Solution: Total Workforce Solutions

Talking Talent Leadership Profile: Jennifer Mattocks

Posted on by nfuqua

The roles of talent acquisition and HR are changing. When you talk with Jennifer Mattocks, it’s clear that she’s here to lead that change. PeopleScout’s Executive Leader of the Americas, Jennifer is the daughter of an artist and a mathematician – part creative, part analytical and constantly looking for better ways to work.

Jennifer doesn’t come from a traditional recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) background. With more than 20 years of experience leading enterprise client management and strategic sales teams in HR advisory services and talent assessment, Jennifer has a broad view across the HR function and has seen firsthand the way it’s transforming. She has a deep understanding of not just talent acquisition, but also the full employee lifecycle.

We spoke with Jennifer at our Chicago headquarters about the changes headed for HR, the forces behind that transformation and what organisations should be doing now to be ready for what’s next.

We’re starting a new decade with historically low unemployment and skills shortages, making it more difficult to find and hire the right talent. How should employers approach their workforce planning?

Thinking about the skills shortage, there have been a few statistics that have caught my eye. One is that the World Health Organization predicts that there will be a worldwide shortage of 15 million healthcare workers by 2030. That’s not far away. This is an issue that we need to focus on now. Another is that according to the Department of Labour, 17.4% of workers in the U.S. are now foreign-born, and it’s rising. That means we need to have a global perspective when we’re looking at our workforce.

As it relates to the skills shortage, employers should be thinking about the influence of significant shifts in the talent landscape and how they address them in their workforce planning strategies. Strong talent pipelines will hinge on the idea of the fluid workforce – the idea of non-linear career development – and making sure that we have programmes in place to have the right skills at the right time in the right place.

One way to adapt to the challenges that we’re facing in finding the right talent is through a total workforce solution, which allows employers the flexibility to be able to address skills shortages and low unemployment. For some industries, healthcare included, that means we need to look at ways we can find talent with relevant skills through non-traditional channels. Then, by closely tying training and development with talent acquisition, we have the ability to realign talent to roles and responsibilities that fit with their current skills.

How do you see the role of HR transforming to adapt to the changing world of work?

One role of HR is matching people’s skills to work. As HR and talent leaders, we know we cannot assume that when an individual is placed in a role, that is what they will do – or want to do – for the rest of their career. Creating nimble career paths and opportunities for ongoing development will be critical to the success of any HR leader going forward.

An example to illustrate the change we’ll see from HR is through how we approach career pathing. Right now, we have a career ladder that goes from bottom to top. That ladder is going to be flipped on its side – and it already has, to some degree. Individuals are seeking different skillsets or opportunities to develop within the organisation, which doesn’t always translate to a linear career progression. Employees also want to have stronger ownership and input into their own career development; we see this characterised by input particularly from the millennial and Gen Z talent, who are just starting to enter the workforce and seek variety in opportunity.

I also anticipate that we’ll see the idea of the external gig economy brought in house. Meaning, HR will serve as a hub that is responsible for moving talent throughout an organisation based on individual skillsets, the work that needs to get done and the way talent wants to work. With that, HR as a function will change, and the skills needed to succeed in HR will change, as well.

To this end, I see the need for a much tighter connection, even blending, of talent acquisition and talent development roles. Not only is HR responsible for nimbly fulfilling the talent needs of the business to deliver on the work that needs to get done today, but HR is also responsible for providing structure, resources, and tools for the development of talent pools for the future. So, we will see HR marrying those two roles to a degree we haven’t yet seen.

What is the role of technology in the changing world of HR?

HR leaders first need to have a thoughtful strategy, then make sure the technology supports and enables the strategy. With a strategic foundation in place, technology will facilitate the ability of organisations to do three things.

First is to have visibility into and a more comprehensive understanding of the talent that they have in place today, as well as the talent pools that exist both internally and externally. Second, HR leaders can leverage learning and collaboration technology to build up the skillsets that perhaps are missing or need development within the organisation. I think we’ll see a lot more innovation to come related to this. And third, HR can utilise technology, AI, and analytics to better match individuals at the right time to the work that needs to be done.

Technology will also change the HR roles we see today in a fundamental way. There’s a lot of talk about certain roles being replaced by technology and tasks replaced by automation, but we still need human thought, perspective and ethical input to drive technology to make the right decisions. The human touch will never go away and will increase in importance for organisations to be competitive.

What are you most excited about for the future of talent acquisition?

There are two things. One is that we are at the point in which HR and talent acquisition needs to be prescriptive to drive success. Then, HR needs to deliver on the needs of the business while driving the engagement and productivity of the employees. It’s going to be fun to see that shift start to be more pronounced.

I think the other really exciting shift is one that’s personal to me, given the age of my children, and that’s seeing Gen Z enter the workforce and even start to enter management. This is a generation that more naturally and openly drives inclusivity and values having an ethical decision-making process behind what they do. They really embrace technology in novel ways, and having individuals with those capabilities entering the workforce will be very exciting for talent acquisition. I think it will continue to shape how we hire, promote and develop talent, and I look forward to seeing the positive changes they bring.

