This guest post was provided for us by Paul Malone, the director of Cloud RPO. Paul is experienced in building resourcing models that align our interests to the success of candidates and not just to placing them. He specialises in early growth companies within the SaaS and digital sector.So you’re a small business looking to do your recruitment more efficiently and effectively and you’ve identified that the use of a recruitment process outsourcing company could do that. What next? Once the decision has been made, there is a period after appointing your new RPO provider (following a competitive tendering process) when you will need to build a strong working relationship and establish a good way of working together. Here are some tips for making this work as smoothly and as quickly as possible.
1. Be Clear On Your Business Objectives
If your business has decided to use a recruitment process outsourcing company, then it is likely to have clear drivers for doing so. These can include a desire to remove fixed resource costs from within the business and transfer to a more flexible agency model, a need to recruit higher-quality staff in a more efficient and modern way or a requirement for greater compliance, for example. Make sure that your new RPO provider understands your business drivers so that they can deliver to your needs.
2. Build Up a Strong Dialogue
Regardless of whether your RPO is being contracted to deliver an element of the recruitment service or is taking on the entire outsourced function for your organisation, communication will be essential to ensure that the new relationship works as well as possible. Give your account manager plenty of available time, tell them about your business and give them lots of opportunities to learn about your culture, brand and business values. Ideally, your account manager will spend time in your business meeting with key people to understand their drivers for recruitment and gaining a real feel for your operation.
3. Listen to Your Provider
If you’ve taken on RPO services, you are paying for expert support in the particular field of HR – so listen to the experts and take their advice on board. An incredible number of clients pay for advice that they subsequently ignore or fail to implement.
4. Set Metrics and Review Progress
The easiest way to measure success is by having agreed deliverables at the start and then producing MI to check progress. Ask your RPO to measure their activity according to the pre-agreed criteria and then have regular review sessions to establish progress and check that everything is running as planned. A monthly review meeting can be very useful and give both parties a chance to discuss ideas, critical issues and means of further improving and refining the recruitment process to benefit the client.
Your new RPO provider understands your business drivers so that they can deliver to your needs. And you get the most out of the opportunities.