Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) providers bring higher expertise to organizations from recruiting best practices to technology and metrics that drive business success. Having the relevant data and the right metrics make all the difference. According to the Q4 2018 Insights report from Advanced RPO, “74 percent of recruiters believe hiring will become more competitive in the next 12 months.”

Creating an employment brand is not as easy as it sounds. Making sure the organization is viewed how executives and shareholders want it to be, in order to recruit and retain top talent, requires strategy. Katrina Kibben, CEO/Founder of Three Ears Media, states, the “Employer brand doesn’t work unless you do.”

Recruitment marketing and employer branding are gaining popularity in most organizations as the war on talent continues. An employer’s brand includes the values and mission of an organization and how current, past, and future employees view the organization. According to an article in Forbes, “One of the most effective ways of promoting recruitment is to create a workplace that employees recommend to their friends.” Tracey Parsons, President of Parsons Strategic Consulting, stated her famous quote “They come for the brand, they convert for the job, they stay for the culture”

It's easy to understand why recruiters are so attached to in-person interviews. It creates a great environment to get to know the candidate and how they may fit into your organization. It also lets the candidate see your company in action, which will help them decide if they want to work for you.

As an employer and as a job candidate, first impressions do matter.

The way you come across in your conversations and interactions, in person and online, will make a big impact on whether you get hired or find the ideal candidate. In the latter case, even if you are inundated with applicants, miscommunication or simply putting off the wrong vibe can mean that you end up with an employ who is considerably less desirable than if you had navigated the situation correctly. But knowing exactly how to manage early communications can be really difficult: it’s a tricky blend of personal and professional skills. The stakes feel very high, on both ends of the spectrum. So, without further ado, here are seven classic mistakes you should avoid.

In recent years, business owners and managers have been talking about a skilled labor shortage.

Top talents are thin on the ground, and there's no one to charge with brand missions. It was 18 years ago when The War for Talents described the competition for talented employees as a given, but companies still continued spending a fortune on recruitment agencies, latest sourcing technologies, and building an employer brand instead of stop making the glaring mistakes while recruiting candidates.

Yes, it's challenging to tailor the process so it would suit the diverse pool of job applicants. But, as a professional recruiter, you need to knock it out of the park for attracting top talents.

"Looking for skills rather than attitude," "poorly-written job ads," or "not asking the right interview questions" are copybook maxims already, so we won't focus on them here. Instead, let's take a look at more subtle but no less frequent and crucial mistakes you might be making while recruiting. 

Let's talk about productivity; it's something everyone is trying to boost, no matter your job, niche, or industry. However, it does look like, regardless of how we spend our days, we never seem to have enough hours in the day.   

Employee turnover is expensive and it’s a real business issue. A survey in 2016 by consulting firm, Deloitte, suggested that a combination of hiring costs and lost productivity added up to $121,000 per departing employee. Figures from the second quarter of 2018 showed that employee turnover in the American software sector was running at an annual rate of 24%, with two-thirds of those workers leaving voluntarily. And the issue is not slowing down. Turnover in the U.S. was little changed at 5.6 million and total separations rate was 3.7 percent in March of this year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

What can be done to reduce turnover?

Outsourcing is a hot topic that in some cases can become easily debatable. 

Even with a casual conversation about exploring the benefits of outsourcing for business efficiency, the comparison of its benefits or detriments has many points from both sides. Yet, when your company is looking at efficiency options, outsourcing still has many perks.

Of course, when you jump into the outsourcing discussion from a budgeting perspective, it becomes a much more sensitive topic with questions that arise if it should come from an offshore provider, or by a more recent trend selecting “nearshore” companies providing a similar but uniquely different alternative.

In this day and age, finding talent with the right mix of skills and personality to fit the organization's culture, is not that easy. For consulting and professional services firms it is even more difficult, as their reputation comes in to play. In an article by Consultants 500, they list some of the largest causes or disruptors this industry is facing. For example, increased competition, deregulation, globalization, changing client demands, and technology and artificial intelligence.