3 Economic Trends That Will Affect Talent Acquisition in 2020

Posted on by skatz

Every talent acquisition professional is kind of an economic expert. In the process of filling positions, you become aware of local unemployment levels, current rates of compensation, and the competitive landscape in the sectors and markets in which you work. And, while understanding these specific conditions may be essential aspects of successful talent strategies, there are always larger economic forces at work. In this article, we cover three of economic trends and their impact on Talent Acquisition in 2020.

Understanding these economic trends can help develop an effective workforce strategy. To illustrate this point, PeopleScout has identified three economic trends that will affect talent acquisition and workforce management in 2020 – and potential ways to respond to the challenges and opportunities they bring.

Trade Disruption & Uncertainty

Uncertainty over trade due to Brexit, ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and key trading partners, and other global commerce issues dominated the headlines in 2019. How will these yet-to-be-resolved issues affect talent acquisition?

Flexible Workforce Planning

Imagine planning a budget without knowing the future costs of goods and services. Due to current uncertainty over trade, this is the dilemma that many enterprises are facing. The imposition of tariffs in the U.S.-China trade dispute has caused shifts in both the price and availability of products, according to The New York Times. Uncertainty over whether Brexit will happen – and, if it does, what the consequences will be on nearly every aspect of the UK economy and other nations – remains uncertain. One way to respond to uncertainty is to make flexibility a key component in workforce planning. Flexible workforce planning can include contingent staffing, sourcing strategies that promote rapid onboarding and employee cross-training in anticipation of potential downsizing.

Sourcing Candidates from Alternative Talent Pools

While low unemployment still characterizes many of the world’s leading economies, trade disruption has also led to some job losses and displacement. For example, in Great Britain, a number of companies have closed, moved or are planning to, as reported by Metro in the UK. In both the U.S. and the UK, the manufacturing sector has seen job losses due to tariffs and trade uncertainty. Fortunately, many of those who work in manufacturing possess transferrable skills that can be used in other industries. Employers that can identify and attract this newly available source of talent will have a competitive advantage in tight labour markets.

The Migrant Workforce & Shifting Talent Landscape

The era of growing immigration to many advanced economies has been disrupted. The Guardian reports that thousands of European Union nationals have left the UK since the 2016 Brexit referendum, in large part due to the uncertainty over their legal status after an eventual exit from the EU. And, in the U.S., a tightening of available visas and selective immigration bans have caused the number of legal immigrants to plummet. On the other hand, 29% of Australia’s population is foreign-born, but the economic growth in many Asian countries – the source of much of Australia’s immigrant population – has contributed to its decline in net migration in recent years. 

Know the Affected Sectors

One important way for employers to respond to changing immigration patterns is to know which jobs are most affected and to plan accordingly. The reality is that immigrants comprise a significant portion of workers in a range of sectors. For example, nearly one-third of hotel workers in the U.S. are immigrants, and more than one in 10 healthcare workers in the UK are non-British nationals (half of these are from the EU), according to the Office for National Statistics. Understanding the sectors and markets that are affected by the falling rates of available talent from abroad may play an increasingly important role in developing effective talent acquisition strategies.

Talent Without Borders

The pool of available talent is exponentially expanded when work can be done outside of a fixed location. Advances in technology and communications have greatly reduced the need for many processes to take place in brick-and-mortar workplaces. For this reason, recruitment strategies may increasingly include a review of job descriptions to determine which positions can work from virtual locations, including those that are abroad. By doing so, employers can move beyond the constraints of limited talent pools and the wage pressures that tight labour markets generate.

OK, Boomer?

According to Glassdoor’s Chief Economist, Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, baby boomers, born between 1944 and 1964, are now the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. workforce. Dr. Chamberlain notes that “A ‘gray wave’ of senior citizens will be impacting the workforce in coming years, both in the United States and the United Kingdom.” In Canada, the percentage of workers aged 55 and older more than doubled in a little more than two decades; they are now more than one in five of all Canadian workers. Similarly, the number of Australians aged 65 and older who participated in the workforce in 2018 was 13%, compared to only 8% in 2006. And, in New Zealand, 22% of retirement-age people worked in 2016, an 87% increase in just 10 years.

Candidates with a Silver Lining

Given these striking statistics, an increasing number of applications from older candidates should be expected. In addition to the talent that these older candidates bring in their own right, they also help employers adopt a holistic approach to upskilling.

Take the case of a recent college graduate who has strong technical skills, but lacks industry knowledge and even critical soft skills, such as effective communication. These deficiencies can be offset by pairing this new hire with a seasoned industry veteran. The ensuing mentoring can go both ways; a tech-savvy new hire can help an older worker who may be challenged in this area, while the seasoned worker can guide and instruct the younger employee on important industry knowledge and work skills. This symbiotic pairing can also become an important element in an enterprise’s succession planning strategy.

Partnering for Success

Responding to economic trends can be daunting for those under constant pressure to fill positions and manage talent. However, tracking newly available workers due to shifting tariffs and treaties, knowing how to find candidates in unknown and far-flung locations, and navigating the process of recruiting from a broad range of age groups may seem overwhelming to even the best-equipped team of talent professionals. This is precisely why leveraging the expertise and resources of a talent acquisition partner can be the deciding factor for success in a complex and rapidly changing economic environment.

