Virgin Media: High-Volume RPO and Professional Recruiting for Improve Diversity

Posted on May 17, 2019January 3, 2023 by rharris

CHALLENGE

After publishing their gender parity report, Virgin Media set us the challenge of recruiting more female technicians into a role which has a pronounced gender bias, with 99% male incumbents.

At the end of 2017, Virgin Media changed their approach for vetting new starters. Sales starters would now have to complete full vetting before starting. vetting was completed after the start date.

In 2017 we successfully hired 275 Field Sales Advisors, in 2018 we were challenged to increase the number to 450, with a smaller attraction budget than we were granted in 2017. This was a sizeable challenge as field sales are one of the tougher areas to recruit for. Typically it uses up a higher percentage of our media budget.

APPROACH

Setting up a ‘Women in Field’ working group and regular project calls with the client were key. We explored every avenue to tap into a market which previously wasn’t engaged with this opportunity. We wanted to be bold and disruptive in our approach, particularly around how the role was advertised and positioned. We listened to existing female employees and involved them in the recruitment process, making sure they were present for female candidates attending assessments.

Fully vetting new joiners before they start on induction makes for a fantastic candidate and hiring manager experience. We used our existing partnership with ‘Security Watchdog’ to identify how to dramatically reduce the three-week clearance period. With better signposting and a clearer process, we reduced the clearance period to just 11 days.

We developed new channels to engage people who previously would not have applied. We streamlined the application process and introduced the option to register interest in hotspot areas. We used our internal SNAP team to post across social channels such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Our Field Sales recruiters were then able to engage those interested and convert them into applicants.

‘We’ve made more than 30% more hires in 2018, with a 20% smaller attraction budget.’

RESULTS

‘Women in Field’ was launched in four key locations and in just two months, we received triple the number of applications from women that we received in the whole of 2017. And by the end of the pilot, we had more than doubled the number of female employees.

The new vetting process has helped to reduce early attrition by up to 20% across sales channels.

In field sales we’ve made more than 30% more hires in 2018, with a 20% smaller attraction budget compared to 2017.

Overall, we’ve dramatically improved our application to hire ratios across all of the UK. And in 2018 (year to date) hiring managers have saved 376 hours in interview time.

The campaign was shortlisted in the ‘Diversity’ category of the 2018 Recruitment Marketing Awards. We’re now seeing more regions across the UK using a similar approach in order to increase their gender diversity.

Safran Nacelles: Reducing Time-to-Hire by a Third for Critical Engineering Talent

Posted on May 17, 2019January 3, 2023 by rharris

CHALLENGE

With increased litigation and fear around aeroplane safety, stress engineers have become an essential part of the design and test processes. Consequently, Nacelle’s were keen to attract experienced stress engineers to join in permanent roles. This had proved difficult to say the least, as experienced stress engineers are in very short supply. The aerospace market is highly competitive and the best candidates opt for contracts rather than permanent positions. All of which demands substantial time and focus for resourcers. So after 18 unsatisfying months trying to fill roles with their previous supplier, Nacelles approached PeopleScout for help.

APPROACH

Four things defined our approach: rigour, innovation, relationships and brand unity.

To assess in detail, the skills, experience and behaviors that typified an excellent candidate for Nacelles, we held a detailed briefing with the hiring manager and other stakeholders. Next, we devised an innovative sourcing strategy, including deep web searching, competitor mapping and tapping into online forums, reaching out to candidates from Romania, India and the UK.

A unified employer brand simplifies life. But more than that, it’s a reason for candidates to gravitate to us over traditional agencies. So we worked in the Nacelles headquarters to build great relationships with the hiring managers. And the unity behind the scenes extended to candidate communications. Every contact by the PeopleScout team was made under the Nacelles name, whether sourcing candidates, conducting interviews or leading tours of the factory. Nacelles and PeopleScout were as one.

‘The agreed time per hire is 45 days, while our average is just 30 days. That’s a reduction of 33%.’

RESULTS

Because we manage every part of the process we’ve substantially streamlined Nacelle’s resourcing, yielding fantastic results. Within a month, we filled the first 3 roles. Then we placed nine more stress engineers in permanent roles at Nacelle: an unheard-of achievement in the aerospace industry. And the good results continue to build as we help with the client’s ongoing recruitment needs. The agreed time per hire is 45 days, while our average is just 30 days. That’s a reduction of 33%. And we’ve managed to halve the cost per hire.

