Let’s be honest, the decision to outsource your recruitment is a complex and difficult one to make. The first step before making any major change to your existing recruitment set-up is  to determine if you need to make the switch. This process starts with a thorough evaluation your current recruitment capabilities, identifying gaps for future staffing requirements in relation to your forecasted workforce model, and having a clear understanding of what you are trying to achieve.

It’s important that you take the time to properly research the market conditions for each location where you’re considering ,outsourcing, gather a thorough understanding of your business’ strategic objectives and consider in detail the operational challenges your organisation will face. Armed with this information, you will be better placed to understand the true benefits there are to gain from enlisting a strategic RPO partner to accelerate your recruitment goal ambitions. 

As we said above, the decision to outsource your recruitment is a complex and difficult one. Below are some recruitment related issues that an RPO partner can help solve:

Market conditions

Are there market conditions, such as competitor moves or industry changes, that have created the need to rethink workforce plans? This could include factors such as a planned acquisition or market expansion that would require a re-assessment of headcount or departmental structure to align skills, capabilities and hire numbers. It could also be that your customers are facing new challenges that require you to hire and align new types of talent, such as specific diversity groups, or perhaps experts in scarce skills such as cybersecurity. Or maybe, rapid change in talent market conditions has exposed the need for greater agility, or a new location strategy in order to remain competitive. Whatever the reason(s), make sure that you thoroughly consider whether the market conditions are conducive for you to make this change in your business.  

Strategic initiatives

Do you have key strategic initiatives that could be bolstered with more focus? Has your organisation recently shifted its strategic direction, creating business lines or departments requiring talent as scale to meet growth ambitions? Perhaps your organisation is considering new low-cost locations in emerging markets and you aren’t sure what or where to start. RPO partners are experts in just this, leaving your  HR team take on strategic projects designed to accelerate the business and drive operational efficiencies Any one of these strategic moves could be an indicator that outsourcing recruitment is the right choice for you. 

Operational challenges

Can you pin-point any operational challenges or inefficiencies that exist in your current recruitment ecosystem? There are a host of operational symptoms that can help you identify recruitment-related issues that can be addressed by an outsourced recruitment solution. For instance, if your direct hire agency usage is increasing, impacting your recruitment budget, or you are losing productivity by not being able to close open vacancies quick enough , or perhaps your receiving poor candidate experience feedback which is impacting your ability hire and retain talent. These are all operational symptoms that can be solved through an RPO partner with visibility of your recruitment ecosystem and years of solutioning recruitment problems.

Asking yourself questions is a great way to poke holes in your business case before you present it to key stakeholders. That is why we always recommend that our clients do their due diligence before considering switching to an RPO solution. Determining that your organisation has a market, strategic, or operational need is the starting point for building your business case.  

Download our guide to Building a Business Case for Outsourcing your Recruitment whitepaper to discover what questions you need to be asking yourself before you consider an RPO solution.