Retail Recruiters: Creating a Winning Retail Recruiting Strategy

Posted on by edyson

There is no doubt that the internet has forever changed the way customers shop. Despite this, in-store sales continue to trend upward. In fact, in-store sales revenue growth has outpaced e-commerce sales steadily over the last decade. To support in-store demand and continue growth, retail employers need top-performing talent in the right positions.

Unfortunately, with a tight labour market and various retail recruiting challenges, it is now harder than ever for retail recruiters to find the right candidates. In this article, we cover the best hiring practices for retail recruiters to help you source, attract and hire the best retail talent.

Defining Your Hiring Goals as Retail Recruiters

Regardless of industry, the first step in the recruiting journey begins with outlining how many hires you need to make, what positions you are looking to fill and the timeline you need to hire by. By outlining these goals early on in the recruitment process, you develop a clear strategy that helps you meet your organisation’s talent needs.

As a retail recruiter, your organisation’s hiring goals may fluctuate or change depending on seasonality and store openings, so in addition to your current hiring needs, also anticipate future needs when creating your hiring goals.

Do not be afraid to change your goals as you go. Outside factors, such as new competitors, a change in demand or opening of a new store, might influence the goals you established. If you need to make a shift to your strategy, remain agile enough to do so.

Sourcing Retail Candidates

For a retail organisation to thrive, it takes a diverse range of individuals working together towards a common goal. So, it should come as no surprise that when searching for top retail talent, retail recruiters need to cast a wide net.

While some companies may focus on hiring high school or college students looking for part-time or seasonal jobs, others may want to experienced full-time candidates in search of careers. If you’re hiring low wage, low skill labour, community sites like Craigslist or standard job boards can help you attract students or young individuals looking to gain some experience. If you’re looking for more experienced retail workers, try more targeted job boards like iHireRetail or LinkedIn.

It is essential to know where your potential candidates are active and advertise your open jobs strategically. Use location-specific job boards, local papers or blogs, or other targeted strategies to help pinpoint your area for the best candidates.

When sourcing for seasonal positions, using digital and social media ads along with email as a way to find and attract talent can pay huge dividends. Just make sure you create a specific careers site to send seasonal candidates too. This way it will be easier for them to find information on the opportunity without having to navigate your full careers website.  

Finally, you can also look at your customers as potential candidates when recruiting new employees. When your employees are passionate about your brand and products, like loyal customers often are, they can help increase sales and educate new shoppers about what you offer.

Retail Recruiters Need to Go Online

Retailers of today are operating in a competitive space that requires forward-thinking as well as online and social savviness. If you want to attract applicants who have those traits, you should take your recruitment efforts beyond traditional channels such as job boards. Social media is known to be an effective recruitment tool. LinkedIn, for instance, has a number of talent solutions that enable you to find, vet and contact candidates.

Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, while not specifically made for recruiting, can also help you find new hires. Use Twitter to spread the word about your openings and put a special careers tab on your Facebook page where your fans can browse and apply for jobs.

Even Instagram has proven to be a good platform, particularly for companies looking for young and fresh talent. As Software Advice cited in this piece on Instagram recruiting, a study by the Pew Research Center found that the largest group using Instagram is adults between 18-29 years of age with some college education. This makes it an ideal platform to attract a new generation of applicants.

So, make it a point to spruce up your employer profile on social media. A good way to do this is to share fun team photos on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. And if you are actively recruiting, spread the word by posting “we’re hiring” images on your accounts and running targeted social media campaigns to attract the right candidates. You can also show your company culture and promote things such as flexibility in the workplace you provide, your commitment to diversity and inclusion and more.

For Retail Recruiters, Attitude is the New Experience  

When hiring in retail, which is a bigger predictor of a candidate’s success: attitude or experience? In the case of industries like retail, an employee’s attitude is often more important than their experience. What’s more, The Future of Work: The Augmented Workforce study conducted by Deloitte found that “skills such as empathy, communication, persuasion, personal service, problem-solving, and strategic decision-making are more valuable than ever.”

Retail Recruiters

Whether it’s assisting customers at a department store or managing an automotive supply store, each role within the retail industry requires the right attitude. So, how can retail recruiters ensure they hire candidates who have the right attitude? You can start by assessing candidates’ soft skills in the workplace.

Key soft skills to look for in retail candidates

  • Willing and eager to learn
  • Patient
  • Inquisitive
  • Competitive
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Responsible
  • Good communicator
  • Strong listener
  • Team-oriented
  • Emphatic
  • Can-do attitudes
  • High emotional intelligence

The good news is that many of these soft skills go hand-in-hand, so finding retail candidates who exhibit these qualities and attitudes will not be as difficult as it may seem.

Group Interviews and Assessing Soft Skills

A great way to find candidates with the right soft skills is to conduct group interviews. Candidates at Disney’s retail Store go through a group interview process where they are quizzed on Disney trivia and are asked to sell a product to the rest of the team.

Conducting group interviews provides you an opportunity to glean insights into someone’s soft skills by observing how they conduct themselves around other people, how they handle a stressful situation and you get to an understanding of how they will fit with your team.

