In This Turbulent Talent Market, What Are The Benefits of Outsourced Recruitment?

With the recruitment market going through a challenging period, is it now a good time to seriously consider outsourced recruitment…with a difference?

Let’s cut to the chase here. Recruitment is tough right now. And that’s mainly because it keeps changing. No sooner do companies get on top of their hiring plans and strategies than candidate behaviour changes or there’s a downturn and they need to reprioritise. (Or the world shuts down again and they need to pivot.)

Considering people are the most important part of any business, it’s not an ideal situation to be in. Many teams are still bouncing back or trying to regain their competitive edge after the effects of 2020/21. They just don’t have the capacity to to keep up with the changes and challenges needed for a recruiting process in today’s market.

Talent Acquisition Teams are coming to us saying things like: 

In short, there’s a lot going on in a short period of time and not enough people or expertise to do it. 

Candidates Want to be Wooed

One of the biggest issues companies are coming across right now is that candidates’ expectations are growing. They want more flexibility, more freedom and they want their employers to stand for something.

At a recent HR and TA Leaders Forum we held, Aktana’s Kate Terrell said:
“When I started my career work was work, social was social. Our talent now want us to take a stand on social issues. That’s a really important needle for a company to thread. We need to give people a sense of belonging.”

More and Better Engagement

In addition to that, the best talent want more engagement. Contacting them at each stage of the recruitment process is no longer enough. They want to be continually updated and they want recruitment processes to take much less time. Some of our clients are reporting that their time to hire has halved over the last few years, mainly driven by candidates being in multiple processes or being counter-offered more often.

Quality Candidates Are Thin on The Ground

Despite the growing expectations of candidates, the truth is, there is still the age-old issue of a lack of quality candidates – especially for specialised or niche roles. 

That means talent acquisition teams are spending more time searching for top talent that fits their needs, rather than just accepting applications. More time searching means they’re spending less time doing other important parts of their role like talent development, backfilling plans, and and internal mobility strategy.

Tech Shortages

Add the fact that a lot of businesses don’t have the necessary tech to do deep searches and it’s all seeming just a bit too challenging for many.

After all, recruitment is becoming increasingly like sales where multiple touchpoints are required to even get a candidate to speak to you. That kind of indepth engagement requires various tools, some of which are prohibitively expensive, and businesses don’t have the resources to maintain a talent pipeline.

Enter Outsourced Recruitment

Mention outsourcing or recruitment process outsourcing to many companies and they baulk. RPO providers are often associated with high costs, long contracts, and inflexibility.

But RPO solutions don’t have to be like that.

New Problems

At Solutions Driven, we’ve typically worked on business critical or niche roles, requiring less than 10 positions to be filled. However, a couple of years ago, our clients started coming to us with the issues listed above, saying that they needed more help.

Shutdowns had affected their teams hugely. They either couldn’t hire recruiters to recruit, or they didn’t want to grow their team right now but needed more capacity for their talent acquisition process.

A Different Kind of Embedded Recruitment

It was then we realised the recruitment market needed another kind of recruitment process outsourcing solution. They needed an option that:

• Was flexible enough that their talent acquisition teams didn’t feel hemmed in, while operating in a volatile business world

• Could offer them various types of recruiters who could slot into their team

• Didn’t just give them the first recruiters available, but matched them people with the skills and qualifications needed

• Followed specific recruitment processes that guaranteed accountability

• Used data and intelligence to secure results

So, taking all the knowledge of the last two decades, we created SD Embedded. An embedded recruitment option that did all of the above.

SD Embedded

So, taking all the knowledge of the last two decades, we created SD Embedded. An embedded recruitment option that did all of the above – unlike many of the recruitment process outsourcing options on the market.

It was our intention to create a flexible solution that worked perfectly for every internal talent acquisition team and helped solve the problems caused by the current state of the recruitment market. Not another RPO provider, built on principles from 10 years ago. Instead, using future proof processes bespoke to each client’s business goals.

And we think we’ve done that.

Don’t believe us?

We’ve collated our expertise and written an ebook, focussed on how embedded recruitment can solve the issues talent acquisition is facing in the current market.

Conversations with clients have changed recently. Even in traditional businesses where they have never considered outsourcing recruitment, they’re finding that they just can’t keep up with changes in the market.

Conversations with clients have changed recently. Even in traditional businesses where they have never considered outsourcing recruitment, they’re finding that they just can’t keep up with changes in the market.

The Market is Challenging

At a recent HR and TA round table, our participants spoke of various challenges, including finding it difficult to complete workforce planning, engaging candidates, coping with employee attrition, and much more.

In fact, 58% cited market volatility as the biggest change in the market.

Hiring Manager Alignment in recruitment processes

While talent acquisition professionals are aware of these challenges, many managers are not. 33% of talent professionals said that hiring managers not realising how much the market has changed was currently their main challenge.

That means aligning teams on how to hire the right talent throughout a hiring process is becoming a bigger challenge.

Requirement Misalignment

We’ve encountered many situations where the hiring manager will come armed with a list of requirements and a salary range that would have been completely possible 3-4 years ago. But because of their lack of scope to keep up with the hiring market, they’re not aware the salary range and skills no longer match up.

Another common issue is hiring managers or hiring teams being unaware of how quickly a recruitment process needs to move now. With every hiring process being sped up by counter-offers and candidates being in multiple hiring processes, they often lose candidates by not moving quickly enough on top talent.

Which Is Where An External Provider Comes In

One of the best ways to align your team across the recruitment lifecycle, is bringing in a team who can help streamline internal recruiting processes.

Not only can an embedded partner help your outsource recruitment, they can also help align your team and qualify exactly what you require.

When we start a new process, we usually kick things off by speaking to all the major stakeholders. Those initial calls often reveal differences in expectations across the business.

A Non-Partisan View

Having an outside partner with knowledge in recruitment process outsourcing can give a non-biased view of your whole process and strategy, ironing out issues and streamlining a strategy. Without internal bias, an external partner gets different functions and departments on the same side, providing context to the whole market.

And, while we might not want it to be like this, your team will often listen to an outsider they see as an expert, more than they will someone they know…

Want to find out more about SD Embedded and the benefits of outsourcing recruitment, particularly in a market that’s changing constantly? Download our Embedded Recruitment Book.