Talent Acquisition professionals are misunderstood. Generally, recruiters are rebellious. We color outside the lines and come and go when we please. Often times, this freedom is misinterpreted. Our work can be considered soft, simple, easy. But frankly, we never stop recruiting. We work at night and on weekends and there is science behind the mysterious, magical quality of our work.
 
We often hear things like, “I don’t know how you do it, but can you get me another one just like Mary (or John or whomever).” It is this mystery and ambiguity that makes our work seem more like art than true science. I have managed more than 1,000 recruiters in my career and I can share from experience that only a few are born to recruit. Those that are born with it have some common traits. They are naturally curious, they care about people and they have the energy of the “Energizer Bunny”. They go, go, go 24/7 and they move mountains for their customers. They make it look easy, when it is not. This work ethic, curiosity and personality can get you started but it takes great science to be a good recruiter.
 
The trouble with the science of recruiting is that there is not one standard formula. When it comes to hiring, our clients respect education and certifications. There are CPA’s, MBA’s, RN’s, EE’s… you name it, these certifications and degrees are a symbol of excellence in a particular field. But how do you know when a recruiter has reached a certain level? That they know, understand and excel in their field? For recruiters, it is not as cut and dry. We learn by doing and sometimes we are lucky to have a good mentor show us the way. We can take some course work or get an Internet certification, but we do not have certifications that translate. Have you heard of CPC or CTS? Probably not. I have had both, but now they mean nothing.
 
All we do is run Internet searches or review our databases. Right? This misunderstanding of our profession means we aren’t typically viewed with strategic importance. We are rock stars for a year. We are homeless the next. Our expertise is necessary during certain times of a business cycle like growth, acquisition, new product or business unit launches. But we have to be creative with our skills to show our value in down times of the business cycle.
 
Our customers see outcomes (the people we hire, the requisitions that aren’t filled) not process. They don’t care about things like sourcing or behavioral based interviews because they need what they need when they need it. But take a minute to think about the people on your team. Would you hire them if it were up to you? How would you find the right people to build the best team? With enough thought I think you’d agree that people are really the science behind the strategy — and good recruiters are the science behind it all.
 

A few weeks ago I discussed the maturing of the recruitment outsourcing industry and the role it can play in your business. RPO can be a terrific way to address the complexity and volatility that most companies experience today when dealing with overall recruitment strategy. But what is it that RPO providers are selling and what are companies buying?
 
To start, the RPO industry promised reductions in the costs of hiring. Today companies expect much more, such as improvements in compliance or more quality talent for your business. Beyond these expectations, I find that more and more of our clients are looking to find a staffing partner that tells them how to implement and dictates the recruitment solution. Unfortunately, too much is operated by the recruitment partner’s way of doing things and there is too little customization. Sure, customers want a global solution, but not if they lose control and input. We’d like to think our staffing partner creates a solution for our problem by starting with a blank sheet of paper, right? If we are Nabisco we don’t want a solution built for Kraft. No, we want our own.
 
The RPO industry builds best of breed recruitment processes. Providers have built the strongest recruitment outsourcing product they could with the latest in technology and the best recruitment talent that does the proper task at the right time with the right price. All RPO providers run their recruitment process a little differently but with the same goal – on time, in budget delivery of recruitment services. But getting to know your business, culture, and unique business needs are often not part of the solution. Custom built RPO programs? Unusual. CBI Group calls this starting with a “blank sheet of paper.” How often does this happen? Almost never.
 
Over time, most industry products become very similar as the industry gets commoditized. The difference comes down to providers applying their expertise in a unique and custom way for their customers. In the quest to sell more, we lose something in transition. I don’t brag very well but I was in this game before the industry had an acronym – or even the name. RPO started with great recruitment talent, excel spreadsheets and strong customer relationships. My customer relationships let me in on their staffing challenges and they allowed my company to innovate and try new things. We built a company on that very premise – custom recruitment solutions.
 
The industry finds itself at another turning point. One-size-fits-all is, well, fitting only for the customer that wants one-size-fits-all. But as the song says the times they are a-changing. I see requests for partial RPO. Partial meaning outsourcing one skill set that is critical to business success or a few steps in the recruitment process to improve organizational capability. Customers may like new and shiny objects, but they come back for results. Frankly, we find that what most customers want are old fashioned things; flexibility, relationships, and a partner that will both listen and respond. Not one-size-fits-all solutions.
 
Customers want to know that you differentiate in the right areas. So, if you sell RPO – do you sell best of breed or Blank Sheet of Paper? And if you are looking for a staffing partner – what are you looking for? A custom solution or the best in breed option?
 

My blog really covers a multitude of topics… leadership, culture, sales & marketing and talent acquisition. But one area I do not often write about is the industry I work in. My company, CBI Group, is in the recruitment solutions business; the staffing industry. To most, this is the land of headhunters and images of the old Kelly Girl temporary. When I was starting out at Placers, a temporary agency, I was blessed to work for a pioneer in the industry, a staffing industry Hall of Famer. As I was cutting my teeth learning to sell, lead and build a culture, Placers was building a reputation for doing new things in the world of staffing. The company had a knack for doing two things well: establishing close relationships and building trust. These two things put us in the room with customers to hear and discuss their problems, opportunities and unique challenges.
 
After twenty years, first at Placers and now at CBI Group, we have solved enough recruitment problems to find that there tend to be core problems. As these problems change, we adapt our business units to solve those problems. Feedback from our customers put us in the recruitment outsourcing business. And as our products have evolved, an entire Recruitment Process Industry has emerged and flourished. Recruitment outsourcing is that misunderstood field full of acronyms and phrases like MSP, VOP, Managed Staffing, project staffing, BPO and RPO, just to name a few. This new industry is saturating the marketplace and people are asking, “What is RPO? And how do I know if my business could benefit from it?”
 
Here is the industry definition of Recruitment Process Outsourcing, or RPO:

“When a provider acts as a company’s internal recruitment function for a portion or all of its jobs. RPO providers manage the entire recruiting/hiring process from job profiling through the onboarding of the new hire, including staff, technology, method and reporting. A properly managed RPO will improve a company’s time to hire, increase the quality of the candidate pool, provide verifiable metrics, reduce cost and improve governmental compliance.”

This definition is good but I think it requires the addition of some fundamental thinking. Staffing services can truly augment your company efforts. They complement your recruiters or your managers with the effort of putting the right staff in place. Working with a temporary or search firm are exactly that. RPO, however, is a managed service. An RPO firm takes on the recruiting process, technology and owns the outcomes. The last part is crucial. Outcomes are the costs and time commitments that it takes to get the recruitment work accomplished as well as the ownership of making recruitment better in your business.
 
If you’re thinking, “should I be looking at a managed staffing solution?” – a good place to begin is to answer three “simple” questions:

1. Is your recruitment process working?

2. Are you maximizing the productivity gains of your or someone else’s technology for recruitment?

3. Are you getting recruitment results that fit your goals and strategy?

I am very curious about the outsourced recruitment trends that will unfold in 2011 and I’d love to hear what you think too. Send your links, articles and comments to me via the email on the CBI Group contact page.