RPO Narrows the Skills Gap

 

While hiring managers have begun to see it, many haven’t yet…a market once flush with candidates and deep streams of talent is drying up.  The economy is on the better side of recovery, and much of the highly-skilled talent has already been snapped up.

Today, this skills gap is cited as one of the major obstacles to achieving business objectives for many HR leaders, as they now have to adapt to the post-recession landscape.

Not too long ago, a simple job posting to a career site would attract droves of candidates, allowing HR to selectively plod along in the hiring process—sometimes it would take months before the offer was made. Nevertheless, candidates always seemed to stay on the line. This high level of interest in a small amount of work allowed hiring managers to offer compensation packages that were not always the most competitive. But back then, it didn’t matter.

Fast forward to today.  The talent pools are drying up fast. Many hiring managers are in need of talent on-demand, but are still operating under the guidance of recession-era data. Organizations are ignoring or missing current supply and demand figures and, ultimately, losing out.

Many forward-thinking companies are now accessing talent to fuel growth without slowing down day-to-day operations.  How?  One way is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO).

RPO is a proactive approach that diminishes the workload of already-burdened HR managers by partnering with a provider who has ready-access to candidate pipelines. These providers also have access to a wide array of data analytics to assess the current market and offer competitive benefits.  All of this adds up to the rapid onboarding of candidates…before someone else does.

According to Aberdeen Group research, RPO has many quantified benefits, including:

  • 90% retention of first-year employees
  • 8% improvement in hiring manager satisfaction
  • 6% average in cost reductions
  • 10% improvement in time-to-hire

In the end, there are a lot of strategies for HR leaders, but in the current candidate-driven job market, RPO is among the fastest growing. Year-over-year, RPO usage is expected to grow an average of 15.4%.  HR’s workload isn’t decreasing, but the talent supply is. Thus, RPO is on the rise.