3 Ways Your Recruitment CRM Can Give Candidates What They Want

A candidate relationship management (CRM) tool is at the centre of any strong recruitment process, but I can almost guarantee that you aren’t making the most of yours.  

According to Aptitude Research, only 2% of companies use all of the functionality of their recruitment CRMs, and more than 60% of employers spend more on their CRM than on their applicant tracking system (ATS).  

Most likely, your CRM could be doing more to improve your recruiting process and candidate experience, and 2023 is the perfect year to optimise it. That’s because you can add functionality without additional budget — a key benefit in an uncertain global economy. With your CRM, you can: 

  • Appeal to the 70% of candidates who are not actively looking for a job, but would move for the right position.  
  • Provide that consumer-like candidate experience that has become the cost of entry for employers.  
  • Share your employer value proposition more effectively with candidates of all backgrounds.  

Below are three ways you can improve your own processes and the experience candidates have when they interact with your brand. 

1. Appeal to Candidates From Underrepresented Backgrounds & Supercharge Your Diversity Initiatives 

Whether you’re looking to increase the number of female employees in a male-dominated industry; fulfilling your commitment to helping veterans; or building a team that reflects the diversity of your customers, issues around diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) remain a focus for talent acquisition leaders. Fortunately, many CRMs feature the ability to create microsites, which let you share your employer brand more effectively with candidates from underrepresented backgrounds that you want to target.  

Sometimes called landing pages, these microsites drive diverse traffic to your careers site and showcase your DE&I initiatives. Of course, diversity means something different for different employers. Therefore, consider building a microsite for each target group that contains messaging and content of interest to them. With a recruitment marketing campaign that showcases the representation that already exists in your organisation, in addition to a targeted microsite, you can boost your DE&I recruitment outcomes.  

At PeopleScout, our AffinixTM microsites are fast and easy to set up—and they also yield results. For example, one client was looking to increase its percentage of female hires from just 7%. By building a landing page and campaign that featured the stories of real women who love and are excelling at their jobs, PeopleScout was able to increase that number to 18%. 

2. Provide a Consumer-Level Application Experience & Reduce Candidate Fall-Out 

If you’re seeing a lot of candidates falling out in your application process, that’s a sign that your candidate experience isn’t meeting expectations. In 2023, a mobile-first application that only takes a few minutes to complete is essential. If you’re missing that mark, you’re missing out on top talent.  

In particular, look for a recruitment CRM with a quick-apply feature that allows candidates to submit only the most important information. While you’ll likely need more details from the candidate, you can gather that later in the process. As an added benefit, CRM features—like on-demand assessments and text questionnaires—can also keep candidates more engaged as they move through the interview and assessment stage faster.  

Additionally, a shortened application is a simple change that can have a profound effect on your recruitment outcomes. As an example, one PeopleScout client went from a long application with a 30% conversion rate to one that took less than 10 minutes to fill out with an 80% conversion rate. It also shaved eight to 10 days off their time-to-fill.  

3. Find Candidates Who Don’t Realise You’ve Posted Their Dream Jobs & Fill Your Most Challenging Roles 

When you post a new job opening, somewhere out there is that perfect person for the role: There’s a chance your open position is someone’s dream job, but do they even know it exists? Realistically, there’s a very good chance that they don’t, and they won’t come across your posting on their own. So, it’s up to your recruiting team to find them and pitch the job that they’ve been waiting for. 

Some recruitment CRMs have automated talent matching that search candidate databases to find qualified candidates for any role. These are then ranked by how closely they fit the role requirements, how likely they are to leave their current position, and their average tenure. Unlike a manual sourcing process, an automated talent matching feature like this can help fill the top of your funnel in seconds.  

Notably, in PeopleScout’s Affinix CRM, Talent Finder is one option for automation technology that can find and filter qualified candidates. Our Diversity Boost feature also amplifies diverse candidates to help you reach your DE&I goals. Then, once you find that perfect match, you can bring them through the process and provide a good candidate experience—if you’re getting the most out of your CRM. 

Keep in mind that this list only scratches the surface of what your CRM could bring to your recruitment process if properly optimised for your organisation. While candidate expectations continue to shift, at the end of the day, they’re looking to build the right relationship with the right organisation. It’s up to you to start that relationship off right. 

What Candidates Want: Key Research Findings [Infographic]

At PeopleScout, we hear a lot of talk about the candidate experience. Most organisations understand the importance of improving how they engage with job seekers. Yet, our latest research shows that less than two in 10 candidates would rate their recent recruitment experience as excellent.