IMI: End-to-End Graduate Recruitment Balancing Technology and the Human Touch

Posted on May 17, 2019January 3, 2023 by rharris

CHALLENGE

IMI is a specialist engineering company. They design, manufacture and service highly engineered products that control the movement of fluids. They employ some 11,000 people, have manufacturing facilities in more than 20 countries and operate a global service network. When they needed a comprehensive global graduate recruitment campaign, IMI approached PeopleScout.

APPROACH

We’ve supported IMI’s Graduate Programme for two years, with a global end-to-end talent solution designed to deliver an excellent candidate experience. It includes everything from website design, attraction and sourcing, through to candidate management.

In practice, we manage a recruitment process that comprises an online application, a detailed qualification screen, a sift of written motivational responses, online verbal and numerical reasoning testing and a telephone interview. Assessment centres are regionally administered and conducted by IMI hiring managers.

We know just how valuable human contact is in the recruitment process. So we give applicants real-time phone access to the resourcers and recruiters in the Delivery Centre – maintaining high candidate satisfaction. Candidates can expect responses to email enquiries within 24 hours. And telephone interviews and assessments are scheduled during UK evening hours, allowing IMI to concentrate on interviews and assessments.

“Moving to PeopleScout was the best decision I ever made.” Mari Docker – Global Graduate Development Manager, IMI

RESULTS

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

Posted on May 9, 2019January 3, 2023 by Kate

Global RPO

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

An international hospitality brand—and longstanding PeopleScout client—was experiencing growing pains after an acquisition. The client needed to source, screen and hire an additional 20,000 staff for both corporate and on-site positions at hotel properties across multiple continents—bringing the annual headcount to 65,000 new hires. PeopleScout’s global RPO solution proved agile enough to seamlessly scale up to absorb the increased hiring volume, while hitting target service levels across regions.

65,000 Annual Hires

90 % Customer Satisfaction Scores Amongst Hiring Managers

84 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for In-Market Roles

100 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for Corporate Roles

Situation

PeopleScout facilitates more than 65,000 hires annually for the hospitality brand, delivering RPO through a 350-member team across continents. Roles include management and hourly hiring needs in both corporate and in-market environments, including sales, accounting, technology, e-commerce, infrastructure, risk management, engineering, architecture, property management, customer service, housekeeping, culinary and more.

In addition to corporate hiring in the U.S. and Canada, we’ve recruited for their operations centres in the UK and India and hospitality properties spanning North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC.

Solution

Starting with a small pilot in 2007, our relationship has developed into a strategic partnership over 15 years. At the start, the client had disjointed hiring processes across regions. PeopleScout’s RPO team streamlined their recruitment processes and developed robust, standardised compliance practices across the entire recruiting program.

Following an acquisition in 2017, the client gained nearly 1,300 properties across over 100 countries. PeopleScout scaled our global talent acquisition program to ensure the established standardised processes and compliance practices were applied to the newly acquired properties, while keeping costs down.

PeopleScout seamlessly absorbed a 20,000-position increase and easily increased resources to meet a 50% increase in the scope of services. This included scaling our RPO solution to cover the end-to-end recruitment process for management positions for all hotel locations and the U.S. and Canadian headquarters. This allowed the in-house HR team to focus on training, workforce planning and employer branding.

PeopleScout also supported the client through three talent technology transitions over the course of the partnership, creating new levels of efficiency through automation. Plus, our in-house creative agency TMP assisted the client with their recruitment marketing efforts, creating attraction content in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Results

In just two months, PeopleScout was able to achieve the same level of performance at the newly acquired locations as they had at the legacy locations.

Created standardised recruitment processes and robust compliance practices across all in-market locations resulting in significant cost savings through efficiency
84% time-to-fill targets achieved for in-market hires
Nearly 100% time-to-fill targets achieved for corporate hires
90%+ customer satisfaction scores hit for both in-market and management hires
Achieved nearly 100% consistency in SLAs thanks to standardised operations across PeopleScout’s global delivery centres.

AT A GLANCE

COMPANY
International hospitality brand
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
Recruitment Process Outsourcing
ANNUAL HIRES
65,000
LOCATIONS
Hospitality properties, corporate offices and operational centres across North America, Latin America, Europe and APAC

Contact Sales

Talking Talent: Getting the Most Out of RPO

Posted on April 19, 2019July 14, 2023 by skatz

On this episode of Talking Talent, we’re talking about Recruitment Process Outsourcing or RPO.

