In the current economic climate many recruiting departments are challenged by the combination of unpredictable demand, fixed recruiter headcount allocations and the ever present requirement for speed and quality of delivery, more cost effectively, by increasingly demanding customers.
The resulting pressure on recruiters workload can significantly impact quality of delivery, time to hire, cost of hire and lead to negative feedback from stakeholders (candidates, clients and vendors) and in some cases, loss of process control as managers link-up with some of the many agencies they get called by directly on a daily basis.
The reality for many organisations is that little additional resources are available in the short/medium term as budgets are cut and complicated and unpredictable headcount sign-off processes are put in place or maintained.
Meanwhile, some categories of talent remain a significant challenge to attract. So what are the options open to busy recruitment/HR functions? Well, they can continue to do it for themselves, they can outsource the process to an RPO organisation or they can build a more balanced recruitment supply chain, finding a supplier support architecture beyond the agency client relationship but without outsourcing the recruitment function:
RPO, while a valid option, depends to a large extent on business drivers, scale and distribution of recruitment demand, organisational readiness to work with outsourced solutions, current state of capability, current attitudes to talent acquisition by line managers and the urgency of the specific issues being faced by the recruiting/HR function. There is in any case a big investment in time, cost and discipline to define, implement and run successfully.
Agencies, an expensive option at the best of times, still leads to significant process management work for internal recruiters, as well as reducing the opportunity to identify the highest quality of candidates by omitting passive candidate and competitor talent who may be approachable but not in the market. There is also the lack of direct market connectivity and feedback on an organisations employee value proposition to consider.
In-house delivery is a great and progressive option where resources match demand. However, an under capacity to manage volumes within the function, will store up problems across all stakeholders – recruiters, line managers, vendors and candidates.
Even with the support of agencies, ultimately the pressure on recruiters will drive attrition, lack of engagement, and reduced quality of outcomes. Adding flexible resources, such as contract resources is an attractive option, however, many organisations treat contract resource as headcount or non-budgeted cost leading to restrictions mentioned above. Likewise the demand volume and peaks may not be ideally suited to delivery by a contract resource.
Partnership Recruiting, tasking out segments of demand to recruitment partners outside the typical agency fee model, is in my view the most flexible option.
Having determined that it's not possible to do everything to the required quality in-house, partnership recruiting provides an opportunity to define which segments of demand companies can and want to manage in-house and those requiring support.
Typical candidates for support are those aspects of the recruitment process which can reduce cost, increase speed, add technical capability, improve candidate quality or increase functional capacity.
The attractiveness of partnership based recruiting of defined segmnets of demand is that any demand, large or small can be supported on a project, short or long term basis, leaving control of delivery internally, whilst flexibly mitigating resource challenges with high quality delivery at a reduced cost to typical third party support.
One organisation I worked with struggled with overall volumes and was experiencing significant capacity challenges in the recruiting team, whilst also incurring significant agency/search firm cost. A delivery architecture was developed putting in place process support for blue collar and junior roles, leaving in-house recruiters free to deliver against technical, managerial, professional and executive roles.
The in-house team were then focused on direct sourcing, with the support of passive candidate and competitor research support, delivery enhanced candidates at dramatically reduced costs.
Organisations will in any case ultimately and progressively move towards a more balanced recruitment supply chain, utilising a combination of co-sourcing support, agencies, in-house delivery, and/or RPO.
The key drivers of the need for flexible cost effective support will be the variability of demand within a fixed headcount.
Key to making a successful transition will be to understand how organisations want to connect with the talent market, expected outputs and the resource, cost and delivery implications of the different options and combinations.
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