School’s out for the summer, but in the world of our RPO partnerships this is the time of year where we focus on early careers recruitment, in anticipation of entering apprentice, undergraduate and graduate markets in the autumn. Right now, we’re talking with clients both established and prospective about their needs in this area and, as ever, the focus on using EC programs to correct or balance diversity of workforce and (future) leadership remains a priority.
Most organisations will not necessarily view themselves as having a “diversity crisis” of the kind described in a recent article highlighting research into consulting and finance hiring in the City of London. However, many will benefit from accepting its key takeaway that, “employers are more likely to hire black candidates if they rely on anonymised, ‘skills-based’ assessments in the hiring process”.
In my experience, employers have long moved on from the most “traditional methods”. It’s certainly been a decade or more since I’ve heard of an early careers program requiring a cover letter or making space on an application form for candidates to list all the University societies of which they were definitely the President.
But my experience is not universal. I’m not a graduate looking to start my career, and I’m lucky enough to work in a recruitment business with an award-winning assessment consultancy arm, partnering with clients who take hiring for true potential seriously. That doesn’t mean there’s not more work for us to do within these partnerships—even for those who’ve taken positive steps in this area. Each year brings a new implementation cycle, and new opportunities to improve.
Here are some solutions we’ve developed, launched or refined in our early careers RPO partnerships:
Assessing for Skills & Strengths in Early Careers Recruitment
Over time, many employers have reduced focus on abilities in favour of strengths- or behaviour-based testing, which is considered more conducive to measuring potential. Organisationally we broadly agree, but, where appropriate, we continue to recommend reasoning tests covering verbal, numerical and cognitive ability.
The key here is not to use them in isolation as a blunt tool. Benchmark or cut off scores should be set only within the parameters of adverse impact analysis using anonymised candidate diversity data, and ability tests should be followed up with strengths or behavioural assessments. The link RPO expertise can create between recruitment technology, recruiters, and business psychologists is critical in this space.
Recruiting for Role Fit to Enhance Diversity
Predicting workplace performance and potential through behavioural assessment is often seen by early careers talent acquisition leaders as a smarter approach to hiring. Experiential tests, backed by data and research, producing personal interview guides for final stage assessment often leads to better outcomes and maintains diversity in the process.
This approach highlights candidate suitability against role fit over culture fit, the latter being a potential barrier to creating a more diverse workforce (the concept of aligning new recruits with a prevailing culture or mindset being an obvious denial of the need for organisational change).
Focusing on Culture Add Rather than Culture Fit
I am not yet aware of any early careers programs where assessment is now 100% anonymised. Whether online via video, as part of a wider virtual assessment experience, or in a traditional face-to-face meeting, an interview is going to happen before a hire is made. Removing anonymity can introduce bias, and we promote two key mitigations.
Firstly, design and deliver structured interviews which are competency-based and/or focused on culture add (what the candidate can contribute to your organisation’s culture) over culture fit. Our teams often partner with hiring managers on best practice in this area, even facilitating or assessing directly where needed. This helps maintain consistency and relevance, avoiding questions on personal interests or previous experience—instead asking specific questions on working styles and preferences.
Secondly, put candidate experience first and learn from feedback to provide support and guidance, setting the stage for success. By hearing the candidates’ voice, and measuring their experience across, we’ve been able to improve outcomes for employers.
We’re looking forward to seeing how these solutions progress, and what improvements they bring as we take early careers RPO from now to next, supporting the diverse workforces of the future—identifying and unlocking true potential wherever it exists.
The job market and the world of work have changed drastically in the last few years, leaving employers to deal with the new challenges. For example, in the U.S., there are currently more than 11 million job openings, and year-over-year wage growth was at 5.2% in May. On top of that, the Great Resignation has record numbers of workers leaving their jobs: In the last six months in the U.S., more than 4 million people left their jobs each month. And, it’s spreading across the globe; CNN reports that resignations have also jumped in countries like the United Kingdom, Australia and France.
But, employers are dealing with more than just a tight talent market, increased turnover and rising wages; the world of work has changed permanently—and so have candidate expectations. For instance, nearly two-thirds of the workforce wants some form of remote work option and nearly one-third wants hybrid work. As such, employers can’t simply plan to return to the pre-pandemic ways of doing business; instead, they must adapt.
More precisely, to succeed in this job market, you need to both hire the best talent and retain the workers you already have—and that requires multifaceted solutions that address the specific issues within your organization. In this article, we’ll cover the potential sources of your talent challenges, some signs that they may be negatively affecting your organization and strategies you can use to get ahead.
