The Perfect Partnership: How RPO Complements Internal HR and Talent Acquisition

Modern business leaders are under immense pressure to reduce costs and streamline operations. Such strains put HR and talent acquisition teams—who are already dealing with a historically difficult labor market—under a microscope. A solution for these challenges is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO).

Let’s get one falsehood off the table first; RPO doesn’t replace your internal team. Instead, companies get the best of both worlds: they can utilize RPO to offload the task-oriented, high-risk aspect of high-volume recruiting while focusing their internal talent acquisition resources on managerial and other strategic hires that are too often outsourced to expensive “search” firms. Further, RPO enables the ability to quickly scale recruiting up and down in a highly variable cost model as market conditions change.

Let’s unpack how RPO agencies complement your internal HR processes. How can your company take full advantage of this powerful partnership?

Scalability & Flexibility

If you’re a business that:

• Wants to maintain control over internal recruitment processes;
• Has high volume needs of frontline workers; and
• Is dedicating a disproportionate amount of your internal HR resources to managing the tasks of finding and engaging frontline workers

Partnering with an RPO agency might be the best solution for your organization. RPO helps you remain flexible in your recruitment processes, while still being able to scale when necessary. In other words, you maintain complete control of your in-house strengths—and outsource time-consuming transactional processes associated with high-volume positions.

For example, if you lack the resources or technology to screen candidates efficiently, an RPO partner can handle it. That way, your hiring managers will only deal with the most qualified candidates.

RPO partners offer you more flexibility and efficiency by assuming the nuanced and time-consuming tasks associated with the hiring processes. You likely know what your ideal candidate looks like, but you don’t have the time or resources to sift through thousands of applications to find them.

Furthermore, hiring enough HR professionals to do so leads adds significantly to your fixed costs in uncertain times. Constantly scaling your HR team up and down is not an efficient business practice either; instead, you can tap an RPO partner whenever you need to ramp up hiring. Think- turn them up and turn them down as business dictates.

They’ll leverage all the technologies, tools, and expertise necessary to identify funnel qualified candidates to your HR team and Hiring Managers. And if you need to double- or even triple-down on your hiring processes, the right RPO partner can quickly accommodate surge hiring needs. This is a core element to a well-run RPO

Your internal HR team’s primary objective is to support hiring needs to ensure the business doesn’t miss revenue opportunities. Unfortunately, this goal is hard to meet consistently, given uncertain market conditions and other business factors. Leaning on an RPO partner ensures you always have enough resources to capitalize—never too few or too many. Furthermore, the pay-for-performance pricing structure ensures a high return on investment.

Variable-Cost Recruiting

Companies must remain agile given today’s rapidly changing business landscape. As markets constantly shift, business leaders must find efficient ways to control costs without hindering productivity. One area they tend to tighten up is talent acquisition and recruitment.

Plenty of studies point to the high cost of turnover and hiring new employees. Forbes says it runs around 33% of an employee’s salary—and according to one Gallup Poll, it can rise as high as 50% to 200% of an employee’s salary!

We can all agree on one simple fact: hiring and turnover is costly. The more efficient your hiring strategies, the less money you’ll spend. This is especially true for businesses that are growing and expanding into new markets.

For example, when a national healthcare insurance provider wanted to hire 600 new employees to staff a new location, they leaned on the RPO experts at Source2 to manage their needs. Source2 assigned a team of 18 dedicated specialists to the case; with a sense of urgency, this team recruited and sourced 5,000 new candidates, pre-screened 2,600 qualified applicants, and whittled the pool down to 691 exceptional new hires. All this in just 90 days!

RPO partners operate on a just-in-time service model, scaling up and down depending on your needs. Thanks to variable price points, you’ll only pay for the recruiting resources you need. You’ll also save considerably on turnover, as RPO agencies only send the most qualified candidates who are available and interested. Additionally, a well-qualified RPO firm can assist you with retention solutions—saving you even more money.

RPO partners are SMEs in their own fields. For example, you may work with one specifically tailored to insurance, healthcare, or manufacturing. They’ll impart their best practices on your organization, thus optimizing your company beyond your business relationship.

Focus on Higher Value Tasks

RPO partners complement your internal teams by taking on high-volume recruitment campaigns. Meanwhile, your HR teams can focus on hiring for more impactful positions, like executive and managerial openings. These higher-level positions require a personal, hands-on approach from your internal team, which knows your culture and can best assess fit. If hiring for task-oriented frontline positions bogs them down, they might miss a valuable leadership candidate.

Here are just a few tasks an RPO partner can take off your HR team’s plate:

• Keeping up with market trends to provide recruitment solutions
• Social media outreach to promote your employment proposition
• Sourcing passive candidates through proactive research and outreach
• Screening candidates before sending them down the recruitment funnel
• Scaling on-demand
• Managing candidate databases and portals

Meanwhile, your internal teams can focus on the following:

• Hiring, onboarding, and training qualified candidates
• Keeping employees safe, happy, and satisfied
• Cultivating the company culture
• Ensuring compliance with state and federal labor laws
• Managing risk

Recruitment Best Practices and Expertise

Partnering with an RPO agency does more than save time and money. They’ll come armed with valuable insights and best practices you can leverage to grow as a business.

High-value RPO firms specialize in two key areas: recruitment process optimization and assembling the technology stacks that impact every aspect of the process. Today, technology plays a significant role in the business world. Recruitment is no different.

RPO partners lean on cutting-edge solutions regarding candidate attraction, assessment, and management. For example, they constantly review and update candidate channels based on results. Demand and talent supply data allow budgets to be tweaked and focused to meet local market conditions.

RPO partners can also elevate your employee value proposition (EVP) if it isn’t immediately clear to HR leaders. To fill this gap, they’ll perform competitor and brand positioning analyses, ensure your employer and business brand and vision align, and craft recruitment communications tailored to your messaging and culture.

Finally, RPO agencies will dive into your reports and analytics to ensure you comply with local and federal regulations. These include diverse hire percentages and how long it takes to fill open positions. They’ll highlight areas where compliance could be improved and offer solutions to how you can meet compliance goals.

Leverage RPO Expertise During Your Next Hiring Campaign

Your internal HR team can only do so much. They’re highly skilled and motivated—but the demands of the modern, fast-paced business world are often overwhelming.

Be careful of overloading your internal team when you need to scale up your hiring and recruitment processes. Doing so could cause business-critical decisions to be overlooked for low-impact tasks.

Instead, consider leaning on a dedicated RPO partner, like Source2, to minimize expenses, optimize recruitment strategies, and maximize results. By partnering with Source2, you can create greater flexibility—while leveraging their expertise to fill your recruitment funnel with highly qualified candidates. They’ll engage, screen, and send the best-of-the-best for your final decision.

Get in touch with Source2 today to take your hiring and recruitment strategies to the next level.