The Future Is Now

With technology moving into the RPO space at an ever faster rate, HRM asked representatives from the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association to share their thought on where we are and where we’re going.

“Individuals are predicted to change jobs 10 to 14 times before the age of 38”
-US Department of Labor

The Foundation: building on a solid base

Kim Davis: To date, technology has made a positive impact by lowering time to hire, lowering cost per hire, providing accurate and relevant reporting data, and improving the candidate experience. In light of these technology benefits, the rate of RPO adoption has accelerated – be it full lifecycle enterprise RPO or discrete RPO services such as research, sourcing and screening. One specific area where technology has made an impact is on-boarding; automating and digitizing a process that is largely manual and paper-based, not only helps organizations save millions of dollars, but also ensures records are accurate and that new hires become productive much more quickly.

Anne Nimke: We have witnessed great innovation with recruitment technology and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Many recruiters may not remember the day when candidate resumes were mailed or faxed and had to be “batched and scanned” into an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS. How about when your candidates couldn’t be accessed remotely because the ATS was on your mainframe? Most technology is now built and sold in an ASP or SaaS platform easily accessible through the Internet anytime, anywhere. Even the simplest ATS offers many great, core features for easily communicating with candidates. These include auto-interview scheduling, job agent/notifications for candidates, and auto-email communication based on status changes.

John Younger: Recruiting is essentially about relationships, and technology’s transformative power is only beginning to take shape as an enabler for enhancing connections between individuals. Traditionally, recruiting was centered only around the company and its Applicant Tracking System – a need is identified, recruiters find someone, the hire is made and it’s all tracked in the system. Even with today’s technology, 94% of all applicants never hear back about the status of their application and only 43% of hiring managers rate their recruiting support as acceptable or better (staffing.org). Despite the technological advances in recruiting over the last 30 years, the average recruiter’s productivity remains unchanged at supporting an average of 4 to 18 unique full-time jobs simultaneously.

The technological foundation for the recruiting industry must think about applicants as people first, not as transactions. Individuals are predicted to change jobs 10 to 14 times before the age of 38 (US Dept of Labor). The future of recruitment related technology and delivery models will rise above the individual company needs and address the needs of the other key stakeholders over time with equal or greater emphasis. Technology is driving transparency, and future recruiting technologies will recognize that applicants may also be hiring managers, consumers of that company’s product or service, shareholders, future hires and referral sources.

The present: best of breed solutions

Kim Davis: Today’s best of breed RPO solutions work on the front-end to develop a structure that empowers organizations to embrace technology. Organizations streamline technology implementations through business rules. As a result, a well written statement of work is imperative; without a properly articulated, mutually agreed-to scope, RPO technology implementation can become unwieldy. Getting early buy-in from the IT department is also a critical success factor. Finally, a good governance model is required. More often than not, adjustments will need to be made during implementation. By starting with a well thought-through process, business partners can handle change orders with relative ease and minimal disruption.

Anne Nimke: Today’s RPO solutions are built to improve the quality of the recruitment process through process efficiency, cost effectiveness, and improved candidate and hiring manager experience. None of this is possible without technology. It touches every candidate and hiring manager, and is a critically important for recruiters. The ATS that is utilized for candidate and requisition management is the platform on which all relevant information is stored. However, there are many other “technology touch points” that become integrated into the RPO solution including: job posting, database searching, interview scheduling and pre- and post-hire selection testing. Mobilizing these tools and integrating them to create a seamless high-tech/high-touch process is the ultimate value of a high performance RPO solution.

The technology available to find and communicate with candidates has also become more sophisticated and is core to both active and passive candidate recruiting. This includes: job posting distribution (like Viper and eQuest); posting aggregators (including SimplyHired and InDeed); SEO (search engine optimization) offered by Jobs2Web, and candidate search and marketing technology like AIRS SourcePoint. These types of technology aids are in the portfolio of any proactive recruiting department and RPO provider. Most integrate easily into many standard ATS’s. I f they aren’t integrated , then a download/upload or import/export is available to connect the technology.

John Younger: The Internet has transformed the recruiting industry, allowing hiring managers and people seeking work to connect outside the typical recruiting mechanisms like Linkedin. Thanks to the ascent of online candidate forums, social networking sites, tracking and reporting, the huge barrier of legacy businesses adopting technology has been removed. A few select technologies ride above all the others, effectively driving a best practice approach that makes even relatively junior recruiters produce as if they were 20 year recruiting veterans. This new technology will be a “relationship management system” and will establish relationships with the potential candidates over time, and maintain that relationship with or without the individual being hired.

The future is now

Kim Davis: The DaVinci Code of recruitment technology will provide a way for employers and candidates seeking employment to connect for “moments of truth” – times when either side needs the other – but also to stay connected permanently. Today recruitment, and the technology that supports it, is largely an episodic activity with a few exciting exceptions, but tomorrow’s recruitment technology will make talent acquisition and management a 360 degree activity. It will enable true social recruiting, and geo-sourcing skills and capabilities.

Anne Nimke: The marketplace is moving toward a comprehensive technology solution that creates a one-stop-shop for talent acquisition where integration is on one platform. HR management technology consolidation goes beyond talent acquisition to encompass a full suite of services for talent management that are available to the employee and manager on a self service basis. These include workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management, learning management, payroll, and succession planning.

John Younger: Thanks to technology, recruiters can focus more on those tasks that are the “art” of recruiting while the bulk of routine best practices are completely managed by the technology. The biggest difference of tomorrow’s technology will be the focus on adhering to the 10 Universal Hiring Best Practices for every job: being the path of least resistance for the hiring manager; treating every job as unique; driving referrals; ad apting to different job types (executive, technical, non-exempt, etc.); driving div ersity sourcing; giving everyone a genuinely fair and equal opportunity; tracking accurately; and maintaining confidentiality.

With the above in mind, the next wave of recruiting technology platforms will be transformative and place the candidate, not the company, at the center of the equation.

About RPOA

The Recruitment Processing Outsourcing Association (RPOA) is a special interest group of the Human Resources Outsourcing Association dedicated to providing research, data, and tools to enable the community of providers, buyers, and other stakeholders to make informed decisions related to the evaluation, purchase, implementation and management of recruitment process outsourcing.

RPOA Panel includes:
Kim Davis , is the SVP, Adecco RPO, the worldwide leader in HR services. He is a recognized thought leader on RPO and a pioneer in the industry. Kim was the founder of TalentTrack which was acquired by Adecco in 2007. He has more than 30 years of human resources experience and has authored several industry articles.

Anne Nimke is co-founder and executive consultant at Pinstripe, a leading human resources and recruitment outsourcing company. Nimke has 30 years of experience in human resources and staffing. A recognized leader in the RPO arena, Nimke is a seasoned veteran in the world of talent strategy and performance improvement.

John Younger is CEO and founder of Accolo, a leader in RPO for small and mid-sized companies. John’s passion to dramatically improve how people and jobs find each other is rooted in his deep understanding of technology, the recruitment process, and a core belief that everyone deserves courtesy and respect.