The Gist

Retail recruiters and the industry as a whole face a unique set of challenges when attracting top talent with the right skills. With the majority of the retail workforce comprised of hourly, part-time and seasonal employees, recruiting quality workers quickly is a tall order.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy or tactic to retail recruiters. However, armed with the tips we have shared you can develop a retail recruiting strategy that fits your organisation’s unique issues, needs and culture. Remember, get to know your candidate pool, create a robust employer brand, utilise the internet and talent technology tools. If you cover all of these bases, you can improve your recruitment process and make smarter hiring decisions.

Global Implementation: Is Your Talent Programme Ready for the World Stage?

Posted on by skatz

The shift toward global expansion is top of mind in many of today’s organisations, and for good reason: going global brings opportunities that may otherwise go untapped – such as new revenue sources, cultural diversification, economies of scale and greater access to talent. So, as your talent programme grows, you may be considering expanding beyond your current borders.

Similar to traveling internationally, there are many steps to taking your business’ talent acquisition programme global. As you plan for a trip abroad, you may make a packing checklist, get your passport and prepare accommodations. There’s anticipation as you near your trip date, and even some nerves as you take flight. You don’t quite know what to expect, but you’re excited about the possibilities of what you’ll discover. After an invigorating visit, you recount your trip and replay all you’ve experienced – good and bad. Global talent acquisition deployments are similar, and in this article, we’ll outline factors to consider throughout the different stages of implementation.

Choosing Your Global Talent Acquisition Deployment Type

The first item on any traveler’s checklist is determining where to go. When it comes to global implementations, get a good handle on the location or locations you’ll be expanding into before taking off. After considering talent supply, cultural nuances and how easy (or difficult!) it is to do business in a certain location, selecting a deployment type should be straightforward.

There are two main types of global talent acquisition deployments:

  1. “Big Bang” Approach: If you opt for this method, you’ll be launching all operations at one time on a singular date. This might be the choice for you if the main goal is compliance with global policies and procedures that align with a specific set of dates and standards.
  2. Phased Approach: This type of deployment type favors a slower rollout of operations over time – which might be helpful for first-generation managed service provider (MSP), recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) or total workforce solutions programmes that you want your organisation to ease into.

Factors to Consider

After choosing a travel destination, you’ll start looking into the details of the location you’re visiting. What’s the weather like? What language do people speak? Where are the best food spots in town? In essence, seemingly small aspects tend to have large effects on the success of your trip. Likewise, once you’ve taken all of the initial expansion considerations into account, you’re better equipped to further assess pivotal factors that will greatly influence the success of the overall deployment, including the following significant global and local influencers.

Key Stakeholder Identification & Support Capacity

It’s crucial to align organisational expansion plans with regional cultural norms and any specific local nuances. For example, when initially organising the details, are there any types of communication styles that are considered rude or offensive? This is crucial to ascertain for positive programme adoption from the start. Also, be sure to frame that local focus to stakeholders, as opposed to communicating a message that essentially states that a new programme will be laid over local operations. Stress the fact that you’ll be interweaving existing operations with new features and benefits to ensure maximum success for the programme and all involved.

Additionally, focus on ensuring that all voices are heard – from local teams to individual hiring managers – to avoid any passive resistance; you’ll want to fully understand how people work in that particular location and what day-to-day norms mean to ensure the success of the programme. Try putting yourself in the shoes of the end-user; a seemingly simple concept like shadowing can go a long way in showing the local constituency that you’re invested in the success of the programme at their specific location.

Availability of Talent

We’re currently seeing low unemployment rates paired with skills shortages across the globe– a trend we haven’t seen consistently in the past. Because of this, consider shifting your focus to soft skills when it comes to assessing the talent landscape in a given region. This means concentrating on skills like critical thinking, problem solving and adaptability to new environments. No matter whether you’re introducing a new industry to the area, carefully decipher what the competition for talent looks like. From there, you can start developing a well-thought-out sourcing plan to align the resources necessary for a successful deployment.

Change Management and Global Talent Acquisition

global talent acquisition

When done right, change management can have the greatest effect on deployment success. A critical component of managing change in global talent acquisition implementations is gaining buy-in from key, local stakeholders. Then, you can depend on these stakeholders to translate (literally and figuratively), the feedback needed to take into consideration.

Another vital part of managing change is ensuring the right amount of frequency to ensure consistent alignment. Rather than one initial message followed by months of silence leading up to the “go-live” communication, consider a layering approach. Keep communications frequent, consistent and to the point to get people excited about what’s coming and interested in what the changes mean for them.

And, as important as it is to keep communication consistent as you prepare for launch, it’s just as critical post-launch. Reinforce the benefits people should be seeing, ensuring everyone is comfortable with the changes and collecting feedback around any training or functionality that may need revisiting. A high level of communication and comfort translates into successful programme adoption.

For more on change management, check out our Talking Talent Podcast.

Technology Readiness

When it comes to talent technology, several different factors need to be considered. For an MSP programme, the main component is the vendor management system (VMS). Along the same lines, with an RPO program, you’ll be focused on the applicant tracking system (ATS) and any other systems that may need to be integrated for either or both. Similar systems may be utilised across an organisation with varying local versions, so it’s important to understand what consistencies exist, as well as gaps that need to be addressed.

