One thing I learned from 15 years in the recruiting industry is that RPO/Embedded Recruitment partners are not a good fit for everyone. However, those companies that successfully partner with RPO/Embedded Recruitment providers have an advantage over those that don’t.
Companies that find the right partner that can help them get over hurdles of implementation, communication and can build trust are the ones that get the most return on investment from RPO: they can hire better talent faster than their competitors.
Despite this being the case, even the best partnerships are typically used to augment internal teams by only 15-20%. Some companies rely entirely on internal teams.
While that seemingly worked in the past, the current waves of layoffs tell a different story. Hundreds, and even thousands, of recruiters have been affected. That means that even after cutting external support, companies still have too many recruiters when growth slows down or stops.
This shows us that companies are not equipped to handle sharp changes in the market.
What’s going to happen when the market bounces back and companies start to grow? How will they handle the surge in hiring?
There are going to be two challenges:
1) You’ll have a hard time hiring recruiters
2) Knowing the right size for that recruiting team for the short, mid and long term
Where companies have previously found the right solution to their hiring needs to be a 15-20% reliance on RPO or Agency they should now evaluate a bigger role in their partnerships.
The successful model will be a modern, flexible and scalable organization with a lean but strong, senior core team of internal recruiters who then leverages outside support to handle 40-50% of their sourcing and hiring.
These organizations will pay close attention to their contracts to ensure that they’ll be able to scale up support as needed for a hiring surge, and scale down when there is a slowdown.
They’ll also evaluate an RPO’s ability to scale and the speed at which they can adapt to larger or smaller roles.
If you have not worked with RPO in the past, reach out and connect with a few. Learn about their model, see if they’ll work in your organization. Interview them to ensure there’s a culture fit, a fit for skills, on if they can help you hire in your industry, etc. Find one that can become your trusted partner.
If you’ve worked with RPO in the past, then start talking to your trusted partners today about what’s coming up next year. Talk about being scalable. Talk about being flexible. Start planning now so you’re ready for any hiring surges there might be. It’s going to be a tough year, and you can’t miss opportunities. Then, reach out to new RPOs. There might be a better partner for your needs in 2023!
At ELI Recruiting we provide flexible and scalable recruitment solutions. And we’d love to be your partner starting in 2023!
