overcoming your talent roadblock

August 25, 2015 Roop Kaistha

 

by leveraging an RPO solution, employers can make big gains in savings, process efficiency, and talent quality

This is the first in a three-part blog series by Roop Kaistha, Randstad Sourceright's solutions design expert in Asia Pacific.

The vast majority (73%) of HR leaders feel the war for talent still reflects today’s talent environment — Randstad Sourceright 2015 Talent Trends Report research.

You just attended your company’s board meeting and found out that software development will be relocated from Silicon Valley to Asia. This ensures that development of new product lines and innovation occur close to where market growth is taking place. A decision on the exact location has yet to be made, but Kuala Lumpur, Bangalore, and Manila are on the shortlist.

As the general manager of HR in Asia, you are tasked with deciding the location and building out. Things need to move very quickly as the CEO has given a target launch date that is fastly approaching. You are left with fewer than six months to plan and execute — activities ranging from site selection to change management to the actual team selection and training.

How will you to accomplish this important task of not only choosing the right location but ensuring that it will have access to the talent you need? You work closely with the Global Chief Operating Officer and the Global Chief Technology Officer and know that they want to hire only the very best for this new center. Another challenge is the need to provision for multiple shifts given the global nature of the facility.

The regional talent acquisition team is already stretched, and HR business partners are still involved in day-to-day transactional recruitment. Do you really want to add more heads and to the company’s fixed costs? Even if you add recruiters, how will you ensure that talent acquisition for this 500-seat center happens on time and doesn’t conflict with the current work of the business partners and TA leaders?

Outsourcing is always an attractive option for addressing surges in hiring, but what’s the right solution for your needs? Employers often turn to agencies and headhunters to find scarce skills, but these costly solutions make no enhancements to an organization’s recruitment strategies or processes. At even moderate volumes, they are economically unsustainable given the fees involved.

Across the globe, employers increasingly turn to recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) to address their talent acquisition challenges. By leveraging the efficiency and expertise of RPO providers, organizations are able to procure talent, reduce recruitment costs, and optimize their processes. It’s no wonder RPO is one of the fastest-growing business process outsourcing services around the world.

Why is RPO gaining such tremendous momentum in Asia and elsewhere? Let’s take a look at the typical benefits of a program:

  • Scalable. RPO is great for companies that are growing rapidly and need help in scaling their recruiting capacity to meet growth. In these cases, the RPO becomes an extended arm of the in-house HR/TA team and expands the employer’s reach, both in capacity and geographical coverage.

  • Consistent and predictable. RPO is all about standardizing the recruitment process across the enterprise, hence making the recruit-to-hire process consistent and predictable for clients and candidates. This makes it easier to keep everyone informed — an especially critical consideration for projects that have tight timelines.

  • High quality. Hiring managers know that a great candidate is much more than a combination of experience and education; they should also have personality and accomplishments. RPOs have developed proven methodologies to source and engage the right candidates, which raise the quality of talent presented to hiring managers.

  • Enhanced employer brand. Whether you are starting a new business or expanding an existing business/service line, it is important to have a consistent market message as an employer. A good RPO provider will support your employer brand strategies and raise your attractiveness among prospective employees.

  • Higher satisfaction. RPO teams do all the background work in choosing the best 3 to 5 candidates per role so that the hiring community doesn’t need to sift through non-qualified candidates. With the help of an RPO provider, hiring managers are more satisfied with what’s accomplished and how candidates are recruited and brought into the company.

  • Technologically innovative. RPO providers have expertise in best-in-class recruitment technology including applicant tracking systems (ATS), recruitment marketing platforms, mobile recruitment tools, and other cutting-edge solutions. By leveraging the best technologies in video interviewing, social media, and assessments, they not only improve quality of candidates but also process efficiency and time-to-hire.

  • Reduced recruiting costs. Last but not the least, hiring 500-plus people in six months can be costly. This is one of the top reasons why organizations choose an RPO solution, and it’s also one of the biggest benefits of RPO. The provider can find qualified candidates with the right cultural fit without incurring the overhead of a headhunter.

As the RPO market in the Asia Pacific region continues to gain momentum, it’s clear employers are enjoying the multiple benefits this solution can deliver. While it’s not a universal solution for every recruitment need — organizations with very low volume of hiring are typically not a good fit — the majority of mid- and global organizations can surely realize economic, process, and quality gains from an RPO program.

Part two of this three-part RPO blog series will examine the five best tips on how to choose the right RPO provider.

 

about the author

Roop Kaistha

Roop is regional director for our global Talent Innovation Center and an expert in RPO solutions design supporting Randstad Sourceright's clients in Asia. Roop is experienced in all aspects of recruiting, including sourcing, technology enablement, candidate engagement, client interaction and management approaches, process and workflow, and analytics. It also encompasses solution design and implementation as key building blocks to a successful RPO engagement.

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