Is Your Employer Brand on Life Support?
Throughout the pandemic and initial recovery, many organizations didn’t have the resources to invest in their employer brands. Unfortunately, if this was the case for your organization, it may be affecting your ability to recruit top talent. That’s because, if your employer brand is weak, qualified candidates won’t apply because they simply have other options.
So, how can you tell if your employer brand is holding your organization back? Watch for these warning signs:
Solution: Rebuild Your Employer Brand
If any of these signs look familiar, it’s time to focus on your employer brand. Luckily, there are a few things you can do. The first is to build out a strong employer value proposition (EVP) as the foundation of an employer branding campaign.
It’s important to note that building a strong EVP to drive your employer brand requires research into the short- and long-term goals of your organization; the reality of what it’s like to work for you right now; and the outside perception of your organization. That information is distilled into an EVP that’s unique, aspirational, authentic and dynamic. From there, you can communicate your message through an employer branding campaign via your careers site, social media campaigns, hiring events and more.
At PeopleScout, we supported work on the employer brand at Vodafone, a telecommunications company in the UK. In this case, consumers knew the brand well as a mobile phone retailer, but didn’t see it as a multifaceted tech innovator. So, to help Vodafone hire more young workers, we worked to create an employer brand campaign that captured the spirit of change and possibility that’s part of their EVP. At the end of the project, PeopleScout had generated more than 16,000 applications and increased the number of female candidates by 23%.
Does Your Candidate Experience Leave Much to be Desired?
If your employer brand is in good shape, but you’re still struggling to hire qualified candidates, the next area to evaluate is your candidate experience. Candidate experience has always been important, but it’s even more critical in today’s job market. Nowadays, people have plenty of other options, so they won’t take the time to complete a long application or wait weeks for a call back.
How can you tell if your candidate experience is the cause of your hiring woes? Look for these signs:
Solution: Update Your Talent Tech Stack
The right technology can have a significant influence on your candidate experience. Candidates want the recruitment experience to be fast and easy and allow them to feel in control. For this reason, evaluate every step of the candidate journey to identify where you can make improvements with technology.
Your first step is to look at your application. Have you tried filling out your own application recently? How long does it take to complete? Is it simple or does it feel drawn out and tedious? Can you complete the application on a mobile device? If the process takes a long time or requires a desktop computer, it’s time to update your application.
Then, look for other points in the process where you might make things easier for candidates. Do candidates have to wait weeks to schedule a screening or interview? If so, consider adding a self-scheduling interview tool or virtual interview solution, like text interviews or on-demand interviews. Furthermore, adding something as simple as a status bar that shows candidates where they are in the process can help them stay engaged.
At PeopleScout, we work with a large retailer that had a strong consumer brand, but still struggled to recruit candidates. Their application required a computer and took more than 30 minutes to fill out. As an alternative, we developed a mobile-first application with just 11 questions that took less than eight minutes to complete. Now, half the candidates apply on mobile devices and the application conversion rate rose to 85%. For comparison, employers using a traditional application have an average applicant conversion rate of just 35%.
Are Your Offers Competitive Enough in the Job Market?
Salary and benefits are the elephants in the room in any discussion about hiring challenges. Wages are rising significantly. While the average year-over-year salary growth in the U.S. is at 5.2%, some industries are experiencing even steeper wage growth. For example, in the leisure and hospitality sector, wages are up more than 11% in the last year. In fact, the World Economic Forum reports that wages are rising in every region of the world. Therefore, in the current job market, your offer needs to be competitive.
Here are some signs that your offers may not be competitive enough:
Solution: Adjust Your Compensation to Current Job Market Rates
If you’re experiencing any of these warning signs, evaluate your compensation against the market and adjust where necessary. Due to remote work, the job market has changed. Now, you’re not just competing against employers in your area for talent; you’re competing for talent across the country and, in some cases, the entire world.
To that end, an RPO or MSP provider can help advise you on market rates and what types of adjustments are needed to make your offers more competitive. Plus, increasing your wages could even save you money in the long run.
This happened for one PeopleScout client, a major rural healthcare system. Hit hard by the ongoing nursing shortage, the healthcare organization was relying on expensive travel nurses and struggling to bring in enough candidates. PeopleScout advised the provider to implement a $10,000 hiring bonus. This resulted in a cost savings as the client was able to reduce its nursing recruitment spend by 77%, totaling more than $4 million. The client was also able to reduce its use of traveling nurses by 68% and experienced its lowest-ever nursing vacancy rate—just 1.3%.
