When you’re a talent acquisition specialist, bringing in external help is a huge decision, and there can often be a bit of a stigma attached to it. Many believe that outsourcing recruitment or asking for the help of an RPO provider creates the connotation that your existing talent function isn’t working and that you need help to do your job.
However, as an RPO provider with over ten years of experience, we know this isn’t the case. There are many reasons why talent acquisition professionals may seek extra support when it comes to their recruitment efforts. Enlisting an RPO agency to work as a recruitment partner is a strategic way of finding this support without making permanent or hard to reverse decisions. In many cases, it’s a more cost effective and intelligent way of solving talent acquisition challenges.
To help make this more clear, we’re exploring some of the common scenarios in which we’ve found scaling tech businesses often need to consider external recruitment support:
The roles you need to fill are specialist
It may be that the roles you need to fill are quite niche, and therefore finding talent with the appropriate skills and experience to fill them is more of a challenge. For example, you may be looking for individuals experienced in AI or robotics, which are relatively new technologies, and experience is in short supply. In these cases, the talent pool is limited. Waiting for this limited talent pool to come to you, unless you’re incredibly well known in the industry, will prove to be unsuccessful and could take up more time than you have. This is where requesting the help of talent acquisition specialists, and RPO providers could help you. They have resources and tactics at hand which can help them to source even the most niche talent. They have time to reach out to candidates directly or can think strategically about promoting your employer brand to the right sort of talent; so that candidates choose to come to you. They can dedicate the time to finding individuals with the right skills and experience, no matter how specific they may be.
You need to hire at volume to scale your business quickly
Sometimes businesses see an incredible surge in demand for their product or service, which means they have to scale quicker than anyone could have predicted. While the anticipation surrounding their product or service is hot, leaders need to work out how to grow their offering which often means hiring talent. Unfortunately, hiring at volume quickly can often lead to poor hiring decisions as you rush to get people on board. Plus, if your existing teams are preoccupied with growing the business as a whole, there often isn’t time to source, screen and interview a large number of candidates. This is where outsourcing your recruitment can help.
RPO providers have access to talent pools and have the resources to recruit talent quickly and ensure the talent is right for your business, meaning a better quality of hire. In addition, they will act as an extension of your talent function, giving you the resource to make more hires in a short time. After all, it’s no secret that recruitment is a time-consuming exercise. Screening and interviewing candidates is a full-time job, so ramp up your hiring, and you’ll need extra resources to facilitate it. Again, an RPO provider can help.
Your business is looking to expand into a new market
Scaling your business globally can create a whole new set of talent acquisition problems. If you’re looking to move into new markets geographically, it often helps to have the local talent to help you get off the ground. However, if you’re new to this country or area, it may be harder for you to source the talent you need. It’s possible that when hiring in a new country, you’ll lack the local reputation, the knowledge of the best job boards and even of candidate behaviours or qualifications. As a result, you may struggle to find skilled candidates in specific locations.
Outsourcing can help with this from the get go. An RPO provider can engage in talent mapping to help you source skilled candidates and approach business expansion more strategically. They’ll help you set up a base in a location where talent and skills are in abundance, like tech university towns or cities where your largest competitors for talent are based. This way, you’ll know that the skill sets are available to you before you open an office or begin the recruitment process. They’ll also be able to connect with talent overseas or further afield, using digital talent attraction or their own networks to help you reach out to talent in locations where your business may be less well known. They can build employer brand awareness and help your business to become a renowned local employer.
Your TA teams are stretched and need support
If you’re a scaling business trying to hire a lot of roles in a short space of time, the likelihood is your talent teams are stretched. Whether you’re experiencing growth or trying to bounce back from the pandemic, talent acquisition functions in many industries are currently under a lot of pressure. Perhaps you had to let go of some of your internal team during the pandemic, and now you’re struggling to manage demand. Hiring more internal recruiters is a solution, but if you only need temporary support, it can be costly and mean you have to make further layoffs down the line. However, if your TA teams experience burnout and leave, then you’re stuck trying to hire people to hire others, and that can put a significant halt on growth plans.
Outsourcing recruitment to an RPO provider can relieve some of this pressure on a flexible basis. It means that your team can split their workload and work with the external recruiters on projects. It’s not a case of one against the other; in RPO, you form a recruitment partnership with your agency. Of course, projects can be split between your internal and external teams, but really you’re working together to achieve one goal, which means giving feedback and advice. Support is always appreciated, and if your teams are under pressure, having an external recruitment partner on hand to lighten the load and give strategic advice will keep your teams happy and help them avoid burnout.
You don’t have an existing talent acquisition function at all
If you’re a startup, it’s pretty likely that you don’t have a built-in talent acquisition function at all. If your team is in the early stages, then hiring someone to handle recruitment probably hasn’t been a priority. Hiring an in-house recruitment team is a big commitment financially, and sometimes you cannot anticipate that you’ll have hiring demand to justify it, especially in the early stages. Therefore, you’re trusting your existing team with the job of hiring, but they have to balance this with their day-to-day responsibilities and often aren’t experienced in recruitment practices. This can often lead to staff being burnt out, other areas of growth being put on hold, and poor hiring decisions being made for the sake of saving time. As you grow your business, it’s crucial to get hires right, rather than just hiring who is available at that time. However, for c-suite executives with other responsibilities, dedicating the time to sourcing, screening and interviewing candidates isn’t possible.
This is where outsourcing can come in handy. An RPO provider extends your talent team or can become your entire talent acquisition function. You can benefit from their skills and expertise on a flexible basis without committing to hiring a permanent team member. Instead, you’ll have a dedicated team of recruitment experts who can dedicate their time to finding the right individuals to grow your business, both in skillset and in cultural fit. This means that when recruitment demand is high, you have a team on hand to hire talent, and when it slows down, you can dial down the services you access. It’s a much more cost-effective way for new businesses to embed a talent acquisition function into their organisation.
Talent Works flexible approach to RPO allows businesses from startups and scaleups to larger-scale enterprises to scale our services to meet demand. We know that no company expects to continually hire in the current climate; however, many companies can benefit from the extra help that an RPO provider offers. Our team of recruitment, employer branding, digital attraction and market research experts can embed themselves into your organisation, becoming an extension of our team or acting as your sole talent acquisition function. It’s our job to make surrounding yourself with talent easy, giving your talent teams the support they need to grow your business successfully.
