Aligning the recruitment course of with the applicant monitoring system (ATS) creates the muse of constant hiring. Lamees Abourahma of RPOA spoke with Mike Foster, Account Director for Superior RPO, about recruitment course of outsourcing (RPO) options that assist employers create a constant recruiting course of.
The interview explored the importance of a constant recruiting course of for companies. Foster delved into the significance of configuring the ATS with the recruitment course of, the advantages of RPO options addressing scaling challenges, the added worth RPO suppliers carry to employers, and successful story showcasing the impact of RPO in overcoming hiring obstacles. This interview offers you a deeper understanding of how RPO suppliers enhance recruiting processes and drive organizational success. The next is an edited model of the second a part of this Expertise Chief Council interview.
RPOA: Why is aligning the recruitment course of with the applicant monitoring system (ATS) essential for an employer?
Mike Foster Usually, employers do not have an applicant monitoring system (ATS) that’s configured to their recruitment course of. We’ll see an ATS that is utterly completely different from the recruitment course of. Employers should take a look at and consider their recruitment course of from begin to end after which configure their ATS to match that course of. Alignment between the ATS and the recruitment course of is crucial as a result of you possibly can create recruitment studies and recruiter efficiencies from it. An ATS that’s not correctly configured can find yourself inflicting recruiters to resort to handbook reporting and processes that can straight have an effect on the pace, high quality, and consistency of your recruitment course of.
Q: What’s an RPO supplier’s function in aligning the ATS with the recruitment course of?
Foster: When an RPO supplier is available in, they’re going to first perceive the present recruiting course of and make sure the present ATS is configured to that course of. With alignment between the 2, the RPO supplier can then evaluate information and metrics on how this course of works whereas guaranteeing the recruitment operate is working as effectively as doable. From there they establish alternatives for enchancment, see the successes, and begin to make some enterprise selections primarily based on that information.
RPOA: RPO options align the ATS with the recruitment course of, providing substantial advantages for addressing the challenges of scaling expertise acquisition.
Q: What are the advantages of utilizing RPO to unravel the issues of scaling expertise acquisition?
Foster: Scaling expertise acquisition entails challenges comparable to predicting headcount wants and managing fluctuations in hiring demand. These fluctuations have a huge impact on inside TA groups.
Partnering with an RPO can take away the burden of regularly right-sizing an inside TA workforce. As a substitute of including recruiters (headcount) to fulfill a hiring spike after which retaining these overhead prices when demand cools or decreasing the headcount, an RPO associate supplies the recruitment sources wanted for the mandatory time interval.
One other state of affairs might be an organization’s want to rent a sure ability set at scale and the inner TA workforce doesn’t have expertise recruiting these sorts of candidates. An RPO supplier can complement an inside TA workforce by taking over the recruiting for simply these roles.
RPO corporations even have assist mechanisms for his or her recruiters which many corporations can not afford to construct for an inside TA workforce. Oftentimes a single recruiter is accountable for dealing with all features of the method. There are lots of administrative duties and behind-the-scenes work concerned in recruiting, and it’s exhausting for a single individual to be an skilled in all features of the recruiting course of. Many RPOs have devoted groups of those who deal with duties comparable to sourcing candidates, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, and increasing provide letters.
RPOs additionally prioritize ongoing coaching and improvement alternatives for his or her recruiters to make sure they’re staying present with the newest developments and developments associated to attracting, partaking with and hiring expertise.
In-house expertise acquisition groups are sometimes tasked with many priorities exterior of recruiting, and partnering with an RPO supplier can allow them to scale and stability all the weather of the recruitment course of.
Q: How do RPO options carry added worth to employers?
Foster: RPO suppliers carry worth and experience above and past offering conventional recruitment assist. For instance, there are various new synthetic intelligence instruments in the marketplace. Now we have a workforce that evaluates all of them to take a look at their effectiveness and decide the place they will greatest improve the recruiting course of. That is one thing that many inside TA groups don’t have the bandwidth to do.
Many RPO suppliers even have experience in recruitment advertising, promoting, and posting methods. There’s an artwork and science to posting utilizing synthetic intelligence and digital advertising. Not can corporations assume, “I’ll purchase 30 Monster postings, and that’ll be good.” Recruiters may be extremely efficient utilizing these techniques in the event that they perceive the artwork and science behind them.
RPO provides superior recruitment instruments and applied sciences that may considerably improve the effectiveness of the recruiting course of. However these instruments are costly and plenty of corporations don’t know which of them to put money into or methods to get probably the most out of them. When requisition masses come down, the primary issues eradicated are the instruments and the promoting, and unexpectedly, recruiters aren’t efficient. Employers then say, “Why aren’t my recruiters efficient?” Effectively, for those who put your recruiters ready to achieve success and provides them the instruments they want, they are going to be profitable. Why pay for a 12-month license for a device you solely want to make use of for six months? Working with an RPO associate eliminates the necessity for employers to buy sure recruitment instruments and applied sciences themselves as they’re constructed into the RPO engagement.
Q: Are you able to share an instance of how your RPO options helped employers overcome hiring challenges?
Foster: We had a mid-size shopper with two or three recruiters and a backlog of 70 openings. They may not sustain with turnover and the extra requisitions concurrently. With minimal information and metrics, they estimated their time-to-fill at between 3-6 months. They had been hiring anyone they might get by the method, after which that individual ended up turning over shortly.
As we evaluated their recruitment course of we shortly discovered that the bottleneck was with the hiring supervisor interview estage. Many positions required 6-7 rounds of interviews which took as much as 4-6 weeks to finish. This was inflicting prime candidates to drop out of the method and meant recruiters needed to begin over ceaselessly.
We additionally recognized that that they had no step or statuses of their ATS to trace progress. A candidate would apply and sit on the identical standing from the second they entered the ATS till it was time for a proposal. When requested a few typical interview-to-hire ratio, the shopper did not have any of that data.
We really useful a best-in-class recruitment course of that targeted on solely together with choice makers within the recruitment course of. This meant the shopper solely wanted 2 rounds of interviews which might be accomplished in 1-2 weeks. We additionally correctly configured their ATS to align with the brand new recruitment course of to assist enhance recruiter and reporting efficiencies.
As soon as the shopper agreed to our proposed recruitment course of we documented it and constructed course of maps to visualise our plan. From there we went into implementation mode to place this plan into place shortly.
It has been a 12 months since we applied the brand new course of and we’ve improved their time-to-fill to 40 days for exempt-level roles. Moreover, they’ve sturdy recruitment studies that roll-up to senior management to assist make impactful enterprise selections.
In Conclusion
Aligning an optimized recruitment course of with an ATS cultivates constant hiring. RPO suppliers are pivotal in buidling constant recruiting processes and driving organizational success by their experience, superior instruments, and flexibility to various trade wants. Constant hiring profoundly results companies’ total success and sustainability in right this moment’s unstable and aggressive market.
We encourage you to learn half one in all our interview with Mike Foster for insights into RPO enhancing the standard of rent.
