Every company is charged with the assignment of doing more with less. The movement to create efficiencies in every component of running a business has lead to a huge movement of outsourcing everything from office administration, technology, recruitment and manufacturing to accounting, supply chain, staffing and in some cases customer service. Many of the largest companies in America have been among the first to explore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for some it is the best thing that they have ever tried, for others the results have been disastrous.
In the area of business that I specialize in I have been researching the RPO movement. Recruitment Process Outsourcing, is about removing the recruitment and staffing function from inside the company and having an outside vendor manage, execute and deliver people on an as needed basis.
The choice to RPO has for the most part been about price, economies of scale and efficiency. The most popular roles that I have read about RPO filling is call center, front line banking, customer service, retail, and medical.
Some user reports say this is the most efficient way for a National or Global organization to staff, others say their quality of hires has declined, unwanted turnover has increased and candidates are left with an ill feeling about the companies employment brand.
What I have learned for sure is that RPO is not for every company; a company has to have certain staffing objectives that make an RPO offering appealing.
Just because RPO might not be the right answer for your company does not mean that there is not work to do to create an efficient, effective and highly successful recruitment function within your organization. After all, your company is only as good as the people inside and an ineffective, inefficient recruitment process is a barrier between you and your next level of talent.
Over 10 years ago, when I owned Alliance HR Network, one of my mentors asked me for our operational quality ratio of interviews to hires. I did not have the number. He then asked me how many candidates we had to talk to, to generate a live interview, I did not have that number either. I began to see that my lack of managing those important numbers was in the way of me running an efficient recruiting operation and that was costing me money.
Efficiency
The journey was a painful one