We audited the candidate journeys of over 215 organisations around the world, assigning each a Candidate Experience Quotient (CandidateXQ) score based on 40 key experience indicators, 15 of which are critical to the candidate experience. Then, we analysed these scores alongside data gathered from surveying over 2,400 job seekers globally. The results revealed a clear disparity between candidate expectations and their reality.

Check out this infographic to explore the key findings from the Inside the Candidate Experience 2023 Report.

Candidate experience infographic

For more global candidate experience insights, download the full Inside the Candidate Experience 2023 Report.

Less Than Two in 10 Job Seekers Rate Their Recent Recruitment Process Experience as Excellent

PeopleScout’s latest research reveals hard truths about candidate expectations versus the reality of their experiences  

25 January 2023 – Today’s job market is experiencing a clear disparity between candidate expectations and the reality they face when searching for and applying for jobs, according to a recent report by leading recruitment process outsourcing provider PeopleScout, a TrueBlue company. Survey findings showed that less than two in 10 candidates would rate their experience as “excellent”—a clear indicator that expectations for their job search are not being met by employers. The global research report, Inside the Candidate Experience, surveyed over 2,400 job seekers and analysed 217 companies around the globe to see how employers stacked up against candidate expectations.  

Technology, social media and lightning-fast consumer experiences have driven job seekers to expect seamless, quick, digital-first experiences. For employers to succeed in this market, they must deliver the same intuitive and personalised experience. For example, survey results showed that two-thirds of candidates use social media to research companies during their job search. Yet, a third of employers are not consistently posting career-related content to their social channels.  

Job seekers also showed a desire to make an emotional connection with prospective employers. The study revealed that an organisation’s mission, purpose and values are top considerations for candidates when deciding whether to apply for a job. Yet less than half of organisations include this information on their career site. Also, 35% of employers do not feature real employees in their recruitment material.  

In addition, candidates want to know that applying to an organisation is worth their time and effort. Of those surveyed, 21% of candidates said lack of information regarding next steps would make them likely to drop out of the process after applying, but less than two in 10 employers provided candidates with those details. Plus, only 30% of employers clearly stated that adjustments were available for candidates with disabilities prior to starting an application. 

“In my conversations with talent acquisition leaders, it’s clear organisations understand the importance of the candidate experience, yet our research reveals that employers have a long way to go to meet candidates’ expectations,” said Simon Wright, PeopleScout’s Head of Global Talent Advisory Consulting. “PeopleScout strives to make the recruitment process as seamless as possible for both parties, and our hope is that this serves as a rallying cry for employers to get serious about making improvements to their candidate experience, especially as hiring has become so challenging.”   

Download PeopleScout’s full report here for more survey findings and actionable insights for employers. 

Press Contact 
Taylor Winchell 
Senior Manager, External Communications 
pr@trueblue.com 
+1-253-680-8291 

The Future of Work: 4 Key Factors That Will Shape the Workplace by 2030

It’s no secret that the labour market has been volatile over the last several years, and talent acquisition teams have experienced a multitude of highs and lows. In our capacity as trusted advisors, PeopleScout analysed patterns in global workforce trends to help our clients create informed strategies for future-proofing their workforce by examining how these patterns may affect their workforce. While we can’t predict the future of work, we think there are four key factors will shape the world of work over the next decade.

1. Flexibility

Flexibility is here to stay, and it will apply to everything from where and how we work to the roles we do and who we do them for. There will be no hard and fast rules about working hours and shifts in the future.

As life becomes increasingly characterised by change, employees will need to be agile—always ready to reskill. Learning becomes a constant, and we may even find ourselves counting AI robots as our trainers and mentors.

Flexibility and upskilling will manifest differently from generation to generation, so organisations must facilitate working arrangements for different demographics. Over the next decade, the generation gap will widen and then gradually close as Baby Boomers begin to settle down to retirement by blending work and leisure. Millennials and Gen Z will bring their progressive perspectives to work.

10 Predictions for What’s NEXT in the World of Work

DESTINATION 2030

2. Fluidity 

Globalisation will enable much more cross-border, cross-company collaboration. Project teams will be established based on all sorts of factors, not just who’s in what department or which location. People will work with talent from all sorts of specialities as they move from project to project.

Technology helps to support our wellbeing as the lines between work and home become more blurred. But with new technologies come new laws, so security and compliance will also be strategically important, especially for organisations working at the cutting-edge of innovation.

