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Recruiting 2011 and Beyond; Call for a change in Vision!
Pad N Swami
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
These are difficult and turbulent times. Market is opening up and growing rapidly globaly and locally everywhere. Market demand is there for good resources but recruiting and sourcing has taken a different dimension. Fees charged by contingency agencies are big and without any guarantees of success. In house recruiters need to be deployed to perm hiring , but all are not trained to source efficiently and effectively. And as the U.S. and global market rebounds from recession, many things are changed in this world.

The staffing market in U.S. is over $15 billion and growing day by day. With the need for innovative and quality solutions the demand for exceptionally talented hard to find passive candidates is ever increasing. The solutions have to be global and thinking local and cross technology, cross border , and needs speed and virtual presence to cater to different time zones.

Passive candidates have grown to become a talent that is high in demand. As many of today’s companies have modified their recruiting strategies to include a passive candidate initiative, we discover that many recruiters lack the skills necessary to successfully recruit this elusive group of candidates.

All this calls for a change in thinking and approach.

So what is the future of the recruiting going beyond? How can Corporates get their resources and have a scalable recruiting and sourcing workforce that is ever alert and knowing every situation, domain and yet available 24/7. Is the concept of in-house recruiters is the answer or is there a better way? Is there away to get the resources yet have a balanced life both form the recruiter’s perspective and alsothe employer perspective?

The answer is a big yes. Let us look at some of the ways that Corporates can use.

The easy solution is to get recruiters on contract basis based on needs of that time. But not a viable option for a start up where contnuity is important. Another option is hire the best and constantly train them on new technologies. But training on sourcing methods is easy but not the domain expertise. The best of all is lookat recruiting like an in-sourced agency and let themrun it like a service and also engage in RPO as a combination.

What is an RPO anyway? It is offering Recruiting as a Service. RPO is the management and /or day-to-day execution of a business function by a third party service provider. Outsourcing can be provided on or off premises, in the same country or in another country. We can call it RTES meaning Recruiting using Technology Enabled Service. It is a virtual extended service to Corporates that think only recruiting, sourcing, technologies and domain expertise. Since an RPO can serve many cleinets the expertsie will be varied and teams can be deploayedand reassigned basedon changing demands of the client.without having to hirediverse recruiters with different skills and yet have the service on a monthly basis without long term overheads .

In most organizations, the recruitment function is either assigned to various people in HR or is comprised of a dedicated group within HR. It is a critical function, which includes sourcing, assessment, interviewing, and sometimes new-hire administration and orientation. An effective RPO arrangement involves standardized recruiting processes and platforms for workforce planning, applicant tracking, and workflow. By specializing, an RPO firm can invest in the most efficient technology and processes. They also reap significant scale advantages in relationships with vendors in staffing search, online recruiting, recruitment marketing, background check and profiling, to name a few.

Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever. And as people continue moving more frequently between jobs, recruiting and hiring functions are costing companies more time, energy and money. Many HR departments don’t have the resources needed to continuously find and hire new people. Other businesses have the resources but would prefer to use them elsewhere. The simple solution is Recruitment Process Outsourcing.

The kind of Market reach is brought out aptly by the following diagram:

How is RTES or RPO help the corporate ?
RPO solution is to achieve improvement in four areas: quality, cost, service, and speed.
RPO providers utilize their inherent economies of scale along with heightened levels of recruiting expertise that is expected within a company that does nothing but recruiting. For example, some multi-national companies may have over 1,000 positions requiring different skill-sets and expertise. Staffing an in-house recruiting population that possesses the sourcing skills needed to recruit for all those different skill-sets is extremely challenging. However, an RPO provider will typically have a large staff of recruiters, an extensive database of candidate resumes, and the established tools and networks needed to source for all types of positions.

Costs can be reduced because an RPO provider typically provides greater recruiting efficiencies with best practice processes and improved sourcing techniques. In addition, RPO solutions typically allow for greater fluctuation in volumes and do not require dedicated staff to support a department when volumes are low. For example, if a company hires 10 recruiters to handle their peak requisition volumes, then the company will have to either lay-off recruiters during the slower periods or will be forced to compensate under-utilized recruiters. With RPO, the external provider can often shift underutilized resources to other clients where volumes are higher, thus saving the original client the cost of those resources.

Organizations need to scale with the right resources in a cost-effective way. Most companies haven’t been scaling their technology recruiting departments since the bubble burst in 2001. With the upward in demand over the last year, organizations have begun hiring recruiters or engaging agencies to help identify resources. What they really hope they’re buying is a channel for hidden sources of IT talent. What they’re getting are resumes of candidates that were “key-word” searched off the job boards. With minimal candidate sources and limited evaluation criteria, your employees waste too much time pre-qualifying candidates for positions. RPO offers a unique approach that provides a cost effective, results-driven alternative to staffing services, recruiters and internal efforts. By bringing IT and HR together, organizations can improve quality while realizing significant cost savings for their full-time and contingent staffing needs.

The above pictorial analysis shows the potentiality of RPO business and its advantages for the industries which it has been designed for.

So what does a recruiter of 2011 and beyond look like or should be?
Should be knowledgeable, internet savvy, scalable, hands on expert in cold calling and networking, headhunting and well branded in social networks with an active presence and not depending on job boards, but uses technology, auto search tools and become an individual service provider or part of a global RTES /RPO enterprise.

It is not too late for what ever the future has in store. Time is now to invest on oneself to learn and be empowered to succeed in a Corporate RTES or in an emerging RPO.

The author is Founder and CEO, Urpantech
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