“Consistent hiring brings the right people through the door,” explains Mike Gillespie, Vice President of RPO services at Hueman RPO. He added, “Hiring consistency maintains the employer's culture and values--it's the backbone of any company, allowing employers to retain and grow their business because they have the right people.
In a recent interview for the RPOA, Gillespie and Zach Coffey, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Hueman, discussed how employers can improve hiring consistency using recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). The following is an edited version of this Talent Leader Council interview.
Gillespie: Hiring consistency brings the right people through the door. It's about recruiters identifying and zeroing in on what the right candidate looks like for the organization and then repeating that hiring process to bring in talent that matches the needs and the culture of the organization. Hiring consistency comes down to finding the right candidates and the methodology that works to bring in those candidates. Then it becomes a rinse-and-repeat process, where recruiters know what to look for to get those folks, both in the quality and quantity needed, through the door consistently.
Zach Coffey: Talent acquisition (TA) leaders try to balance the needs of the business. They balance the management of their recruiters, the processes and technologies they use, the recruitment marketing, and ensuring the TA department has meaningful reporting. Depending on the needs of the business, things get prioritized and deprioritized, causing inconsistent hiring results.
Gillespie: I'll add that TA leaders often feel the pressure–not only do they have competing priorities, but quality can suffer when they just want to get people through the door. They start to think of it as a numbers game. They might think that if they have ten openings, let's just hire ten people rather than the right people. Maybe it’s a slower process, but hiring consistency is about the long-term play and getting the right employees into the organization.
Coffey: Recruitment process outsourcing (commonly known as RPO) is when an organization outsources any portion of the talent acquisition function to an outside partner. As we see it at Hueman, our role as an RPO partner is to help our partners achieve hiring consistency to ensure that employers operate on the five key pillars of a world-class hiring process at a high level. The five key pillars are the following.
First, you have to have great people. The recruiters are the only salespeople you have in HR who tell your organization's story. An RPO partner ensures that your people are working through a world-class process. That's the second vital pillar. An RPO ensures the process considers and optimizes the candidate and the hiring manager's experience. Third, an RPO ensures employers leverage the right technologies. That technology spans from applicant tracking systems (ATSs) to interviewing or texting platforms you use throughout the hiring process. The fourth pillar calls for a dedicated digital recruitment marketing team. Finally, an RPO partner will provide meaningful data and reporting that allows employers to make strategic decisions. An RPO looks across those five key areas to see where they can apply tools and resources to make sure that the employer operates at a high level, which leads to hiring consistency and a competitive advantage in the acquisition of talent.
Coffey: Working with an RPO brings consistency to the entire hiring function and ensures that employers operate within the five key areas just discussed at a high level. An RPO helps employers look at candidates as people, not numbers. An RPO partnership can reduce potential premium labor, and overtime spending, because the employer now performs at a consistent level of hiring. As a result, employers can create a better candidate and hiring manager experience, leading to happier new employees and better retention. The bottom line is that employers gain consistent results when working with an RPO partner, which helps them make informed decisions with the provided data.
Gillespie: RPO brings that laser focus to what that ideal candidate looks like. That means we want to understand the ideal candidate persona and what the hiring manager wants. We can read a job description just like anyone, but what are the soft skills? What sums up what that unit, department, and shift needs? As a result, an RPO recruiter often conducts a rich, in-depth conversation with candidates. The other positive effect is that talent acquisition leaders can focus on other business needs instead of on various HR functions and know that TA continues to operate consistently.
Coffey: RPO providers can help clients scale down and up their recruiting capacity as needed. Many organizations have gone through downsizing recently. Nobody knows a hundred percent what's happening, but when things return to normal, it will probably not be a slow growth. It's going to be that hockey stick where it takes off. Organizations that partner with an RPO provider have the ability to scale up their hiring capacity significantly without the need to ramp up their internal teams.
Gillespie: We contracted a few years ago with a rural healthcare system in North Carolina. They are a wonderful partner and very open to new ideas. They wanted to get better in every area of talent acquisition. During our detailed implementation, we quickly realized they had a very unsophisticated approach to managing their ATS. They did not have any internal recruitment marketing. They didn't know how to use the technology and tools they had available effectively and efficiently. The partner gave us their hard-to-fill requisitions in their nursing and imaging departments. They set a lofty goal for us, and early in the implementation process, they told us that they didn't think there was any way we could hit it.
This situation speaks to the beauty of working with an RPO. Our marketing team works hand in hand with our recruitment team. As our recruiters screen and source candidates to find that next ideal candidate, our marketing team often does a lot of the behind-the-scenes legwork. They research which candidate platforms drive the best results. That research saves our RPO recruiters from looking in dry areas and allows them to hit fruitful platforms filled with quality candidates. The marketing team's work helps us turn things around.
For this particular partner, we achieved 145% of our year one goal, when they told us going into the partnership, ‘if you can do 75 percent of the goal, we’ll be thrilled.’
This example testifies to partners having open minds and trusting us to come in and be the experts in the space. We look at everything they do when we start a new partnership. We look at every step, from when a candidate applies to when the employer hires the candidate. Sometimes, that's 40 steps in the process. We offer our best practices and our expertise. And in this case, and in most cases, it pays dividends in the end.
Coffey: Our process works for partners, big and small. For instance, we worked with a large firm that had many inconsistencies in its business needs. They relied on contract recruiters. They scaled up several contract recruiters, and after the recruiters finished the job, the firm scaled back down. We realized the firm spent much time training those folks to get them up to speed without guaranteeing performance. The contract recruiters could also leave at any time.
The firm leaned on us for consistency throughout those peaks and valleys. We had a constant conversation and a genuine partnership with them. When the firm needed a thousand more customer service reps, we planned for it and scaled up with them.
The same principles apply to a small health system and a large commercial partner: find suitable candidates and ensure that we work within their business and understand the culture of our partners. We know every organization has gaps in those five key areas of the TA process. An RPO partner dives in with the employer and works to correct any problems within their hiring process.
Gillespie: One of the keys to a successful RPO partnership starts with client partners as willing participants. Like any business relationship, things don't go well if there's only one side invested. The most successful partnerships involve invested employers. They want to be a part of the process. They want to hear our best practices. They want to offer their best practices. We often meet in the middle. There is not a silver bullet answer in the equation of hiring. But if two partners come to the table and put their joint talents together, an RPO solution works for almost every organization out there that is struggling with their hiring needs.
Hiring consistency maintains an organization's culture and values and requires a dedicated and systematic approach. Our Talent Leader Council contributors explored the concept of hiring consistency, identified the causes of inconsistent hiring, and delved into the role of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) in improving hiring consistency. By understanding the key pillars of a world-class hiring process and the value that RPO brings, organizations can strive for greater consistency in their recruitment efforts, leading to better retention and an improved candidate experience. Ultimately, embracing hiring consistency and considering RPO as a strategic partner can positively affect an organization's success in the long run.
Read more about the value of RPO from Hueman talent leader contributors.