High-Volume Recruiting Problems Only RPOs Understand

By Aida Fazylova

Even the most experiences of talent acquisition pros struggle with the high-volume recruiting is challenging. It combines the common talent acquisition troubles of building the right recruiting strategy, maintaining employer branding values and providing a great candidate experience with additional unique struggles. Things like candidate management and understanding the specifics of roles can be hard to scale but hold just as much weight in reputation and engaging talent.

For companies who provide recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), these issues are magnified. Organizations depend on the work of RPO to find talent while supporting a positive brand with candidates. It falls on the RPO provider to ensure those expectations are met without causing any additional strain to the employer.

Treading Reputational Lines

One of the biggest concerns of working with an RPO is the connotations “outsourcing” brings about. Anyone in the field can attest to the various concerns and hesitations many people have with the word and the practice. RPO is not a shady business where companies hand over valuable business operations to complete strangers all to save a penny.

Instead, it’s inviting an expert into your recruitment program to improve talent acquisition strategies or create more efficient hiring processes or simply to provide temporary help in moments of large hiring initiatives. Bridging the misunderstandings is still a huge challenge for those who work in RPO. You have to prove you not only don’t uphold negative hiring habits but that you actually reinforce recruiting best practices.

That’s where high-volume recruiting can cause the most strain for RPOs. Internal talent acquisition teams can face struggles in presenting the right employer brand and culture to talent even when working within both. As an RPO, you are external working from the outside to understand the intricacies and provide an experience that is accurate and inviting.

Getting Immersed in Client Need

RPOs overcome those challenges by diving deep into a client’s need and expectations while observing the unique culture. A good RPO company will take in those elements and correlate them with best practices and the understanding that the right hire isn’t about meeting a long list of job reqs. Instead, it’s about seeing the employer as a living, breathing company who needs people who bring skills that are currently missing or will be necessary for future growth. Again, doing this at a high-volume scale is difficult for internal hiring teams, so it is multiplied for an RPO.

RPOs Depend on and Demand Good Tech

RPOs combine an overall solid understanding of talent acquisition as a practice with an expertise in immersing themselves within an organization. The RPO process demands and thrives on research and in-depth analysis to provide a fitting experience to the employer and candidates who are being hired. All this means a lot of programs, processes and automation.

The good news is RPOs have the ability to test and implement only the best technology for recruitment processes and structures. If you work as or in RPO, you can probably already imagine your top choice in sourcing, candidate management and so on. When your client doesn’t know what they need, it’s these tools that you recommend or prescribe. However, when it comes to high-volume recruitment, you need more than just a place to find potential talent and ways to manage their resumes.

You need engagement. Something that provides a good experience for the individual, but at a greater scale. Often, an ATS or CRM can offer help to parts of this via automated emails and mobile capabilities, but how often does a candidate follow up before you have communicated updates? And how much of that follow-up demands your valuable time and resources?

The Future of Positive Candidate Experience

This was a struggle IBS RPO met head-on. As a modern outsourcing organization, IBS RPO wanted to give candidates the amazing experience they deserved, especially one that positively represented their client. IBS RPO leadership wanted something that made each candidate feel valued on an individual and personal level. However, they needed a high-volume scale and wanted to reduce costs year over year.

They had worked with AI through audiobots and textbots and knew their candidates were comfortable using similar tools. They also knew many applicants weren’t comfortable making telephone calls. That’s why the company decided to implement XOR’s AI recruiting chatbot. XOR chatted with candidates, answering frequently asked questions and providing application processing updates. Meanwhile, the tool screened those individuals and their resumes to help IBS RPO recruiters better understand the talent as individuals. The results were phenomenal. IBS RPO improved the candidate experience and lowered administrative time and burden. Even more, IBS RPO was able to collect analytics for future process improvements.

About Aida:   

Aida is the CEO and Founder of XOR.ai and a former recruiter. She started XOR to help recruiters focus on the hiring and strategic planning that comes with being a recruiter. Aida previously worked in IT recruitment and project management for over six years.

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