Most companies rarely experience steady recruitment needs. In reality, preparing for fluctuations in hiring activity remains a highly challenging aspect of internal talent management. If faced by a sudden hiring spike, do you have the budget and approval to quickly bring on the recruiters you need? Then there’s the question of where you’ll re-deploy these recruiters following a hiring surge, when you find yourself with far fewer roles to fill.
Why Companies May Need to Scale Their Talent Program
There are a variety of reasons why a company may need to temporarily scale its talent program. The recent layoffs and rehiring due to the COVID-19 pandemic are just one extreme example.
Increased recruitment efforts may be needed for peak hiring, filling hard-to-fill and niche roles, or hiring under urgent timelines. This is often the case during times of rapid organizational growth, geographic expansions, new funding, or new business launches. Employers facing unforeseen hiring demands or major challenges in navigating the talent market may also need to ramp up their talent program. How can companies scale their recruitment practices up and down while delivering a high-touch candidate experience, factoring in their talent budget, and ensuring candidate quality at the same time?
Every business has unique hiring goals, which is why recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) programs aren’t designed to be a one-size-fits-all solution. Whether you’re looking to outsource part or all of your recruiting operations, RPO solutions should be tailored to meet the client’s unique business and talent goals. One major benefit of this is the ability for RPO programs to be scaled up and down to accommodate changes in hiring demand.
How Does an RPO Provider Determine Team Size and Scalability?
During the pre-implementation stage, your RPO partner will work with you to evaluate the current and projected state of your hiring goals. Team size and need for scalability will be determined by job volume, skillsets, geographic location, and client approval. The RPO provider may also leverage talent intelligence software to analyze the talent market in real time and forecast necessary increases or decreases in team size.
How RPO Can Help You Ramp Up for High-Volume Hiring
RPO providers have the capacity to add and reduce resources throughout the peaks and valleys of your hiring cycle, ensuring you’ll always have the right number of recruiters on hand. Whether you are faced by time-sensitive or high-volume hiring demands, your assigned RPO resources can be scaled up significantly with minimal burden on your internal management.
In an RPO partnership, you’ll be assigned a recruitment team of subject matter experts who can efficiently identify and evaluate candidates with the right skillsets. Through a combination of industry experience, best practice knowledge, and professional networks, your assigned RPO team will be highly equipped to rapidly source, engage, and close candidates without sacrificing candidate quality.
On top of that, in an RPO partnership you’ll often gain access to the RPO provider’s recruitment tech stack. Advanced recruiting technology—for example: resume screening, AI chatbots, email outreach, and interview scheduling and recording tools—allow the RPO team to streamline and automate repetitive stages of the recruitment cycle to quickly build up a dynamic candidate pipeline.
As hiring needs slow, the RPO solution and assigned RPO team can be scaled back.
Saving with a Scalable RPO Model
In most cases, the cost of an RPO solution will be notably lower in comparison to the annual salaries paid to an internal recruitment team. With an in-house recruitment team, you’ll be paying for a fixed number of permanent staff year-round, even throughout hiring lags. On the other hand, with RPO you’ll only be investing in resources as and when needed; with RPO, companies pay a discounted monthly management fee to cover the cost of the assigned RPO team. This fee will be subject to increases and decreases if and when your RPO program needs to be scaled up and down—ultimately allowing you to avoid unnecessary costs during low-volume hiring periods.
Additionally, RPO is a performance-based solution, meaning cost is also determined by the number of hires made and/or performance-based metrics—such as time-to-fill, offer acceptance rate, and quality of hire. Not only does this ensure that the fees you are paying are directly tied to each successful hire, but the RPO provider is also highly incentivized to deliver candidates, which is particularly crucial during periods of high-volume recruitment. On the contrary, keeping an in-house recruitment team on retainer doesn’t guarantee that hiring targets are met during a hiring surge.
Scalability Is Just One Benefit of Recruitment Process Outsourcing
Companies facing unpredictable or sudden hiring demands may benefit greatly from partnering with an RPO provider. Every RPO delivery model is designed to flex to accommodate the increase and decrease of open requisitions, or as market conditions dictate. Introducing scalability to a company’s talent infrastructure can empower employers to avoid unnecessary costs and resources during hiring lags, while assuring resources are available at peak demand. This can be carried out with minimal disruption to your organization’s management, and ultimately enable your internal HR and talent resources to focus on high-priority business initiatives. To learn more about the full range of benefits that RPO has to offer, check out this blog post.