Ensure the pros and cons are carefully weighed across the systems the technology will interface with, then try to choose one as a “source of truth” for compliance, data validation, and data integrity. In doing so, you’ll see consistency across the talent technology, giving you a true, holistic view of the workforce when it comes to analytics and reporting.

Finance & Tax

What’s important here – and heavily dependent upon the workforce population at hand – is ensuring that there are clear visibility and guidance around cross-border implications, such as supplier and provider payments, global and statutory requirements, or arrangements in which a hiring manager sits in a different location than the resource. This becomes especially important when there is an integration with an invoicing system and effects on back-office operations.

The Stages of a Global Talent Acquisition Launch

After months of preparation, you’re finally leaving for your much-anticipated trip. You just have to check in to your flight, print your boarding pass and you’re on your way! After a two-week experience you’ll never forget, you return home to tell your friends and family every detail of your getaway (even down to the hotel mishap on night three). Your global deployment will go through similar stages, as outlined below.

Pre-launch

At the pre-launch stage, all stakeholders should have a good working knowledge of what’s coming and when, and you should have a good sense of how everyone is feeling. Are people comfortable with what’s coming? Are they ready for it? What needs to be adjusted now based on the feedback collected?

Ensure that all technology components are operating as planned, and that enough time has been dedicated to testing different scenarios that will be realised upon launch. The quickest way to do this is by running through predetermined scripts and observing how the technology responds. If time allows, some organisations also subscribe to a “break the system” approach by trying out every possible or one-off scenario – including erroneous field data – to assess the outcome. While this takes more time, it also tends to be the most thorough, especially if multiple technologies are at play.

Successful Launch

global talent acquisition

When it comes to executing a successful launch, the biggest components are represented above. As you progress in the implementation, it’s wise to consistently refine change management, calibrate resource alignment and pivot as needed, so as not to lose momentum as progress is made. Remember to share successes along the way, and not to lose sight of the overall goals of the programme.

Furthermore, whether you’re evolving your programme or expanding into additional locations, consider the overall maturity of the labor market and generation of the programme you’re launching. For instance, if this is a second-generation programme, what do you need to consider from the first launch and potentially change? It’s also important to communicate the fact that unexpected issues may arise and, if they do, it’s critical to address these obstacles transparently.

Post Launch

Once the programme expansion has launched, consider the following recommendations:

  • Dedicate time to complete a thorough audit: Assess how well the goals were met, taking into account that they may have changed over time.
  • Schedule a “lessons learned” meeting: Identify and capitalise on best practices acquired throughout the launch.
  • Check in at all levels of the operation: Work to understand what is and isn’t working.

As data starts coming in regularly, analyse for trends that may not have been visible before to determine any adjustments that need to be made related to resources, processes or technology.

After any trip, you spend some time at home reliving the experience and getting reassimilated with your day-to-day life. You think about what you did and didn’t like, go over what you learned, and naturally, decide whether you want to take another trip. Maybe the destination was so great that you want to go back, or perhaps you’re ready for something new. Global talent acquisition implementations are similar, and whether you’ve met your needs with one deployment or are planning for further expansion, the right talent partner can help take you there.

Finding the Right Partner

Choosing a partner to help you through your global talent acquisition deployment is like choosing an airline. Are they reputable? Dependable? Can they get you where you need to be? Most important, can you trust them with your bags? When you’re looking into viable partners to work with for your implementation, ask yourself:

  • Do they align with our business needs?
  • Will they deliver value across every level of the organisation?
  • Are they flexible?
  • Do they have any proven standards?
  • Do they have the ability and experience to tailor operations as needed?

Don’t be shy about asking your potential talent partner to prove their value. Request case studies and demonstrated expertise that illustrates that they have the experience you’re looking for. Finding a partner that is a good fit for your organisation is a huge undertaking and you want to make sure you get it right. You’ll likely be working with them for a long period of time, and the success of your implementation will depend on the strength of your relationship and the trust you have in your partner.

Talking Talent: Talent Acquisition in 2020 with Madeline Laurano

Posted on by skatz

Does your talent acquisition programme spark joy? If not, Madeline Laurano is here to help. Laurano is the co-founder of Aptitude Research, a research firm focused on talent acquisition. Based on her proprietary research, Laurano sees a talent acquisition landscape that is crowded and complex. During her keynote presentation at PeopleScout’s 2019 NEXT Talent Summit, she focused on simplifying the process.

Every year, Aptitude Research conducts three major surveys to gather qualitative and quantitative data about the talent acquisition landscape – from the biggest challenges facing recruiting teams to how leaders in the field are integrating innovative technology into their programmes. We spoke with Laurano about the trends she uncovered in her surveys and how she applies the “Marie Kondo” method to talent acquisition and talent technology.

What is the biggest challenge in talent acquisition today?

The biggest challenge across organisations of all sizes and industries is that talent acquisition has become so incredibly complex. We have new technology solutions; vendors entering the industry that provides everything from employer branding to innovative assessments; and organisations that need to expand the skills and breadth of knowledge on their talent acquisition teams. While this presents exciting opportunities, at the same time, it’s creating a lot of challenges. We have to be able to manage all of these different priorities while making sense of the technology we’re using and the strategies in place.

How do you determine which talent technology solutions are the right fit for your organisation?