RPO is a type of business process outsourcing where an external organisation, an RPO provider, supports an employer’s talent acquisition function by assuming responsibility for parts or all facets of talent acquisition for some or all of an employer’s hiring needs.

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

RPO providers then design a customised recruiting programme tailored to support the client’s specific needs. This focus on client consultation and partnership distinguishes RPO providers from standard staffing agencies and headhunters.

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.

To talk about RPO, joining us is Jessie McGowan, PeopleScout’s leader of business development in North America. She spends the majority of her time talking to prospective customers about our solutions here at PeopleScout, but she is client delivery at heart.

Jessie talks about the factors that drive RPO buyers, what makes an RPO partnership different than other third-party vendors and how you can set the right SLAs and KPIs to drive success in your programme. Looking forward, Jessie digs into what technology and the push toward total workforce solutions mean for talent acquisition.

Learn from our other PeopleScout experts in previous Talking Talent episodes:

Recruitment for Retention

Posted on March 25, 2019January 3, 2023 by skatz

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” It is perhaps the most time-worn question in a job interview. But if the candidate answers that if they are hired, they will be happily working in your organisation, the odds are against this ever happening. Why? The average time workers in the U.S. remain in one job is just 4.2 years. And in other leading economies, the average single job tenure can be similarly brief. In the UK, workers change jobs every five years, while in Australia, the national average job tenure is just three years and four months. In Canada, the average length is 8.5 years, but the averages vary widely depending on the industry.

For those hoping to attract and retain top talent, these figures can be familiar – and a cause for concern. When human resource professionals look inside their organisations and identify employees who have defied the statistical average, staying with the company far longer than five years and contributing significantly to its success, they wonder “how do I get more of them?” With low unemployment making many job markets the most challenging in recent memory, there is genuine urgency not only to retain the best talent but to find a way to attract talent that will stay with an organisation for the long-term. In other words, there is a need to recruit to retain, but how?

Know Your Talent: Why They Leave and Why They Stay and Thrive

Like many organisations, your company may already have an employee retention programme in place. Enterprises are making considerable efforts to retain talent, and the processes they deploy to improve employee retention can also be incorporated into your recruitment process.

For example, it is relatively common to have exit interviews with departing workers to better understand why they are leaving the organisation. When a sufficient number of exit interview results are available and evaluated, trends can emerge that can lead to actionable items to improve employee retention. Certain common traits or characteristics may also appear among those who voluntarily leave their jobs.

Less common, but potentially just as valuable, is the “stay interview.” These interviews with current employees allow them to express their concerns before they are in a position to leave, which can help leaders address issues and take steps to retain top talent.

And just as exit interviews can bring into focus the characteristics of those who quit, the stay interview can help identify the traits of those who remain and thrive. Once a group of long-term successful employees is identified, a stay interview can be designed for this group with the goal of identifying why they have remained with the company, what factors have contributed to their success and what characteristics many or most of them have in common. Identifying these characteristics in your candidate pool during the recruiting process could be an indicator of future success.

In today’s tight job market, if you are not working to identify candidates with the characteristics that have been proven to lead to long-term achievement in your company, your competitors probably are. SHRMreports that “Many organisations are seeking more of a ‘whole person’ gauge of candidates, experts say, assessing not just skills or intellectual horsepower but also personality traits, cultural fit and motivational drivers that can prove the difference between candidates who thrive over the long run and those who quickly derail.”

Predictive Analytics: Unlocking the Key to Recruitment for Retention

Predictive analytics is a type of data analytics that uses data to find patterns and then uses those models to attempt to predict the future. Consider the most basic data you likely have about a single employee who worked for your organisation and left after five years. A sample of data points could include:

How they were sourced
Their addresses over their tenure at the company
Their education and certifications
Previous employers

These data points alone may not provide insight into why this employee joined your organisation and why they left. But, if just these pieces of information were aggregated for all your employees, both past and present, here are a few insights which could be determined:

Is there a correlation between how an employee is sourced and their tenure at the organisation?
Do employees who live far from the workplace quit sooner than those who do not?
Do employees from certain schools or that have particular certifications stay longer with the company than others?
Are there previous employers which produce more long-term employees than others?

The information found in even one of these examples could be built into your recruitment strategy and have a meaningful impact in recruiting talent that will remain with your organisation.

