Submitted on Mon 08 Jul 2024
In this climate of high economic uncertainty and persistent talent shortages, it’s no surprise 56% of Australian employers continue to report recruitment difficulties - and that’s why many HR and talent leaders explore how to outsource recruitment.
Apart from a tight-talent market, employers and hiring managers are struggling with the continuous push and pull of the need to return to the office - almost 30% of candidates in the contact centre and sales industries say the ability to work from home is one of their top three drivers in accepting a role. Employers are also faced with the major challenges of dealing with the AI’s impact on recruitment, and an increasing need to shift from experience to skills-based hiring.
What recruitment challenges are you facing right now?
Is it feeling the pressure of trying to find top talent in a competitive job market?
Or are your recruitment processes producing inconsistent hiring results that hurt your business performance?
Perhaps you just can’t keep up, whether it’s with skyrocketing recruitment costs, the time you’re losing in onboarding new staff, or the sheer amount of roles you need to fill due to expansion, restructure or internal promotions.
Whatever the case, let’s look a little deeper into the signs that outsourcing recruitment services might be the solution you need, with a specific focus on Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO).
1. It’s taking too long to hire
You need personnel for a large project but it’s taking forever to fill positions. Hours spent creating recruitment materials, sifting through applications, interviewing, and following up overburden your team, resulting in reduced productivity, missed deadlines, and irate stakeholders.
It’s estimated the impact of an unfilled position can cost your business nearly $20,000 over 60 days when you factor in lost output and the additional burden on your employees. This highlights the critical importance of avoiding a lengthy recruitment process.
How RPO helps:
RPO significantly reduces your time-to-hire by providing access to a much bigger and thoroughly vetted candidate pool (curating a vast network is a central tenet of a recruitment agency’s RPO business). You’ll also benefit from best-in-practice hiring processes, ensuring a timely candidate experience that reduces drop-off rates while enhancing your employer brand.
2. You have skyrocketing recruitment costs
As you move through the lengthy stages of the hiring process, your costs mount. From job advertising fees and recruitment software subscriptions, to HR salaries and the overtime required to meet hiring deadlines and properly onboard, you find your recruitment budget quickly dwindling.
How RPO helps:
Recruitment Process Outsourcing gives you the benefit of a streamlined recruitment lifecycle that harnesses cutting-edge recruitment tech. The by-product is a much lower cost per hire and a better one.
Rather than a haphazard method that results in cost blowouts, RPO ensures you have a predictable monthly spend. Here at TORC, we’ve crunched the numbers and our service equates to less than a third of a company’s average recruitment spend.
3. Your employees keep leaving
You have a case of the dreaded staff revolving door. With each departure, there’s disruption to your team's stability and an impact on productivity. The constant cycle of rehiring drains resources and time, adding further pressure.
You’re not alone in facing this problem. Almost one third (32%) of Australian organisations had an annual average employee turnover rate of 20% or above. One of the biggest reasons for high employee turnover relates to problems with the hiring process, whether it’s the wrong candidate-job fit or poor onboarding.
How RPO helps:
Choosing a reputable RPO provider reduces high employee turnover by ensuring an ideal candidate-job-company match. Such providers have deep expertise in verifying candidates have the right skills and experience for the role, but also align with your company culture. You’ll get the bonus of robust onboarding support to further improve employee retention.
4. You can’t find the right talent for your specialised roles
You have several open specialised roles requiring unique skills and experience, but there's a limited supply of candidates, especially in the current talent-tight market. You’re struggling to find (or attract) them, perhaps pointing to a lack of the right expertise or network in your Talent Acquisition team. For example, you need AI specialists to assist with integration and remain on a level playing field with your competitors.
How RPO helps:
RPO offers the two benefits of access and premium candidate experience. A good RPO provider has a deep and broad network of qualified candidates and is adept at sourcing specialised passive talent - those not actively looking but open to opportunities. With RPO’s streamlined and communication-centric candidate experience, you’ll attract the right talent and keep them in the recruitment pipeline.
5. You’re struggling with restructuring or seasonal workforce scaling
Major organisational changes, such as mergers or acquisitions, bring a host of business benefits including new talent. But you find your Talent Acquisition team is struggling to merge and streamline your recruitment systems. It’s a tricky process that involves integrating cultures, recruitment policies, and consolidating sometimes disparate HR systems and technologies.
Or perhaps you’re in a seasonal industry, such as contact centres, facing constant peaks and troughs. The lead up to Christmas demands a full-stack of staff, but this is quickly followed by a post-holiday lull. You notice your recruitment team scrambling during these times, even struggling with their own staffing, to find the right balance to help you scale up and down.
How RPO helps:
RPO addresses the unique recruitment challenges faced by a merger or acquisition with a ready-to-go integrated recruitment system. It helps you hit the ground running with a unified and efficient hiring approach across the newly formed organisation, aligning recruitment policies and technologies, maintaining a consistent employer brand, and minimising disruptions during the transition.
When it comes to dealing with seasonal fluctuations, Recruitment Process Outsourcing solutions are highly scalable, adapting to fluctuating hiring needs without requiring in-house team adjustments. It also means you can tap into a full talent pipeline as you need it, which is cost-effective.
6. Your employer brand is falling short
An astounding 50% of candidates say they wouldn't work for a company with a bad reputation, even for a pay increase. This speaks to the importance of your employer brand. Some signs of a poor employer brand include negative online reviews, a combination of low job application and high offer rejection rates, candidate recruitment pipeline drop-offs, and a lack of diversity among applicants.
How RPO helps:
A key part of the RPO service is nurturing your employer brand. This involves:
- Using market intelligence to ensure your hiring activities are tailored to current candidate wants and needs
- Cultivating a candidate experience that enhances your company image, such as crafting targeted and highly accurate job descriptions that reflect the role and your company culture
- Ensuring compliance with ever-changing employment laws and regulations to protect your reputation
Uncover more about how you can outsource your recruitment with an RPO solution
It’s clear that RPO is a great remedy for the host of recruitment problems you might encounter, including helping you with large-scale seasonal hiring, dealing with recruitment challenges that come with a merger or acquisition, as well as filling niche roles. But it can also do wonders to reduce high employee turnover and improve employee retention.
RPO involves a professional recruitment company taking over your hiring activities, either fully or partially. They can work in partnership with your Talent Acquisition team or become your TA team, managing permanent and contract recruitment, running contractor payroll services and reporting to stakeholders and managers. Importantly, they not only assume ownership of the design and management of your recruitment process, but responsibility for the results.
At TORC, we specialise in Recruitment Process Outsourcing. We exist to ensure candidates enjoy your recruitment process, while you get the right fit in skills, experience and company culture alignment. Please get in touch with one of our RPO specialists to find out more about how we can support you to outsource recruitment services.