3. Focus 

Organisational culture will become more important than ever before as people make career choices based on ethics, values and purpose above things like pay and benefits. More and more employees will choose to work for organisations that have a clear purpose and are committed to working in the most ethical, sustainable and socially responsible ways.

Technology also plays a role here, in helping people focus on the work that matters to them as automation takes over the mundane tasks. However, more AI and machine learning will make some roles redundant and create many others—generating even greater demand for technical, analytical and digital skill sets across sectors.

4. Forward-thinking 

Organisations will continue to compete when it comes to creating innovative new technologies and using those technologies in the most creative ways. But they’ll also be happy to pool some resources to create a better future for everyone. 

Issues like equality and climate change will continue to grow in importance, forcing organisations to find new and better ways of making social and environmental improvements at speed.

Onward, Upward and Who Knows Where

You may feel more prepared for some changes more than others as we approach 2030, but it’s safe to say that there will be plenty of surprises that will require creative thinking in order to stay resilient.

PeopleScout will be on the journey with you to support, challenge and inspire you—no matter what the future holds.

To learn more about how we came to these predictions and see our research findings, check out our Destination 2030 white paper.

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

So, what is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), and why should companies use it? RPO can boost your talent acquisition by optimising processes amid fierce competition. Whether you’re exploring RPO or want to learn more about maximising it, this guide will provide valuable insights. Understand how partnering with an RPO can boost your talent acquisition outcomes.

This overview explains RPO, answering common questions, including:

  • How RPO works
  • Types of RPO
  • The benefits of outsourcing recruitment
  • What to look for when selecting an RPO partner

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is a type of business process outsourcing (BPO) in which an external organisation (RPO provider) supports an employer’s talent acquisition function by assuming responsibility for some or all facets of the talent acquisition function to support some or all of an employer’s hiring needs.

For example, an RPO engagement may only cover sourcing and screening candidates (partial-cycle RPO) or it may cover the entire recruitment lifecycle from receiving hiring manager’s requisitions all the way to presenting and negotiating job offers to candidates (full-cycle RPO). An RPO provider works closely with an organisation’s internal talent acquisition team, either remotely or on-site.

👉 Debunk common RPO myths.

talent recruitment

Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Recruitment?

Below, we highlight a few high-level reasons why organisations seek RPO providers, and conversely, when RPO may not be a good fit:

REASONS TO ENGAGE AN RPO PROVIDER:

  • If your organisation is looking for more speed, agility and flexibility in your recruiting processes
  • If you are looking to improve the quality of candidates applying to your positions or struggle to attract the right talent
  • If your organisation is looking for a more cost-effective and standardised recruiting process
  • If your organisation’s current use of recruitment technology isn’t up to par and you are seeking a variety of digital upgrades specific to your organisation’s recruiting objectives
  • If your organisation is looking to increase diversity hiring, RPO providers can help you uncover new diverse talent recruitment sources and strategies

REASONS NOT TO ENGAGE AN RPO PROVIDER:

  • If your company culture is not ready for outsourcing talent recruitment
  • If you just need a vendor to fill a quick requisition or two as opposed to a partner to support your talent acquisition strategy
  • If your organisation isn’t open to optimising your recruiting processes and tech stack

Remember, these reasons are not set in stone. Only you and your organisation can assess if you are in need of an RPO partner’s services. An RPO partner should customise their solution to match your needs and offer flexible options to support for peak hiring, hard-to-fill positions, compressed time frames and more—however it works best for you.

👉 Are you Ready for RPO? Ask Yourself These Three Questions.

How Does RPO Work?

During an RPO engagement, the RPO provider’s team works closely with their client’s talent acquisition team and hiring managers to learn the organisation’s long-term talent acquisition strategy, hiring challenges and goals.

The RPO provider then designs a customised recruiting program tailored to support the client’s specific needs. RPO is not a one-size-fits-all solution. A leading RPO partner will customise its service to match your requirements, which could include any or all of the following talent acquisition activities:

RPO Process

👉 Learn more about what to expect in an RPO partnership.

What is the Difference Between an RPO Provider and a Staffing Agency?

An RPO provider is distinct from a staffing agency or headhunter. Staffing agencies identify candidates, obtain their résumés or CVs and submit them to the client.

An RPO partnership brings a higher level of engagement. Your RPO provider will do a deep dive into your talent acquisition goals and challenges and then create and execute a customised recruitment program—and report back on the results. An RPO partner is a trusted advisor who can help you gain agility and future-proof your business.