It’s going to be a little bit different for every company, but it’s best to start at a very basic level. Every organisation needs an ATS, an onboarding system and some type of recruitment marketing platform. That’s what I call the trifecta. Every organisation of every size should have that. Those three systems must be in place to make sure that you have a way of engaging, tracking and managing talent. That’s the basic tech stack.

After that, it’s important to look at what you need to support your needs – whether it’s automation, enhancing communication, providing stronger branding, or sourcing and assessing candidates. Most organisations have screening and assessment solutions. We’re seeing more and more companies using some type of interview management system. Then, there are a lot of sourcing and branding solutions.

I think we need to simplify the talent technology ecosystem as much as possible. That comes down to building the best trifecta – the basic tech stack – and strategically adding additional technology where it will have the greatest significance. There are companies that pull together all of these disparate solutions into one unified technology; PeopleScout’s AffinixTM is a great example of that.

When you’re looking at technology partners, how do you determine if they are the right fit? What kind of questions should you ask, and what should you look for?

It’s really looking beyond just a demo and beyond what’s on somebody’s website. I evaluate technology partners using four buckets: company, product, differentiators and roadmap.

First, I like to ask, “What are the company’s values? What’s the strength of their leadership team? How many employees do they have? How many employees are focused on research and development? What does their customer base look like? Who is their target customer?”

The next piece involves looking at the product, getting into technical questions, and thinking about things like mobile compatibility, the suite of services and the languages that are supported.

Then, it’s about the differentiators. I like to ask technology providers to explain what their differentiators are, and then – after going through the process and understanding what they do – figuring out if I’m seeing the same differentiators. That can be very telling.

The final piece is asking about the roadmap. “What’s planned for the future? Is this a provider truly invested in making enhancements and providing flexibility to organisations?”

How do you simplify your talent acquisition process? What does simplified look like?

We’ve heard of Marie Kondo and her method for organising and decluttering our homes. I think organisations need to take that approach to talent acquisition. This is especially relevant when it comes to talent acquisition technology. Companies are using so many different providers to accomplish certain goals – our research shows it’s an average of 30. When you have so many solutions, you don’t have consistent data sets to look at, so it’s hard to know what’s working and what isn’t.

Leaders need to be able to figure out what talent technology their organisation needs, how it’s going to be used, and how they can narrow down the list of providers to only those that are most effective. As an example, when it comes to recruitment marketing, a lot of companies are using several different vendors within their organisation; only 2% of companies are using all of the capabilities provided by each tool. Leaders need to look at what’s not working and think about a provider that can support the organisation with a more holistic strategy.

What advice can you share with talent acquisition leaders who are looking ahead to 2020?

When it comes to making your talent acquisition programme more manageable and simplifying your technology stack, think about which providers are truly partners and able to support you in many different ways. That’s really important.

Then, think about what skills you need to make your talent acquisition function successful, whether it’s digital expertise, data scientists or more employer branding services. Focus on how you can either bring those onto your team or find an outside provider to partner with you.

The final piece is thinking about embracing some of the areas that haven’t traditionally been part of a talent acquisition function, taking ownership and being a champion for them. Employer branding is one example. We’ve seen a lot of talent acquisition leaders and professionals embrace branding and become experts in that area. Data analytics is another. By advocating for solutions in these specialised areas, talent acquisition leaders move their programme ahead of the competition.

Finally, have fun! There’s so much in talent acquisition that can feel tactically overwhelming, but advocating for new solutions is empowering. So much is changing, but with that change, we’re seeing exciting opportunities for improved data, robust employer branding and more. This is an amasing industry to be in, and we can’t forget that.

Talking Talent: Field Test – How to Attract Top-Performing Field Talent

Posted on by nfuqua

Attracting candidates with the right cultural fit is difficult at any organisation. The issue is compounded when employees are not working in an office environment but instead out in the field, working face-to-face with your customers. For organisations with field service employees, the workers that spend the least amount of time in your office are often the face of the organisation.

So how do you attract and hire field the best service workers? 

Joining us to talk about this is Chris Gera, the Managing Director, Executive Vice President for Service Council™. In his role, Chris is defining and executing the Service Council’s Research & Insights™ product portfolio.

As the Senior Analyst on Service, Chris is directly connected to Senior Service Leaders and Solution Providers to drive the Service Council’s Smarter Services™ agenda. This provides service executives and organisations the ability to benchmark their operations and also provide guided insight to target how to improve their service organisation performance and deliver the full potential of their change management initiatives.

Chris also leads new member acquisition, member engagement, community expansion and the development of their annual Symposium. Chris plays a key role in building out Service Council’s community platform which is focused on becoming the single source of information and networking for service and customer support executives globally.

Prior to his role at Service Council, Chris held service leadership positions at Vivint SmartHome, where he managed 1,200+ field professionals supporting more than one million customers across North America. While at Nielsen, he led global strategic field initiatives, specifically digitization and technology and process improvement implementations of a $1B profit and loss service business supporting greater than 15,000 field professionals in over 100 countries around the globe.