The right technology using predictive analytics can provide effective recruiting insight, as PeopleScout’s Allison Brigden explains:

“In this tightening talent market with unemployment rates at record lows, predictive analytics is emerging as an essential AI tool for employers looking to stay ahead of the competition. Predictive analytics allows employers to use the power of data to make predictions about candidates and drive efficiencies throughout the entire talent acquisition process…

Predictive analytics can’t tell you what will happen, but it shows what is likely to happen based on past trends. It’s as close as employers can get to predicting the future.”

Solving for Retention

The dilemma faced by a major auto retailer was challenging but not surprising. The annual turnover rate in the retail sector is much higher than the national average in the U.S. With a 50% turnover rate and a need for 10,000 annual hires, there was an immediate need for drastic improvement

PeopleScout partnered with this automotive retailer and was able to rapidly address their turnover challenges by implementing the following solutions:

A Standard Hiring Model

An uneven hiring process was replaced, and a standard hiring model was put in place that included consistent OFCCP compliance and standardisation across the company.

An Efficient Process

PeopleScout deployed a time-efficient screening process which focused on the quality of the candidate, with a guaranteed response from recruiting teams within 48 hours of application. To quickly present candidates to hiring managers, PeopleScout implemented block interview scheduling with great success.

Hiring Diversity

To help source and engage more diverse candidates, PeopleScout developed a comprehensive network of community organisations for partnered recruitment.

In-Region Recruiters

Collaborative relationships between recruiters and the client’s area managers were fostered by in-region placement of PeopleScout recruiters.

Transparent Reporting

Continuous improvement was driven through transparent reporting and analysis for the client’s executive and field leadership.

The Results:

PeopleScout hired 10,000 employees in the first year of the engagement.
The technician turnover rate improved by 5% and retail turnover by 6%.
Hiring diversity improved by 40%, including an increase of 2% for veterans and 6% for female hires.

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Posted on February 28, 2019January 31, 2024 by epadmin

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.

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:

👉 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.

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.

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.

Attitude is the New Experience

Posted on January 16, 2019January 3, 2023 by epadmin

There have been numerous studies on turnover rates in multiple industries, and they all land on a similar conclusion: a high proportion of staff fail within the first 18 months of starting a new job. In fact, one study found that figure to be 46 percent of 20,000 new hires in America. When you look at the reasons why, 89 percent of those who failed did so due to cultural misalignment or attitudinal reasons, rather than technical capability.

To try and buck this trend, I’ll share with you a few tips on why it’s so important to attract and retain the right people, rather than the right skill set and how you can adopt this approach in your organisation.

First, you need to have a great culture, which is essential to keeping people in the building. Each company’s culture and mission will be unique, and you need to make sure you have values that you stand by. Secondly – and this is the main area that I’m going to focus on in this article – you need to have a recruitment strategy that is aimed at finding the right people for the organisation rather than the right skill set at every opportunity, from graduate roles through to senior management. At our client PHD Media Worldwide (PHD), we’ve focused on hiring people that align with our values of collaboration, courage and curiosity with conviction – and it’s really, really helped!

“Hire for attitude, train for skills” is a phrase that every HR professional has uttered once or heard being uttered from colleagues. However, unfortunately, only a small number of businesses apply it (like, actually apply it) to their recruitment strategy. Whilst a lot of job advertisements will focus on the soft skills and cultural alignment piece, often the interview process can revert to focusing purely on the hard skills and capability a candidate has from day one.

We work in an ever-changing industry, with the constant emergence of new technologies, new software and increasing shift in focus from traditional channels to more sophisticated digital channels. Change takes place now at a faster rate than ever before, and what you knew yesterday might not necessarily prepare for you tomorrow. So, with that in mind, why do some businesses focus on purely trying to tick skills boxes? The candidate who feels fully aligned with their organisation’s strategy and beliefs and is a part of its continued success will be more motivated to learn the necessary skills for tomorrow than someone who only has today’s skill set and not the buy-in.

Here is how we can go about finding those right candidates in various levels of the organisation:

Graduate Roles

For so long, the media industry, for example, has only considered candidates from a media/advertising/marketing-related field and often opt for interns who have gained first-hand experience working with their particular agency. When interviewing candidates with a specific degree and asking them what they know about a media planning and buying agency, their knowledge levels are comparable with that of any other degree – very little!

