Maximise Recruitment Vendor Performance

From the most progressive of direct sourcing organisations to the agency driven and process outsourced models, there is likely to be a significant number of recruitment vendors in most companies' recruitment supply chain.

 

Given the key role the vendor channel plays in delivering talent into organisations, and the high cost of use, how much do we really know about the vendors we select, their outputs and the experience they provide to all of the stakeholders in the process they support, through the prosecution of their services on their clients behalf? The answer is likely to vary from not much, to a lot, depending on the approach to vendor selection and on-going contract and relationship management employed by the client company. 

Put a group of HR/recruitment leaders on the discussion topic of recruitment vendors together and inevitably there will be many stories of disappointment, lack of timely delivery, poor service levels, patchy quality and cycling through suppliers in search of the holy grail of long term successful delivery. Likewise, speak to candidates, a key stakeholder in the process, and there will be an even greater focus on quality of service received. Candidate experience can have a dramatic effect on brand perception as well as in the decision process of whether to accept or not accept a client offer.

Interestingly, there will also many stories of how well a process is working and how happy candidates and clients have been, often regarding the same vendors criticised by other users and organisations. From the vendor side there will be much feedback regarding clients' ability to successfully respond to their needs and to support and enable them to deliver successfully.

So, what explains the differences between those that get the most from the supplier relationship and those that don't? In my experience, and from broad feedback, the key difference is focus of approach on partnership and diligence of approach to service requirement definition, supplier assessment and selection, development of feedback mechanisms and on-going metrics based continuous process improvement.

What are some of the characteristics of approach by those reporting the most successful outcomes?

A clear definition of the service required and associated metrics by which the service delivery will be measured, including two way service levels, process flow and narrative.

A detailed review, RFP and face to face evaluation, of vendor capabilities across all key drivers of capability by key stakeholders (functional and line) to include

• Vendor experience and track record
• Approach to service levels and measurement
• Background and experience of proposed service delivery team members
• Technical and administration infrastructure
• Vendor Knowledge base
• Research/attraction capabilities
• Professionalism of approach to process
• Financial stability
• Capability to support future efficiencies
• Client references – from similar sized organisations with similar service requirements.
• Clear commitment and capability to implement
• A focus on delivering the required service consistently, at the most competitive price – reverse auction, negotiation etc. 

Establishing a change management and engagement process internally appears to provide the key to ensuring the most appropriate providers are not only chosen, but are effectively implemented to deliver the required outputs. Successful selection and implementations seem to share some of the following characteristics:

• Change Management, communication and project plan through all stages of the process
• Engaging all stakeholders early and agreeing the case for and approach to change
• Seeking inputs to define service capability requirements and gaining consensus on approach
• Contract Management as a conduit to continuous process improvement:
• A defined contract manager
• Regular, agenda driven supplier meetings reviewing metrics, stakeholder feedback and supplier feedback in the spirit of understanding what results are being achieved, why the results are what they are and how they can be improved, along with an action plan to be reviewed at subsequent meetings.
• Metrics and Management Information to include on-going candidate and hiring manager surveys on key aspects of service delivery as well as performance metrics from the two way service level agreement.

The outputs from 3^rd party managed services are often driven, at least to a large extent, by the inputs and approach of the client company during both the selection and on-going contract management process. I hope the above will provide a useful context against which to rationalise current performance of selected vendors and act as a broad broad roadmap to mitigate unsatisfactory performance.