Also joining for this episode are Mike Yinger and Janice Weiner. Mike is our global leader of growth and strategy here at PeopleScout, and he is responsible for global sales results and organisational strategy. Janice leads cross-selling and total talent initiatives for PeopleScout. Total talent includes all the ways a company can “get its work done.” Getting the work done from a company’s field service perspective is what we focus on in this episode.

Are You Getting it Right? How to Manage Your Contract Employee Workforce

Posted on by edyson

Increasingly, organisations are harnessing the talents of contractors and temporary employees to augment their current workforce, respond to rising talent demands, staff large strategic projects, add new skills and expertise to their teams and accelerate growth.

The rising trend of contract labor is a global phenomenon. According to an Oxford Economics survey, 83% of executives reported an increase in the usage of contract labor to meet business objectives. What’s more, according to an industry trends report, up to 30% of the Fortune 100 workforce works on a contract basis. That number is expected to increase to 50% by the year 2020.

It is not just organisations getting in on the contractor market, more and more professionals are opting to work as “free agents”. According to a survey conducted by Upwork, 63% of all independent contractors say they have chosen to freelance as a first option.

While leveraging the skills of a contract workforce provides many significant benefits, such as lower tax burdens and increased workforce agility, improper management of a contract employee can potentially negate many of the upsides.

So, how can managers provide effective leadership and guidance to contract workers under their charge without incurring compliance risk? How can managers successfully integrate contract workers into their teams? What should managers consider when selecting optimal approaches and tactics for recognising the contributions of their contract workforce? How can your organisation be more inclusive of all labor types?

While there are many types of contract employees, freelancers, SOWs, consultants, temporary employees and contingent workers in a multitude of work environments, in this article, we focus on the management of contract workers in an office setting.

Attracting and Engaging Your Contract Workforce

Behavioral scientist Dr. Ashley Whillans from the Harvard Business School, who researches what makes people happy in the workplace, summarised the power of engagement succinctly: “Cash matters in people’s lives, but it’s not all that matters,” said Whillans. “What really matters in the workplace is helping employees feel appreciated.” This sentiment is especially important to the next generations entering the workforce—Millenials and Gen Z—value this over money. 

An Aberdeen study found that 74% of respondents who chose temporary employment cited lack of employer engagement as the driving reason for not renewing their contract.

To get the best from your contract workforce, your organisation needs to treat contract workers with the same respect and appreciation you give to your full-time employees.

Build a Contractor Talent Pipeline

Talent pipelining is critical to improving the recruitment process; even more so when hiring contractors, who are always on the lookout for their next opportunity. Talent communities are a great way to populate an effective pipeline.

Contractors should be frequently encouraged to join your talent community through social media, on your organisation’s career site and in an email via targeted campaigns. Remember, you are not trying to build just a talent pool, but a community, so relationship building and engaging candidates are crucial.

Use this platform to your advantage by interacting and engaging with contractor talent, providing information about current job openings, company happenings and industry news, and sharing branded content that is relevant and beneficial. Capturing data on your talent community based on job interests, industry experience, skill level and basic demographics will help tailor your approach.

Improve the Contract Candidate Experience

Because of the nature of their employment, contractors are always on the lookout for new or better assignments. As a result, a contractor may review multiple opportunities a day, this makes improving and optimising the candidate experience vitally important.

Stand out by explaining what makes the job worth their time, and why they should apply. This will make it easier for them to quickly assess whether the opportunity is a good fit for them and if so, motivate them to toss their hat in the ring. For example, job postings for temporary positions should be more precise and to the point. Try not to include a long list of rigid experience qualifications and responsibilities.

Giving candidates visibility into your work culture through the sourcing and interview process is also key.  Ultimately, candidates are making a decision based on personality fits more and more. The more you can share how the role supports the overall improvement of your organisation is also key. Candidates want to feel like they can make an impact and affect change within the organisation they work in.

Contractors’ hiring experience can be very different from full-time employees. Therefore, don’t use the same process to recruit and onboard them. Instead, develop and employ a consistent onboarding process designed solely for contract workers.

Once you select a contractor you need to make sure that they are properly engaged from the start. Ideas to engage contract workers once they are hired should include incentive programs, benefits packages if applicable and accrued paid time off for long-term contracts.

Do not just assume a high turnover for a contract employee, as many contractors opt to renew their contracts or work seasonally for organisations during peak times. Contractors may also be looking for more permanent employment, so clearly highlight any full-time opportunities that are available once a contract has ended.

Integrating a Contract Employee into Your Team

For your contract workforce to be effective, your leadership should go above and beyond to ensure that members feel welcome and are properly integrated into the larger organisational culture. Workers hiring status should not preclude them from feeling like they are a part of the team. In other words, make sure all your contract workers know that they are valued contributors rather than hired guns.

What’s more, treating a contract employee like “a second class citizen” can result in bad morale, not just with your contractors, but also your permanent workforce who must work beside them. Depending on how contractors are used, organisations can find a myriad of ways to welcome them into the corporate culture while treating them differently from permanent employees. But concern about a contractor being offended by being treated differently should not override the need to observe differences for compliance and liability reasons. Co-employment risk is less about exclusivity and more about ensuring fair treatment for all workers.

Communication

Establishing good communication is the key to maintaining strong relationships between contractors and employers. Research from Gartner shows that 70% of business mistakes are due to poor communication.

