job title, experience, skills and the organisation they work for.
Market research:
Dive deeper into your market and understand where your talent opportunities are; how technology such as AI is changing the skills that organisations need and how organisations in your sector are tackling the challenges created by skills shortages, the growth in contingent working and the need to recruit more diverse candidates.
Conclusion
Overall, the pressures that Talent Acquisition teams feel to deliver is driving them to put in place short-term, quick fix solutions. Or to make rash decisions regarding longer term partnerships, in areas such as RPO. TA teams that have the data to support their decision making are in a stronger position to lead the talent conversation within the business, identify areas of opportunity and put in place an RPO partnership that offers lasting value and return.
If you would like to learn more about how an RPO partnership can benefit your organisation, please get in touch with us.