A huge amount of the first 12-18 months in a media agency is about learning as much as possible. A very small amount of what you learned in university actually applies to what you are now working on in terms of real briefs with real multi-million-dollar budgets attached. With that mind, at PHD we’ve had a lot of success in opening up our doors to entry-level staff from any degree/non-degree background.

Zac and Tiffany, two great coordinators who joined PHD in the last 12 months, even wrote an article recently on how university prepares you for your first job in media. Notice how throughout the article, it never mentions that it’s the marketing theory they were taught in school or the principles of advertising that has helped them succeed. Instead, it’s the focus on meeting deadlines, presentation ability, working under pressure and as part of a team. These are the skills that you need to succeed in your first job, and when you couple them with the right attitude, you can really learn anything, relatively quickly.

More Senior Roles

Believe it or not, it’s those same soft skills that apply to the more senior roles that we look to fill. Let’s face it – at one point or another, we have all had to “fake it ‘til we make it” in our careers. A little white lie in an interview, a little oversell of our abilities and BANG, we’ve landed ourselves a gig without a clue of what we’re actually going to do. When faced with this situation, those with a good attitude, flexibility and the ability to learn quickly will be able to adapt and succeed in their roles better than those without these critical skills.

Additionally, no one knows exactly what they are doing on day one. We all have our own systems, processes and ways of doing things. At PHD, we have our proprietary planning tool, SOURCE. Unless you have worked on it before, there is a learning curve for everyone to pick it up, and it’s the pace and ability with which people pick it up that matters, as they would have zero experience in using it before. All companies have their own processes and tools, which they will expect you to learn over time.

Yes, you need to have a fundamental understanding of what you are talking about and the more senior the role, the more of an understanding we expect you to have. But we want to talk to someone about their attitude towards certain situations, learn how they act when everything goes wrong (because it does sometimes) and what they would do in the difficult times and how they bring a team along on the journey with them. Ultimately, someone who ticks the attitude box will get the job, and we will often wait until that person comes along, rather than simply fill a role with a candidate who doesn’t fit.

So, What is Attitude?

Attitude, for me, is a collection of soft skills that you can apply to every job. It’s not necessarily something that someone has been taught (or could be taught) but more an approach to work, an approach to learning and the way someone conducts themselves personally and professionally.

What does one look for when gauging attitude?

People who look for solutions to problems rather than people who find problems without resolve.
People who raise their hand rather than point their fingers.
People who make mistakes and have a sense of humility but then focus on what they can do next time to improve.
People who, when times get tough, dig in and rally everyone to achieve the same, rather than openly complain to others.
People who genuinely love their job and are interested in joining the organisation – this is half the battle, finding someone who wants to be on the same journey as you.
People who genuinely seek development/career growth opportunities.

Too often, and it’s so easy to, we get bogged down by the immediate needs of our new hire. It may be replacing someone who has left, or it might be a new role that has popped up because of workload increases. However, it works, every time, to be cautious and focus on hiring the right person for the organisation, because the longer-term impact of having the right person will really pay off and the struggle of having to dig a little harder to find them will soon be forgotten.

Read the original article on AdNews.au.

Expanding the Talent Landscape by Recruiting Virtual Employees

Posted on October 1, 2018May 12, 2023 by epadmin

With very low unemployment in many of the world’s major economies, those seeking to attract talent should explore the benefits of recruiting employees that work from home. Since a number of these countries, such as the United States and the UK, are considered to be at “full employment,” where nearly everyone who wants a job has a job, the traditional formula of recruiting in the market where a company is located may no longer be as effective as it has been in the past. And since the top reason for quitting a current job is to increase wages, employers face the challenge of meeting candidate expectations for higher pay based on local salary ranges.

While remote work may not be viable for some positions, expanding the pool of candidates outside a specific geographic area allows employers to take advantage of the growing trend in telecommuting as well as potentially reduce attrition, decrease cost-per-hire and even improve productivity.

The Virtual Workforce is Substantial (and Growing)

A study by Global Workplace Analytics and FlexJobs released earlier this year reported that 3.9 million U.S. employees, or 2.9 percent of the total U.S. workforce, currently work from home at least half of the time. This number is up from 1.8 million in 2005, an increase of 115 percent. And as of 2017, 43 percent of U.S. workers worked remotely at least occasionally, up from only 9 percent of workers in 2007.

