Andy Headworth at Sirona Consulting made a little tweet yesterday asking whether anyone had a document that explains the benefits of RPO to HR staff. As you can imagine, not many people put their hand up to send him one!
But why do we think that HR staff will be so anti-RPO... Because they see it as a threat to their jobs?
Like any outsourcing solution, RPO has got a place. And like other outsourcing styles, it has to be undertaken appropriately otherwise it will just turn into an expensive mess that simply doesn’t work.
The thing about RPO that has always surprised me is that people often think that it should either be done in a wholesale way, or not at all. This is wrong.
The process of recruitment is a long and complicated beast that touches almost every part of the business from senior managers or directors approving a hire, to designers putting ads together, through advertising onto hiring managers, across reference checking, etc... Lots of people, and lots of little areas can be helped with discrete RPO activity.
The bottom line here is that many HR staff (or in-house recruiters) would be happy to see certain parts of their jobs undertaken by somebody else – and lots of RPOs would be happy to do these admin intensive jobs on a transactional fee basis. Remember, HR staff should be adding value to their business, not shuffling paper around the place.
It’s important to realise that undertaking any kind of recruitment activity demands a system that can keep track of the admin. A good ATS can easily allow external providers secure access and visibility to parts of your process and this should be a consideration when considering using RPO as some or indeed all of your recruitment process.
- Mike
On one side I would agree that HR staff need not be afraid of an appropriately aimed RPO effort (scaled to fir, defined appropriately, and has by in from hiring managers), I still think the initial reaction is almost always going to be resistance from HR for any effort to use outside resources for recruitment.
Posted by: Ben | January 07, 2009 at 18:41
Having spent nearly the last year and a half at a big Financial in Tokyo, in the capacity of Account Manager for a recruitment 'Managed Service Provider', I could identify with some of the info and themes in here.
Indeed I could have probably have shared a bit of insight on what we did / documented to present our value to the HR BP's there, to Sirona!
I'd suggest though that a 'mature' RPO company is not looking to take on the admin only part of the Recruitment function, but that you're right, that that's the area HR would probably feel most comfortable handing over, at least initially...
Indeed that senario is exactly the one to keep in mind in Japan, when it comes to building your business model!
All the best in business and life, for 2009!
Jason Ball
Jason[at] goodpeople.jp
www.goodpeople.jp
"Connecting GoodPeople"
http://www.linkedin.com/in/goodpeople
PS Ben: Here in Japan (and the Pony Ranch) I studied under Peter and the Morgan Methodology too! Know him well.
Posted by: Jason | January 08, 2009 at 12:33
Good post!
Posted by: Recruitment Outsourcing | August 19, 2009 at 14:11