👉 Learn the top differences between an RPO and a staffing agency.

What are the Types of RPO Models?

Designed for flexibility, RPO can be customised to meet your needs. Fully outsourcing recruitment may not make sense for all organisations. But that doesn’t mean RPO won’t provide value if you’re not ready to go all in. RPO teams are often used alongside existing in-house recruitment teams. The RPO can complement your current recruitment program by handling recruiting for specific job groups, locations or business units.

Here are various types of RPO that are commonly available:

Full-Cycle RPO

The RPO partner owns the entire recruitment cycle from opening requisitions all the way to presenting and negotiating the job offer—and all activities in between. This solution offers the client the full benefit of the RPO partner’s expertise which most organisations don’t have in-house, including value-added services like market insights, recruitment technology and employer brand consulting.

Partial Cycle RPO

The RPO partner covers certain parts of the recruitment process to boost internal recruitment resources. For example, the RPO partner might source and screen candidates and then hand them over to the in-house recruitment team to schedule interviews and manage offers.

Project RPO

Project RPO engagements are typically fixed-term contracts meant to address specific recruitment challenges such as seasonal hiring peaks, hard-to-fill positions, compressed timeframes and more. The RPO is there to augment the in-house team, often due to rapid growth. These engagements kick off quickly, and the required positions are filled within a few months.

👉 Learn more about project RPO.

Modular RPO

Modular RPO, or variable RPO, is a strategic approach to managing the recruitment process in an ultra-focused manner. It involves outsourcing specific components of the recruitment process to an RPO provider, or as a supplement to an existing outsourced recruitment engagement, providing quick access to targeted and customised recruitment support. With a modular or à la carte approach, you choose from a range of services based on your requirements.

👉 Learn more about modular RPO.

High-Volume RPO

High-volume RPO involves sourcing, screening, interviewing and hiring large numbers of applicants for similar openings or job types. It requires a tricky balance of keeping substantial quantities of job applicants moving through the recruitment process at speed. Plus, throughout the year it requires talent acquisition teams to scale up quickly to meet seasonal demand, like for holiday shopping periods or during peak travel times.

👉 Learn how to overcome high-volume hiring challenges.

Recruitment Cost Per Hire

What are the Benefits of RPO?

Now that you can answer the question, “What is recruitment process outsourcing?”, you may be wondering why organisations engage an RPO provider. Partnering with an experienced RPO gives you access to extensive recruitment knowledge across industries, roles and regions. RPOs have managed every type of hiring campaign imaginable. Whether you need help with one function or end-to-end recruiting, RPO offers advantages including:

Minimise Costs

Every day a role goes unfilled, your organisation loses productivity, which can lead to losses in revenue and profits. Plus, inefficiencies in your organisation’s hiring processes can result in lost revenue and more hours spent recruiting. And, if your organisation hires the wrong person, you’ll spend even more time and money recruiting and training a replacement for the bad hire. By streamlining and optimising recruitment processes, improving the time-to-hire and retention rates, RPO providers can increase your recruiting return on investment and deliver real cost savings to your bottom line. In fact, Everest Group states that organisations can expect a 45% to 55% annual savings with RPO compared to in-house recruitment.

Access Higher Quality Talent Faster

As skills shortages and talent scarcity becomes more challenging, having an RPO team digging into passive sourcing to access niche skills sets will boost time to hire and improve quality-of-hire. RPO providers leverage their comprehensive talent networks and effective screening and assessment tools to produce stronger candidates and more diverse talent pools. This keeps hiring managers happy and helps your organisation achieve its goals.

Agility & Scalability

A leading RPO provider should flex to meet your requirements. Your organisation can scale the amount of work your RPO provider performs to better manage your recruitment cost-per-hire goals and recruiting budget. When you have an increased demand for talent, an RPO provider can promptly scale up your team of dedicated recruiters to keep on top of your increased demands. This works the other way around as well: when there is less demand, we can scale down, saving you recruitment spend, and you avoid layoffs in your talent acquisition team during low demand periods.

Enhanced Candidate Experience

You want your recruitment process to leave every applicant, regardless of whether they get the job, with a positive experience. Your RPO partner can advise on ways to improve the candidate experience including career site audits, job application recommendations and how to leverage technology to speed up the process and reduce friction.

👉 Get Inside the Candidate Experience with our exclusive research report.