Growth in remote work is not limited to the United States. In the UK, one in seven people work from home, according to the Office for National Statistics. In Canada, nearly half (47 percent) of employees work from outside one of their employer’s main offices for half the week or more. And in Australia, the number of people who work from home has risen to 30 percent. The significant percentages of telecommuters is not the case for all economies. Eurostat reported earlier this year that working from home was slightly more common in the Eurozone than in the EU as a whole. And some non-Eurozone countries have a negligible virtual workforce. Bulgaria has only 0.3 and Romania just 0.4 percent of its workers working from home, as an example.

A Deloitte study on Global Human Capital Trends reported that 70 percent of employees value telecommuting, but only 27 percent of employers offer this option. Therefore, companies that provide opportunities for telecommuting may have a competitive advantage in attracting talent.

Reducing Employee Turnover and Increasing Productivity

While study results vary, there is evidence being offered that working from home can increase employee retention. One study by OwlLabs found that companies that support remote work have 25 percent lower employee turnover than those that don’t.

A study conducted by a Stanford University professor set up a control group between office-based workers and those were allowed to work from home. As the Harvard Business Review reports:

“Half the volunteers were allowed to telecommute; the rest remained in the office as a control group. Survey responses and performance data collected at the conclusion of the study revealed that, in comparison with the employees who came into the office, the at-home workers were not only happier and less likely to quit but also more productive.”

The professor noted that “The results we saw at Ctrip, (the company studied, which is the largest online travel agency in China and the owner of other travel sites worldwide including Trip.com) blew me away. Ctrip was thinking that it could save money on space and furniture if people worked from home and that the savings would outweigh the productivity hit it would take when employees left the discipline of the office environment. Instead, we found that…Ctrip got almost an extra workday a week out of them. They also quit at half the rate of people in the office—way beyond what we anticipated. And predictably, at-home workers reported much higher job satisfaction.”

Providing the option of working virtually can be a crucial factor in retaining valuable talent. If an employee needs to relocate temporarily for family reasons, such as caring for an older parent, or permanently due to a spouse’s job transfer, the employee can remain with the company by working remotely. Having this option available allows the employee to remain with the organisation while the employer retains experienced talent and saves the costs of hiring and training a new worker.

Cost Savings for Employers and Employees

This same Stanford study showed that the company saved $1,900 per employee working from home over nine months. Remote workers allow employers to save money on furniture, parking, office space, insurance costs and other expenses. Global Workplace Analytics’ research shows that a typical employer can save more than $11,000 per year for each half-time telecommuter, the result of a combination of increased productivity and reduced real estate, turnover and absenteeism.

The cost benefits of remote work also extend to employees. Those working remotely save on commuting expenses, depreciation on their vehicles if they drive and gain the time back that would normally be spent going to and from work.

Can Remote Work Be a Solution for Your Business?

The difficulties of recruiting locally and the potential returns of developing a remote workforce may be attractive, but it is also uncharted territory for many companies. How would you source candidates throughout the nation and even beyond? Can you develop recruiting processes, including interviewing, that are effective using video and other tools if you have only relied on face-to-face meetings until now? And once a candidate is hired, how will you manage the onboarding process remotely? The answers to these and many other questions confronting a company exploring a remote workforce option can be provided by a recruitment process outsourcing company (RPO). An RPO can provide the experience, technology and expertise to ensure your success as you remove the geographic limits of your talent pool.

Talking Talent: How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition

Posted on September 10, 2018July 14, 2023 by epadmin

In this episode of Talking Talent, we discuss how RPO can solve the top challenges in healthcare talent acquisition.

The Bureau of Labour Statistics projects that healthcare occupations in the U.S. will grow 18 percent between 2016 and 2026. With this growth and staffing shortages that are already common in the industry, healthcare organisations face new challenges sourcing, recruiting and retaining top talent. To cope, healthcare organisations are increasingly turning to RPO providers that can act as an extension of a healthcare organisation’s HR department to source and hire top talent.

At PeopleScout, we’ve recently expanded our healthcare solutions to help clients compete more effectively in the intensifying race for healthcare talent.
As part of this expansion, Brett Bryner joined the PeopleScout team. Brett is our healthcare workforce leaders who brings decades of insight-driven strategy and talent intelligence. Brett creates customised solutions for both clinical and non-clinical healthcare talent acquisition needs that support full-cycle, partial-cycle, project-based and total workforce engagements. In this episode, he talks about the top challenges in healthcare talent acquisition and the specific ways an RPO provider can help.

In this episode, Brett shares expertise about topics including:

Employee turnover
Talent shortages
HR Technology
Candidate Expectations
And more