Tell members of your executive staff that your talent acquisition team needs the help of a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution provider, and you may hear rebukes like:
- “We already have dedicated TA specialists who can source and engage qualified candidates.”
- “What exactly can a recruitment agency do that our in-house recruiting organization can’t?”
- “How can we justify RPO costs if we’re already spending money on our internal hiring process?”
It’s certainly fair for your C-suite to ask questions like these. After all, they are the gatekeepers of your business and, thus, are charged with making sound business decisions to accelerate organizational growth in the long run.
But, what many organizational leaders fail to grasp is there will invariably be times when they must turn to external resources to realize their near- and long-term workforce planning goals and grow their business as desired.
What is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)? An explainer for business leaders
Who better to provide a recruitment process outsourcing definition than NXTThing RPO President Terry Terhark?
“Recruitment process outsourcing … is a way for a company to add expertise and capacity to its staffing function,” said Terry. “Oftentimes, when you think of ‘outsourcing,’ you think you’re giving up control of a function or process. And for us, that is absolutely not the case.”
- In the context of our RPO business, we at NXTThing blend recruiting technology — including but not limited to top-tier applicant tracking systems — and personal connection to help brands of all kinds hire the distinct types of talent they need to thrive today and in the years ahead.
Using proven processes and technology means we can help clients with all talent acquisition tasks, including:
Sourcing net-new candidates from proven channels
Our “proactive pipelining” approach means our expert recruiters can rinse and repeat proven candidate sourcing methods that have helped us bolster the talent pools of countless companies across industries.
Marketing the employer brand and specific roles
On top of reaching out to prospects who fit the bill for available positions, we also implement targeted recruitment marketing campaigns across job boards, career communities, and social media to entice candidates to apply and enhance the employer brand for our client base.
Moreover, we optimize clients’ career sites to simplify the application process and boost application completions.
Engaging good-fit prospects with custom nurtures
Once our recruitment process outsourcing staff IDs strong-fit leads and adds them to our database, we either hand them off to clients to nurture or, if they prefer, handle custom-tailored candidate engagement for them.
Screening individuals before “passing” them off
Our team is also adept at evaluating prospective hires on phone and video screens to weed out poor-fit prospects and ensure only the most applicable candidates make it through to the interview stage for an open role.
Conducting background checks on final-stage leads
Whether we perform every interview with candidates or pass the baton to our clients, should they prefer to interact with and evaluate prospects themselves, we perform background checks on final-choice leads — a process that often gets bogged-down internally with HR and can lead to candidate drop-offs.
Our approach is to act quickly and efficiently to keep the process moving with late-stage prospects of interest.
Assisting with overall hiring and insights needs
The above tasks entail the recruitment process in earnest. But, there is also plenty of pre- and post-hiring work that must be done to ensure said process is smooth and leads to fast and intelligent hires for clients.
- That’s why we aid with workforce planning.
That is, we learn about each client’s unique headcount needs and business goals to recommended which requisitions to prioritize first and foremost and develop an appropriate, strategic hiring plan that ultimately nets them new employees who contribute to growth.
Moreover, we provide rich insights into our recruiting performance, labor market conditions (local, regional, and national), compensation, and other facets of talent acquisition that can enhance their hiring strategies.
When to turn to a recruitment process outsourcing service provider: RPO use cases
That’s the high-level breakdown of RPO. Now, you’re probably wondering when you and your company would need to rely on such services. In short, there are several situations in which it’s ideal to turn to an RPO provider.
You have limited internal TA resources/bandwidth
Scalability in terms of adding substantial headcount in a short period of time is the problem facing many growing and large-scale orgs today. But, it’s a task recruitment process outsourcing firms excel at completing for clients.
“As an in-house recruiter, there’s [sometimes] very little ability to leverage scalable resources, meaning you’ve got two recruiters and an admin, and that’s all you got,” said Terry. “So, it doesn’t matter if you have 100 openings or 50 openings, they’re split amongst that group.
“Whereas, from an external perspective, as an RPO, one of the extreme values we bring is our ability to scale.”
You have very particular and niche hiring needs
No two businesses have the same hiring needs. Thus, their approaches to sourcing, nurturing, interviewing, and evaluating talent and deciding which candidates are worth extending offers to and employing will invariably differ.
- Regardless of your distinct hiring requirements, a leading recruitment process outsourcing firm that handles the end-to-end recruiting process — from initial outreach, to offer, to onboarding — can help you find the right seasonal, hourly, project, or high-volume employees.
For instance, our project RPO services near-term assistance with filling roles for specialized initiatives our clients plan to undertake. Similarly, we aid companies with high-volume hiring needs (e.g., retail chains with many brick-and-mortar locations) by identifying and engaging a high quantity of high-quality prospects.
You find it hard to utilize your wealth of TA data
Analytics are essential to talent acquisition success today. Plain and simple.
Your in-house TA and HR departments undoubtedly leverage insights associated with candidates and existing employees to make data-backed changes to your recruiting and hiring strategies. (Read: Data tied to quality of hire, workforce retention, employee satisfaction, and career mobility).
- But, sometimes, that’s not enough.
The best recruitment process outsourcing firms have data analysts who know how to unearth actionable insights that can elevate key metrics for clients: offer acceptance, candidate drop-off, time to hire/fill, and the like.
What’s more, premier RPO providers dig deep into the latest industry and economic data and use that to inform suggestions to clients’ internal talent leaders and specialists and adjust the outreach and engagement activities they conduct on behalf of clients to better convert the right talent for them.
Speak with a NXTTHing RPO recruitment process outsourcing expert today to find out how we an alleviate pressure on your talent team and help scale and grow your business in the coming years.