Best-Fit Technology

RPO providers can help you implement technology solutions that balance human expertise with automation. RPO partners have expertise with platforms across the HR and talent acquisition tech stack and can make recommendations to help you attract and engage talent more effectively. PeopleScout’s talent acquisition platform, Affinix™ is a mobile-first, cloud-based platform that creates a consumer-like candidate experience and streamlines the sourcing process.

Access More Expertise

Partnering with an RPO means you gain important talent acquisition expertise without having to invest in internal resources. RPO partners have developed a depth and breadth of experience from working across many clients, industries, job types and regions. While they offer recruitment sourcing best practices, they also offer value-added services that will optimise and streamline each phase of the recruiting process like employer branding, recruitment marketing, skills assessment, market insights, specialist sourcing solutions and more.

Improve Diversity

Through experience collected over many client engagements, RPO teams are knowledgeable about different talent attraction options and can help you expand to new job boards, social media groups, online forums and events to engage a more diverse workforce. Plus, RPOs understand the regional nuances of DE&I issues. For example, in some countries like Poland, it is not legal to ask candidates their ethnicity, gender, etc.

Workforce Planning Strategy

Leading RPO providers can provide labour market insights, talent intelligence and benchmarking data. With access to these insights, you have the data you need to support your workforce strategy as well as tactical business decisions. You can capitalise on the latest market analysis, thought leadership and competitive intelligence to inform your talent strategy. Your RPO partner can provide analytics to help you understand what’s working so you can maximise your ROI.

Global Reach

Leading organisations are taking a much more holistic view of the talent landscape and are looking for ways to standardise across regions. Working with a single partner for multi-country RPO eliminates the need for multiple relationships and saves time and money—while raising the quality of your hires. An RPO provider can be your most valuable partner in global expansion, because they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience gained through working with clients in different industries around the world.

Seamless Compliance

A significant aspect of recruiting is dealing with the multitude of compliance requirements that vary by jurisdiction. Your partner should help you navigate the labour laws and compliance issues that accompany any sourcing program. An RPO provider’s rigorous processes ensure a legally compliant hiring process and streamlined responses to audits. Additionally, a partner can help you anticipate any communication and training issues so that you can tackle them head-on.

What Should I Look for in an RPO Company?

If you’ve decided that RPO will be a good fit for your organisation, you may be wondering how you go about choosing the best provider. Here are just three things to consider in order to make RPO a truly transformational model for your business.

Partnership

The best RPO partners understand that each company has unique needs. Look for an RPO partner that is collaborative, that will listen to your ideas and take the time to truly understand your business and pain points. Avoid providers with a one-size-fits-all approach. The right partner balances consistency with customisation.

At PeopleScout, for 30 years we’ve built our services on integrity. We won’t say one thing during the sales pitch only to reset expectations after the ink is dry. We won’t make you comply with a cookie-cutter recruitment process. If we mess up, we’ll make it right. That’s why we have some of the longest running client relationships in the RPO space. 

Talent Advisory Solutions

A strong employer brand is key to recruitment success. The right RPO partner offers talent advisory solutions to develop your employer brand, EVP, recruitment marketing approaches, candidate assessments and more.

Companies often use separate agencies for recruitment marketing and RPO. This silod approach means less accountability. The agency is less likely to be held accountable for their campaigns leading to high quality candidates entering later candidate journey stages. On the other side, the RPO partner has limited means to provide feedback on the campaigns and the impact the ads have on recruitment outcomes.

Look for an RPO with in-house expertise (not one who outsources to an external agency) to consult on your entire talent program, not just filling roles. A holistic approach attracts and hires quality candidates.

Technology Acquisition Technology

HR tech is rapidly evolving, and RPO partners are well positioned to advise on tools like AI and analytics to improve recruiting. Your RPO partner should offer expertise on talent tech. Others have their own proprietary talent acquisition platforms. Look for an RPO partner who will support a modular approach, so you can continue to benefit from existing investments and grow your recruitment tech stack as your needs change.

👉 Get the most out of RPO with this podcast.

talent acquisition recruiter

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing? The Keys to RPO Success

The most important key to successfully engaging an RPO provider for services is to have a clear understanding of what your organisation is trying to achieve. Then, you can choose an RPO provider that best meets your needs.

One thing to keep in mind on your RPO journey: RPO engagements are not only about outsourcing your recruiting, they are also about finding the best partner to help manage the people, process, technology and strategy of your talent acquisition function.

There is no single best option, only the option that best aligns with your organisational needs. To determine if RPO is right for your organisation, take an audit of what your organisation’s specific recruitment and sourcing challenges are and if you have the internal capabilities to overcome your challenges.