Job vacancies have reached and are now exceeding pre-pandemic levels, giving businesses a lot of work and competition when it comes to building their teams. With hiring gaining momentum, the RPOA invited two leaders from Advanced RPO to explain the options organizations have for rebuilding and/or expanding their recruiting capabilities and to share how RPO is decidedly different from traditional approaches.
Tim Oyer, Advanced RPO’s VP of Sales, and John Hess, Advanced RPO’s EVP of Operations, led an insightful RPO Leadership Forum webinar hosted by the RPOA. The following is a summary of how RPO stands apart from traditional contract recruiting and staffing agencies in the race to build a better workforce.
Watch webinar: Making the Case for Recruitment Process Outsourcing
Staffing Agencies and Contract Recruiters
If HR and TA leaders need to outsource part of their recruiting strategy they often look to contract recruiters or a staffing agency. These options can help a company hit their hiring goals, manage one-off and small-scale searches, and boost recruitment resources for the short-term needs. As recruitment needs grow in scale, sophistication, and ambition a holistic and strategic approach is required and this is where RPO shines
5 Ways RPO Is Different
While RPO is also anchored in the work of recruiting and workforce building, there are several ways it is a decidedly different approach to staffing and contract recruiting. Here are the core five ways RPO diverges from traditional recruiting support:
- RPO Is Holistic. The range of an RPO solution is expansive. It requires the assessment of the condition of the hiring program, determination of where improvements are needed, a full-scale plan, and then administration of the new optimized process. It’s a multiphase, holistic solution that begins with intensive knowledge gathering and leads to an long-term outsourced and optimized recruitment solution with specific targets and KPIs. It’s a powerful blend of outsourcing best practices and talent acquisition insight and skill.
- Employers Own the Candidates. In an RPO, the candidates belong to the employer. They are driven to the employer’s ATS and live in the employer’s database. The benefit is an ever-growing and strengthening talent pool that is familiar with the employer’s brand, culture and benefits.
- RPO Is an Extension. Working in lockstep with HR, recruiters and hiring managers, RPO works as an extension of the employer’s talent acquisition team. People and processes are integrated so that candidates have a streamlined employment experience and are never confused between the employer and the RPO. To candidates, it’s all the same, which is exactly how it should be.
- RPO Scales Hiring Resources as Needed. To optimize the recruiting process, an RPO solution adds recruiting and employment process resources that internal teams can’t always include, such as market research specialists, sourcing experts, screeners, recruitment marketing coordinators, and more. These resources, along with the recruiting talent, scale with need and demand, growing or shrinking the talent acquisition force to efficiently and cost-effectively meet the most current talent demand.
- Accountability. Not filling a job is not an option with RPO. From KPIs to the outsourcing contract, the recruiting results are the bottom-line responsibility of the RPO partner. It’s a higher level of accountability that usually results in higher quality hires and few, if any, lasting vacancies.
Despite the expansive potential resources and processes of RPO, it’s nevertheless a nimble solution that can grow and adapt as needed. A 500-personal hiring push one quarter might fall to just a handful later in the year. RPO, agile in function and form, can quickly align with current demand to reduce costs and make the best use of resources.
To learn more about the essentials of any recruitment program, RPO or not, we encourage you to watch the webinar. You can also learn about RPO by accessing the many free RPO resources offered by the RPOA through our blogs and RPO Academy.
