Outsourcing Recruitment: How To Make It Easy

Whether your business is in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, professional services, IT or tech, life sciences, or hospitality, the key to your success rests on the effectiveness of your recruiting, and therefore, your people. But to recruit great people with values that align with yours, who have the skills you need, and who are enthusiastic about working with you, you need a strategy and the resources to enact that recruiting strategy. Many turn to outsourcing their recruitment – and for good reason!

The global recruitment process outsourcing market was valued at USD 6.71 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach a value of $19.96 billion by 2028. But what does it mean to outsource your recruiting?

Defining Outsourced Recruitment

Outsourcing recruitment means partnering with a third party, typically a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) company, to take on and manage all or part of your recruiting. They will take your existing hiring processes and assess them against your business needs to identify improvements, efficiencies, and cost savings.

How Does Recruitment Process Outsourcing Work?

RPOs can embed into your existing HR team or talent acquisition function and operate as part of your team and on your behalf, or they can work remotely to meet your hiring needs. Embedded solutions can be really useful to augment an existing talent function when high volumes of talent are needed. They can integrate into your team and live and breathe your culture and convey it effectively in all employer branding-led recruitment campaigns.

However, remote RPO services are also very useful, particularly if you are recruiting across multiple locations. A good RPO will be able to capture your culture remotely and create a unified recruitment strategy and process so that a candidate in one location or country will have a similar experience to another candidate in another location. Consistency in recruiting is key for a positive candidate experience.

Outsourcing Recruitment Examples

An RPO provider will work with your existing teams to create a recruiting solution and strategy that suits your unique industry needs and your growth goals.

This can include:

• Assessing your existing hiring processes
• Creating workforce planning strategies
• Building and implementing any recruitment technology applications
• Building your employer brand, which can include designing and deploying microsites, and preparing branded job descriptions.
• Managing compliance requirements
• Identifying relevant talent pools
• Pre-employment screening and interview arrangements (even for high-volume hiring)
• Reporting on recruitment success and progress
• And much more

Benefits of Outsourcing All or Parts of Your Recruitment

Whether you choose to partner with an RPO provider to outsource all, or some, of your talent acquisition processes, doing so has several benefits for your business. Some benefits include:

Access to Specialist Knowledge

RPO providers have built their business on understanding the latest recruitment trends and knowing how they affect recruiting in your industry. Collaborating gives you access to their years of experience and specialist expertise, particularly when it comes to inclusive recruitment practices and building a powerful employer brand that will appeal to candidates. You will also gain access to the latest digital tools and software that can help you understand your recruitment data on another level.

Reaching New Talent

Finding new talent can be difficult and take up valuable time and resources. Why waste time and money repeatedly targeting the same candidates when RPO providers are skilled at researching and accessing new talent pools and can help you access niche skills? Another lucrative source of talent is passive candidates. These are candidates who are not actively searching for a role but who could be persuaded to apply. According to LinkedIn, passive candidates make up 70% of the workforce. RPO providers have spent time building relationships with passive candidates and can direct you to those with the skills you need.

Reducing Your Time-to-Hire

Hiring quickly is important. The longer a position goes unfilled the greater your loss of productivity. Not to mention, lengthy hiring processes increase the risk of losing out on high-quality candidates. According to the RPO Association, the average hiring process takes between 23 and 90 days – yet top-quality candidates remain on the market for only 10 days! Using an RPO provider can reduce your time to hire by simplifying your recruitment processes and positioning you as an attractive employer.

Scaling Solutions to Your Needs

Your hiring needs can change over time. Whether you need to hire at volume to cover busy periods or are scaling up following an expansion, an RPO partner offers flexible, scalable resources which make it easy to adapt to your changing needs or fill unexpected vacancies. RPOs create custom solutions to ensure their hiring strategies are fully aligned with your business needs, and having a long-standing partnership with an RPO means they can adjust to your changing needs quickly.

Using an RPO partner helps you achieve cost-effective, efficient hiring whilst building long-term processes to elevate your talent acquisition.
If you need an RPO partner to support your recruitment needs, Pierpoint can help you with everything from talent mapping to strategic workforce planning and even volume hiring. Learn more about our full-service RPO solution, or contact us today to discuss your talent needs.