The first step in establishing good communication is letting your contracted team members know that you are always available to answer questions and address concerns.

You should hold regular meetings with members of your contract staff to stay updated about the progress and obstacles they might be facing on projects. You can also assign each contractor a point person they can go to when questions arise, or they are unclear about their assignment.

Video calls, chat messages and emails are all great ways to keep in touch—especially if the worker is remote—but do not rely too heavily on technology to communicate; just like with your full-time employees, contractors workers like to have personal and face-to-face communications with their employer.

Onboarding a Contract Employee

Walking into an unfamiliar office, parsing out the dos and don’ts of a new workplace, and locating the restrooms and water coolers can be daunting on the first day of a new job. So imagine a contractor who may have to go through this process multiple times a year, as they move from assignment to assignment. This is where providing a seamless onboarding process to contract hires can help reduce the stress related to starting a new assignment and establish trust and comfort from day one.

During the contractor employee onboarding process, make sure you have everything prepared on a worker’s first day. Security badges, equipment, office supplies and access to the information required to navigate projects should all be ready to go once they enter the door.

While the onboarding process for contractors will and should look different from an administrative perspective, it should be an equally positive experience. A good onboarding process will increase a contactors tenure, with 69% of employees more likely to stay with an organisation for three years if they experienced great onboarding according to SHRM. Every employee, once onboarded, should feel as much a part of the team as anyone. Doing so will promote trust in the workplace and will ultimately lead to more creativity and more production across the board.

Fostering Relationships

Workers—regardless of employment status—are more effective and productive when they have strong relationships with their colleagues. According to research conducted by Gallup, employees with who report having a best friend at work constantly perform better than employees without similar connections.

When workers respect and view their colleagues as friends, they are more likely to value each other’s input and ideas and may feel more comfortable sharing their own. This mutual respect and comradery lead to better teamwork and the development of solutions based on the collective insight, wisdom and creativity of the whole team.

Early on in an assignment, introduce your contractors to each other and their full-time counterparts. During the initial meeting, encourage everyone to share their background, experience, personal achievements and interests. This can help build rapport and engender greater trust and cooperation.

Tracking and Supervising Projects Assigned to a Contract Employee

Managers who oversee contract employees do so without a formal supervisor-employee hierarchical relationship. They can specify what projects need to be done and when they need to be completed. However, they cannot dictate the specific hours that contractors work or exactly how they are to perform the work. So, to effectively manage projects assigned to a contract employee, managers need to employ a more hands-off supervisory approach.

Define your Goals, Expectations and Timelines with Your Contract Employee

Before assigning a project or task, you should discuss the goals of the project, their roles in it and what you expect from them. You can avoid future confusion about when they should complete tasks by sketching out a clear timeline of when the project starts when they should report on the progress and when they have to turnover in the final product.

Check-in Regularly with Contract Employees

A good way of checking up on project status is to schedule intermittent check-ins with your contract employees to gauge progress toward goals and objectives. While checking-in, try not to explicitly direct your contract employee’s actions, as this may infringe on their feeling of autonomy and make them feel as if they are being managed rather than being engaged as an independent project-based worker. Think of it as managing for results rather than specific activities.

Evaluate and Review

Just like your permanent employees, contract workers need constructive feedback to improve on their skills. When a contractor submits a task, evaluate it right away and provide speedy feedback. This will not just help them review their work, but you can also check on whether the project and you assigned the worker is on the right track or if it needs a course correction.

Conclusion

As more and more professionals are choosing to make their living working as contract employees, the contractor workforce is becoming a bigger part of the labor mix, developing a best practice management strategy attracting and retaining them critical to organisational growth.

Forward-thinking organisations are providing contracted help with a greater say in the work they do; they’re connecting them with teammates and they’re recognising them for their contributions. In other words, they’re positioning themselves to become employers of choice for contractors.

Talking Talent: Getting the Most out of MSP

Posted on by epadmin

In this episode of Talking Talent, we talk about Managed Service Providers or MSPs.

An MSP is a contingent workforce management solution managed by an external organisation that combines process, personal expertise and technology to support an organization’s gig, temporary, temp-to-hire, direct hire, independent contractor administration, Statement of Work hiring and other complex services such as vendor management.

There is a spectrum of organisations seeking MSP services – some are looking for the first time, others have mature programmes focused on driving continuous improvements and others that are transitioning into a Total Workforce Solution. In this episode, we dig into the issues affecting MSP programmes at all maturity levels.

Joining us is Jen Torres, MSP client portfolio leader at PeopleScout. Jen has more than 12 years’ experience as a partner to Fortune 100 companies seeking MSP solutions. Her creativity and innovation helped some of the country’s largest financial and technology institutions launch and develop workforce operations into industry-leading programmes. She is known for her “passion for people” and excellence in leading custom workforce solutions with an emphasis on customer service.

Jen explains what leaders should consider if they are pursuing MSP services for the first time, what implementing a second or third generation programme looks like and what steps organisations need to take if leaders want to transition to a total workforce solution. Jen also shares what technology means to a successful MSP or total workforce solutions programme and what she’s excited about for the future of workforce management.

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

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Posted on 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.

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.

Attitude is the New Experience

Posted on 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.