Recruitment Outsourcing Trends - The Next Generation

RPO or Recruitment Process Outsourcing was the buzz of the noughties and its forecast to be one of the fastest growth sectors over the coming years, but a wind of change is blowing through the market.

As we emerge from one of the deepest recessions in living memory an evolution is taking place within the recruitment industry. Recruitment Process Outsourcing is no longer just about the Recruitment Process, but about Recruitment Outsourcing and the reduction of costs across all aspects of recruitment. It’s not enough for your Recruitment Outsourcing partner to reduce hiring costs by squeezing supplying agency margins and the use of efficient Vendor Management and Applicant Tracking Systems to manage the process.

The next generation of Recruitment Outsourcing focuses on maximising value at every stage, including:

Reducing Agency Spend through Direct Candidate Attraction

A high quality career website or corporate job board, which focuses on usability, accessibility and is search engine optimised to deliver relevant quality candidates, will dramatically improve a company’s ability to attract talent. Unfortunately the best career website can be easily undermined through a poor integration with the applicant tracking system (ATS). Integrations which see all the vacancies appearing on the ATS provider’s domain www.myATSprovider.com/companyname, will promote your ATS provider’s website, but won’t be indexed by Google under your domain.

Your RPO’s choice of technical partner will influence this by understanding both ATS and Recruitment Website development. This can significantly enhance your organisation’s ability to attract direct applications and significantly reduce agency spend.

Social Networking & Social Media

Much has been written and discussed about social media in recruitment and how successful this is depends on how it is utilised by each organisation. Your website and applicant tracking system can add immense value, through the use of vacancy feeds, social bookmarking and dedicated mobile websites. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook provide the platform for virally spreading vacancies and information across a far wider audience increasing referrals and reach and channeling relevant candidates through to the career website or campaign microsites. The use of Tweetdeck and other computer and mobile applications means that candidates can monitor 1000s of channels for jobs 24/7, so make sure your vacancies stand out with adverts written to attract in this ‘noisy’ environment where you have just seconds to capture attention.

Applicant Tracking & Vendor Management Systems

There are many choices available for applicant tracking and vendor management system, but as Recruitment Outsourcing evolves it is important that your RPO’s technology partner has more than ‘Software in a box’. Here are just some of the key questions to ask any potential technology partner:

• Who owns the license for the system; can you transfer the RPO, MSP or VM software contract to your business without incurring costs and time to implement a new system?

• Can the system truly operate as a recruitment support tool for both temporary & contract as well as permanent hire?
• Are online timesheets an integral part and can you eliminate paper and processing time with web interfaces and standard exports for payroll and finance systems, including your supplying agencies?
• Can it seamlessly integrate with the career website or does it use outdated methodologies?
• Does it automatically manage your supplying agencies and vacancy release?

Retention and Talent Management

Talent management should be a natural extension of your RPO’s applicant tracking system by managing relationships beyond the start date.

• Details and information on new starters should be stored and updated regularly to ensure that their transition from applicant to employee is as smooth as possible.
• Information on leavers should be easy to monitor and report to evaluate the true cost over the first 12 months
• Build up an internal talent pool of employees seeking career advancement and change.
• Use job alerts by email and RSS to communicate new vacancies internally, taking a proactive approach to internal recruitment.

Candidates who apply directly to an organisation and those employed from within are far more likely to remain in their positions beyond the first year than those recruited through agencies. Your RPO should have the tools to manage and monitor this.

The Results

RPO organisations which embrace the holistic nature of recruitment outsourcing and direct candidate attraction, rather than just focusing on the process, can see dramatic reductions in agency spend. Agency spend reductions of 50-60% are common, especially as direct candidates more likely to stay beyond a year, the lifetime costs are still further reduced.

Employers are increasingly looking at their RPO partners and questioning why they don’t bring recruitment back in-house and the growth in Internal Recruitment Teams is testimony to this. The truly innovative Recruitment Process Outsourcing companies are embracing the evolution offering holistic Recruitment Outsourcing models which cater to the employers desire to reduce costs and maximise direct hire, whilst retaining relationships with supplying agencies to add value in key areas, such as short term high volume temporary staff, highly skilled contractors and niche or executive recruitment.

The Solution

HotLizard offer a range of corporate recruitment and vendor management solutions, ranging from RPO & Vendor Management Software, Applicant Tracking and Talent Management Software, Career Websites, Corporate Job Boards and Search Engine Optimisation. To find out more on how we can help your RPO partner add true value to your recruitment strategy, please contact one of our consultants on 01635 527900 or info@hotlizard.net