What can Recruitment Process Outsourcing Resellers (RPOs) do now to increase Service Value through Innovation?

For RPOs, the optimal market balance passes in the blink of an eye. There are either  too many jobs and not enough candidates, or too many candidates and not enough jobs. The shift from one state to the other is often fleeting, but what is constant is the need to hire/retain the best talent for your client, and to fulfill that quickly while reducing cost. 

Squeezed between demanding clients and an unforgiving talent market, RPOs need to leverage technology wherever possible. So what options are there to deliver additional value to clients, whilst improving margins?

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)?

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is a form of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), where an employer outsources all or some of its recruiting operations to a third-party service provider.

Why are RPOs Better than Other Outsourced Recruiting Solutions?

Internal recruiters, contract recruiters, and staffing agencies were the traditional avenues for companies to hire people. However, things changed a few years ago with the introduction of Recruitment Process Outsourcing, which emerged as a better and more feasible way to recruit talent.

RPOs offers a purposeful partnership between an employer and RPO reseller that provides additional value-added benefits, such as:

Extensive Marketing of Jobs

When it comes to the marketing of jobs, most RPOs implement  an omnichannel strategy. They promote employment opportunities to job seekers via job boards, referrals, social media, and networking.

Such events have instilled in Gen-Zers a greater sense of realism. They think practically and exercise extreme caution while selecting a profession or career path. Researchers also found that such experiences have made Gen-Zers more self-reliant and careful with their money. Employers who do not provide latticed career paths and multiple work formats frequently struggle to attract and retain Gen-Zers. 

Analysis and Planning

RPO resellers collaborate with their clients to better understand business objectives that drive  hiring requirements. They assist clients in forecasting staffing needs and planning the resources required to meet them. This way, RPOs help clients achieve their business objectives and pipeline talent for the future.

Candidate Assessments

RPOs assess applicants, guide them through the initial stages of the recruiting process, and ensure they possess the necessary core skills, competencies, and motivators to perform in the workplace.

Sourcing and Engaging Candidates

RPO resellers do much more than discover talent. They also create employment brands and awareness, connect future potential talent via talent networks and pipelines, and source candidates ahead of time and perform various sourcing evaluations.

Candidate Care

Managing the applicant experience is critical since it impacts the employer's brand. Whether applicants are being interviewed, employed, or considered for a position, RPO resellers assist clients in taking care of them and managing their experience.

If compared to all other recruiting options (not just the outsourced ones), RPOs are the best for large organizations as they provide high-volume hiring at a lower cost. Small and medium organizations should research the market and assess their objectives before considering RPOs.

What Can RPOs Do Now to Increase Service Value Through Innovation?

RPOs historically are focused on delivering  cost savings to their clients, but this focus has extended to a partnership based on a deeper value proposition across broader metrics. Now, RPOs bring their innovative technical skills to the table to deliver more creative talent acquisition solutions.

Let's look at some of the ways RPOs can do to improve service value with innovation:

Embrace the Technology

Employers are already welcoming a new generation of talent who are digital natives, so the transformation of the hiring processes with a greater focus on technology is critical. Failure to excite these digital natives can lead to poor engagement and ultimately this will reflect in the hiring and retention metrics. 

Employers are already welcoming a new generation of talent who are digital natives, so the transformation of the hiring processes with a greater focus on technology is critical. Failure to excite these digital natives can lead to poor engagement and ultimately this will reflect in the hiring and retention metrics.

RPOs have began integrating Virtual Career Fairs (VCFs)into their recruitment process in a bid to increase candidate engagement. While corporate Video conferencing tools such as Zoom, are commonly used, they do not provide the same level of fully immersive and holistic engagement provided by VCFs.

With the integration of VCFs, RPO resellers can:

• Engage with more ideal candidates quickly and at a lower cost. By leveraging a VCF platform, RPOs can completely control the candidate experience – fully branded, self-contained and data driven. By seamlessly connecting the Employer Brand Messaging with an intuitive digital recruitment platform, HR and hiring managers can engage directly using video and text chats, review profiles, score candidates and enable direct job applications all within one environment. This approach dramatically expediates the entire process (from months to days), improves active engagement (connecting directly on video chats) and captures the metrics for the entire hiring cycle (real time analytics).

• Hiring at Scale – campaign recruitment across single of multiple markets can enable accelerated hiring for all positions, especially those for graduates, sales and marketing. By combining highly targeted sourcing, early registration, candidate screening, and real time engagement, RPOs can establish large (broad/deep) talent pools to address immediate and near term hiring requirements. With everything enabled online, direct hiring managers can engage earlier in the assessment process to maintain the candidate momentum, irrespective of location.

• Strengthen employer branding. The digital nature of VCFs, enables messaging to fully align, and quick changes can be made when the narrative needs to shift. Whether leveraging existing corporate images and video, or tailoring them to the specific recruitment campaign, VCFs offer the flexibility and efficiency to deliver.

• Compelling ROI. The Speed, Scale and Simplicity of implementing the VCF platform, enables RPOs to reduce cost, time and effort. The intuitive platform needs minimal training and can be launched within weeks. The ROI extends beyond the RPO, the hiring managers and the candidates can all benefit from the platform, available anywhere on any device with a browser! No travel, No printing, No waste! It ticks the ESG compliance checklist as well. 

   

Improve Candidate Experience

RPO resellers can now provide enhanced solutions to assist their clients and exceed not only hiring managers' but also candidates' expectations. RPOs can leverage existing social media activity to lead directly into the VCF platform to maximize the hiring campaigns.

Today, most candidates search for opportunities using their mobile devices. They expect an employer's website to be optimized and have industry-leading apps. RPO resellers should keep this in mind and provide a fully functional recruitment solution with a user interface designed for mobile use.

Resourcefulness & Adaptability

Technology now exists at every level of the recruiting process, making it difficult for internal teams to implement all the options. VCFs can sit alongside existing technologies or be easily integrated into other systems. Either way they provide a strategy to innovate and differentiate RPOs services from the competition – this approach can help win new clients, or to defend existing clients from the competition. VCFs become a clear competitive differentiator between RPOs

Enhance Overall Process

New hiring strategies and technologies emerge over time, and understanding the impact of these changes is critical to maintaining strong client relationships. RPOs must remain open to consider options to accelerate and improve the hiring process for the employer and the candidates they engage with.

RPOs can enhance the talent acquisition process with the help of advanced solutions like chatbot functionality, CRM platforms, etc. Another approach can be to form true partnerships where all stakeholders work together to meet the company's recruiting objectives. For example, partnering with VCF providers provides RPOs with additional benefits that aren't available when utilizing basic video conferencing platforms.

Summary

RPOs may enhance hiring effectiveness and provide a competitive edge to employers by adopting innovative approaches like deploying Virtual Career Fairs solutions. Their adoption might help in creating an environment where everyone benefits: the employer hires the best talent, more quickly whilst reducing cost and lowering employer churn.