The Undercover Recruiter

the future of recruitment in space A few months ago I met a prospective client who is the recruitment manager for a major international consumer goods company. Naturally talk turned, as I’d hoped, to how, when and who they used as third-party recruitment agents? The answer did not make me feel well.

In short the use of agents had over the last two years fallen off the end of a cliff. Not because of a downturn in company fortunes (far from it – they’re going great guns) but because of a strategy to employ a skilled in-house recruitment team and furnish them with the right new media tools and recruitment software. The net result of all three of these steps (a triumvirate of in-house team, new media tools, and recruitment software) was that the need to rely upon an external recruiter to provide talent had simply faded away.

More and more often I am hearing, reading and seeing similar storylines develop amongst the kinds of companies that I would ordinarily view as prospective clients. Luckily to date I’ve not had any of my current client base take me to one side and whisper apologetically: “Look Rob, it’s not you, it’s us … we’ve moved on and, well, the thing is … we think you should too”. But the day may well come and if it does it won’t surprise me.

So what’s a third-party recruiter to do? Here’s a survival guide and field notes for those that want to carry on succeeding at being recruiters:

Specialise: Choose a niche that you can call your own and be the go-to-guy/girl when an employer needs this specialist ingredient. The trick here is to be specialist enough so that your industry knowledge is valued and hard to replicate but not so specialist that the chances to actually do some work are few and far between.
Diversify: Sounds counterintuitive given what I have written above but maybe you should look at offering other types of services or seeking supplementary income streams? Can you provide training services to other recruiters for instance? Or make some money from blogging or presenting? How about CV rewriting for one-fees? Just some quick suggestions to give you a picture of what else you could do. Get your thinking cap on.
SMEs: In my experience often recruiters will gravitate towards the bigger fish in the pond – more vacancies, higher salaries, slicker processes, kudos etc. However, it’s these larger companies that have moved towards doing it for themselves as tools and strategies have got better. Why not turn your attention to the SMEs? You’ll need more of them as they won’t recruit often but they are more likely to buy-in a recruitment service as and when they need it rather than carry an in-situ team through lean times and good.
Join a Big Un: On this point I’m taking a bit of a punt but I think that in general that big companies like dealing with big companies and will continue to do so ad infinitum. So although some hiring companies will take recruitment in-house others will seek to outsource lock, stock and barrel in an RPO deal and focus instead on their core business.
If you can’t beat them, join them: If you’re a good recruiter and you know your market why not join your client’s payroll as a member of their recruitment team? For some this transition will be fairly easy, others less so.

Reading my blog back I’m a bit concerned that I might be appearing to be sound the death knell of the third-party recruitment industry. Let’s be clear – I’m not. The industry continues to do well (particularly I hear in sectors where skills shortages create a fertile market for recruiters; e.g. engineering, scientific) and as the economy recovers I’m sure agents will thrive as job markets bounce back.

The caveat is that more than ever clients will be asking for demonstrable value and not just CVs raked off job boards or search maps copied from Linkedin. I welcome such developments as ultimately I expect greater competition and more empowered clients will lead to improvements in the industry, a raising of the bar and a filtration of the less (ahem) desirable practitioners.

Anyone who hasn’t noticed the big changes that have taken place so far within hiring companies and the quickening development of internet, mobile and software tools that enable these companies to do it for themselves are failing to identify the Os & Ts in their most recent SWOT analysis. Good luck with that.

photo by: HJ Media Studios

Robert Wright

Robert Wright is a Soft Southerner hiding in the North who likes to hire interesting people for interesting companies. Find him on Linkedin or follow his Twitter account @robmwright.

RPO recruitment process outsourcing

To RPO or not to RPO? (Recruitment Process Outsourcing that means of course.)

Frankly, that headline scans better when I’m writing about TUPE, but I’ll leave that for my ER blog.

About three years ago, I headed back into the world of recruitment. The recruitment team at the organisation in question was outsourced and the first thing that I did in my new role was in-source it back again. Well, not literally the first thing, I had a cup of tea and thought it over. But it was the best decision I could have made.

The rule of three

When it comes to outsourcing in general, I am a big believer in the rule of three. You should only outsource in one of the following three circumstances:

1. Someone else can do it significantly better or significantly cheaper
2. It’s just not core
3. It’s broken and you don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to fixing it

On the first point, the word significantly, is well, significant. Outsourcing isn’t that straightforward. You have TUPE to consider for a start if you currently undertake the activity yourself. Added to this an additional supplier relationship to manage, not least the thorny issue of deciding who is the best supplier in the first place. That’s why if you are only saving a fiver I’d question whether it is the right thing to do.

If you genuinely don’t have the internal knowledge, skills or experience to make improvements then consider outsourcing, but you need to be totally clear on the business benefits that the outsource arrangement is going to deliver before starting down this path, as there is guarantee of success, just a set of contractual KPIs and SLAs.

Why not recruitment?

It’s a personal decision for every company whether outsourcing is right for them. I just believe it’s hard for any business serious about attracting the best talent for their organisation to say that recruitment isn’t a core business activity.

If you outsource recruitment you are trusting a third party with your brand. They also have a vested interest in retaining your business which doesn’t necessarily mean they are focused on the things that matter to you.

Can a third party really understand your business as well as you do? Can they help you find the elusive ‘culture fit’ if they are not part of your culture? To make sure that they can, those outsourced individuals providing your recruitment service will need to be so imbedded within your organisation, that they might as well be working for your organisation.

I do think that there are aspects of recruitment that aren’t necessarily core, and can and should be outsourced. A good example is the recruitment might be temps or contractors, depending on your business model. I have outsourced this and jolly well it works too. This ticks point number two on my rule of three list; it’s not core. I believe that an in-house recruitment team can add more value focusing on hiring people who will be with us for the long term rather than on shorter term requirements, so it makes sense to outsource these requirements.

There can be benefits to an RPO arrangement. Some claim it can save you money, although this isn’t my own experience. If your agreement is sufficiently flexible you can make some of your fixed costs variable if you have fluctuating recruitment volume. And…….. that’s my full list.

I know some people won’t agree with these views. They think that the employer brand / core argument is trite. Ultimately it depends on your business model. If I worked in a high turnover, high volume environment then maybe I would consider RPO again. But right now, the only people that I want to recruit for us, is us.

photo by: Victor1558

Gemma Reucroft

Gemma Reucroft is a HR professional specialising in recruitment and employee relations, with a passion for coaching. She tweets as @HR_Gem.

How Agencies Can Survive the Future of Recruitment

Robert Wright

To RPO or Not to RPO?

The rule of three

Why not recruitment?

Gemma Reucroft