Every employer knows that recruitment can be a laborious, costly and sometimes frustrating enterprise. That is why many turn to recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services implementing services such as Hybrid RPO, putting the heavy lifting that talent acquisition can require in the hands of third-party operators.
The usual benefits of outsourcing apply – specialist outfits can often achieve better results for lower costs, it frees up your time to focus on core areas of your business and you get access to skills and knowledge that you don’t have in house.
Increasingly, however, we are seeing what is referred to as a hybrid RPO approach – hiring external parties to take charge of some parts of the recruitment process, but keeping other responsibilities within their own internal HR team.
There are several reasons why this approach is becoming more and more popular. Here are some of the key benefits.
Key Benefits of Hybrid RPO
Adapt your recruitment resources
A hybrid RPO approach allows you to capitalise on the strengths of both your own HR team and an external recruitment specialist. You might be in a position, say, where you have a key senior, strategic or technical appointment to make but you are also in the midst of recruiting for a number of positions further down the organisation, which is taking up a lot of your HR department’s time.
It would make sense in this situation to bring in a third party to handle the general recruitment while your own HR professionals apply their insider knowledge of the company to finding the right fit for the more senior position. Or, you could hire a technical recruitment specialist to use their candidate sourcing capabilities to identify and attract someone with the very specific skill sets you need, leaving your in-house team with day-to-day recruitment.
Both are examples of hybrid RPO, both options demonstrate the flexibility afforded by expanding and adapting the recruitment resources available to you.
Add to your in-house skills
As alluded to above, external RPO providers can deliver very specific skills and capabilities beyond what you would normally expect from an in-house team. Sector and role-specific specialists use extensive contacts and dedicated resources to build comprehensive databases of individuals over time which they draw on to identify and narrow down candidates. They might specialise in particular areas such as graduate or apprentice recruitment or have specific skills in things like talent mapping. All of this means they can provide skills and knowledge that add value to the recruitment process.
Future proof your recruitment strategies
As your business grows, your recruitment needs change. You might need to accelerate talent acquisition rapidly to make sure you have people in place to meet increased demand. You might need to refocus strategies to acquire people with skills in brand new areas. The flexibility of a hybrid RPO approach supports this. You can scale recruitment resources up or down as you wish by drawing on third-party services as and when you need them. Equally, you can draw on outside expertise to help find the best candidates to meet your needs however they change.
Improve insight into recruitment
RPO specialists like Omni frequently make use of sophisticated analytics and reporting tools. We invest in this technology because it helps us to drive excellence in what we do, it helps us to match the very best people to the right positions quickly and efficiently and it gives us hard evidence we can use to demonstrate our service levels to our clients. By adopting a hybrid RPO approach, employers get access to this advanced level of insight into their recruitment processes, giving them intelligence they can use to improve and optimise.
Cut down on costs, improve results
Ultimately, the combination of expanding your recruitment resources, your skills base and your access to robust data adds up to one essential fact – hybrid RPO can help you achieve more with less. With a larger, smarter, multidisciplinary team at your disposal, cost per hire falls while quality increases.
