The TAP - the newsletter for Talent Acquisition Professionals

The Partnering Edition

It’s National Recruitment Partnering Week (#NationalRecruitmentPartneringWeek )

Every day this week I’ll be posting on this topic because using partners (not only agencies) is essential to a growing company's recruitment strategy, yet it's often not done well.

Internal Recruitment teams can’t do everything, and shouldn’t try to. Getting external help from suppliers can be fast, targeted and yes, cost-effective.?

Agencies can’t provide everything, and shouldn’t try to. Long-term relationships with internal Recruiters should be your goal, not short-term role-filling or maximising fees.

Credits: Many thanks to the following people for sharing input this month: Paul Church , James Hunt , Reece Batchelor , Alan Hines-O'Callaghan , Yoshi Danily , ?? Michael T. .

Types of recruitment suppliers

Here is the use case: Your working within, or leading a TA team. The business informs you of a new plan to push the business forward. You need to increase hiring volume and velocity.

Option One: Grow your team internally

Growing your internal talent team is naturally the first option because you’re guaranteed a fixed, forecastable cost (salary + tools/licenses per team member), you keep the knowledge within the business and in theory maintain a stronger feeling for the culture of the business BUT …

• As with any hire, it takes time to hire the right Recruiters internally, and the business needs to grow - now!
• With the exception of really large companies, hiring volumes go up and down. You might not need a larger talent team long term.
• Hiring budgets have been established, timescales are tight so you MUST use all resources available to you to succeed.

Option Two: Classic (Contingent Search) Agencies

Recruitment agencies are hyper-focused on efficient processes and speed of delivery, which is perfect when you need results fast. There is no ramp-up time, as teams spend all their time operating in specialist markets building networks and their database. Sometimes as many as 4 people will work on your role (i.e. Lead, Consultant and two Resourcers). You get candidates ‘on tap’, which comes at a cost, with ‘success-only’ fees typically between 15–20% of hired candidates' base salary.?

The ‘typical’ Recruitment Consultant has changed as well, although the old school agencies still exist in their masses. Agency hiring has moved away from the one-dimensional telesales profile and focused more on relationship builders and true market specialists. The focus is on nurturing markets and providing insight that generates inbound enquiries, rather than pure outbound or chasing job postings. Yes, I still get about 10 a day too!

It’s also not uncommon for the best agencies to drop clients. If communications stop or CV to interview ratios drop, some Agencies will stop supplying. This is fair enough, no-one likes their time is being wasted.?

Engagement tips:

• Establish effective comms from the off. Taking longer over role qualifications, onboarding calls and calls when there are changes all save time in the long run and give the agency the ability to represent the business in the best way.
• Most agencies are very happy to sign your terms. Create your own hiring terms and conditions, present them to agencies that want to work with you and never negotiate terms again!

Option Three: Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

The RPO vendor acts as an extension of the client's HR or talent acquisition department and typically takes over some or all of the recruitment on their behalf. Costs are typically based on an overall project fee, typically based on the delivery of a specific (large) number of heads with various payments due at different project milestones. The specific services provided can vary depending on the scope of the project but typically involve the full cycle of:?

• Attraction, Marketing & Branding
• Sourcing & screening
• Offer management and documentation
• Onboarding?

The benefits of RPO can include increased efficiency, reduced recruitment costs (per hire), provision of specialist Recruiters and support staff, and improved hiring consistency but the key driver is rapid scalability.?RPO is not a quick or immediate solution (at least not with larger projects). The partner selection process is followed by scoping and contract negotiations, integration of systems, onboarding and alignment, and the establishment of project teams and communication channels all before the go-live date.

Engagement tips:

• Start small. Run a pilot to establish the processes, the most effective relationship between RPO and client teams and to highlight all the problems and pain points to address ahead of the full rollout.
• If you have a particularly large project, ask for guarantees around capacity as some providers have difficulties in scaling their services in a short amount of time.

Option Four: Embedded Talent Partners

Embedded talent is the newest trend amongst recruitment providers. Although it's actually been around for a long time, it's only taken off in recent years most notably with the success of Talentful in 2015. Talent Partners work dedicated to one client at a time, onsite (pre-COVID) and instead of charging a fee for every hire, with the embedded model you pay a monthly fee/retainer to cover each consultant working on your account, which can be roughly calculated as 50% less than hiring from agencies. The monthly fee is all you pay, no matter how many hires are made, and they come equipped with their own licensed tools (ATS, Linkedin Pro Licenses, sourcing platforms, etc) ??.

Embedded Talent Partners aim to be an authentic extension of your business, a bolt-on to the Talent team who work in a client-led, non-transactional, non-placement-based relationship. As they are effectively part of your team, there is nowhere to hide if things don't go to plan, providing a very consultative approach to hiring.

Claimed benefits over other models include improved candidate experience, enhanced cultural fit and alignment as the consultants interact with hiring managers just as internal Recruiters would.

How to choose an embedded partner:

• Ask about track record, fill and acceptance rates, average time to hire rates for different roles and ask for references from past clients.?
• Ask if they have their own consultants ready and not looking to hire in order to fulfil your project. This is not the end of the world, but you want a consultant with experience of this working model and who has been trained to the agency's high standards.

Engagement tips:

• Embrace the new team as a true business partner who shares the same success metrics as you, even put them through your induction!
• Like internal hires, do not expect embedded consultants to be productive from day one. They will have a normal ramp-up period.
• Ensure monitoring, metrics and performance are tracked from the beginning
• Ensure all candidates generated are stored on your own database and you own them

Wrap-up

Whichever route you go, you’ll likely need internal Recruiters as well. Having someone working alongside, and coordinating suppliers will help culture alignment and provide continuity once the hiring is done and the suppliers have left. It also helps to have someone that ‘speaks their language’ and can set up relevant metrics for progress reporting.

Keep an eye out for tomorrow's edition, which is relevant for internal and Agency Recruiters: Recruitment Partnering Tips!

The TAP was created by Tony Payne, Head of Talent at Travtus and HR tech designer. Hit the?SUBSCRIBE BUTTON if you're interested in learning, sharing and hearing more from the world of Recruiting.