Does Your Company Culture Send People Running?
Perhaps the best way to avoid staffing shortages is to ensure that you don’t have to backfill large numbers of roles due to turnover. The Great Resignation is in full swing, but employers shouldn’t just throw their hands in the air as employees leave for new jobs.
The good news is that employee turnover isn’t just about money. Talent leaders are finding that a major driving factor is employee disengagement. Throughout the last few years, many employees have experienced negative effects on their mental health, causing burnout and driving a reevaluation of work/life balance. Conversely, company culture can play a huge role in keeping employees happy, healthy and engaged.
Is your company culture a problem? Watch for these warning signs:
Solution: Determine What Employees Want in the Job Market & Meet Their Needs
To improve your company culture, you must first determine what employees feel they’re lacking from your organization. You can gather this information in two ways—and both are valuable. First, you should be conducting exit interviews with employees who have resigned. Try to get an idea of why they decided to take a new role. Is it simply increased pay? Did they feel they lacked a clear career path at your organization? Did they not feel appreciated by managers and colleagues?
Next, try to identify problems before they drive employees to leave. You can accomplish this through anonymous pulse surveys; there are a number of tools you can use to track employee engagement and look for areas of improvement. Do employees want more opportunities for training? Do they want to feel as though they’re part of something bigger? Do they feel as though company leadership is not addressing their concerns?
Then, once you determine the biggest pain points for employees, make targeted improvements to your company culture. You can demonstrate appreciation for your workers in tangible ways: Communicate actively and often. Define paths for advancement and look at learning and development programs. Offer more flexibility. Provide training for managers. Not only will these kinds of investments keep tenured employees from leaving, but they can also improve your employer brand and make your employment offers more competitive.
There’s no doubt that the current talent market is difficult for employers, but the sources of the struggle are multifaceted and complex. There isn’t an easy, one-size-fits-all solution. Employers need to evaluate both the candidate and employee experience and alter their processes where inadequacies reveal themselves. You can’t keep waiting for “things to return to normal.” We’re in the new normal, and we have to adapt. To learn more, check out our ebook, “Employer Brand: Helping the Right Talent Choose You.”
Candidate engagement after extending a job offer is now more important than ever, as employers across most regions are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of new hires who are ghosting on their first day: Data from Robert Half shows that 28% of professionals have backed out of a job offer after initially accepting it, thereby costing employers time and money on a job offer ghosted.
In today’s candidate-driven market—and with the major influence that the pandemic had on the way people view work and personal life—it’s no surprise that candidates are receiving multiple job offers and thinking critically about what they truly want in an employer.
Top 3 Reasons Candidates Backed Out of an Offer They’ve Already Accepted
Source: Robert Half
With candidates in the driver’s seat, employers need to do everything they can to keep new hires from taking an early exit. So, in this article, we offer actionable strategies for your organization to do just that.
Why Do Candidates Ghost?
With record numbers of job openings, job-seekers are more empowered than ever to be picky about the company they choose to work for. This means that candidates are likely interviewing with multiple companies at the same time—and they may not disclose it.
At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for an immense digital transformation of the recruiting process, with everything from phone screens and interviews to offers and onboarding being conducted completely online. Of course, while this has made it easier and faster to apply to jobs (with “easy apply” options and text interviews the norm), it has also informalized the process and made it feel less personal than a face-to-face hiring journey.
As a result, employers who rely solely on these technologies without establishing a human touch might struggle to build a more personal connection with candidates. Furthermore, because the majority of the hiring process now takes place online from behind a screen, it can be difficult for recruiters and candidates to build the same rapport that they would have when communicating in person; when you remove the investment that comes from traveling to meet someone in person and replace it with a simple click, the entire process can start to feel more transactional and less human.
All of this can lead to poor communication overall, leaving candidates feeling like they might not need to provide any formal closure. According to Indeed data, here are some of the consequences of ineffective communication with the recruiter or hiring manager:
And, not only is ghosting happening, but it also appears to be a rapidly growing trend: According to a 2021 survey from Indeed, 28% of job-seekers have ghosted an employer—a 10% increase from 2019 data—and 57% of employers believe it’s more common than ever before.
It’s important to note that the same Indeed survey found that ghosting in the workplace is a two-way street, with 77% of job-seekers saying they’ve been ghosted by an employer. So, while ghosting has become a normalized part of the hiring process (with employers starting the trend and candidates catching on), there are some actionable steps that employers can take to avoid ghosting on both ends and help combat this rising trend.
Strategies to Keep Candidates Engaged After Job Offer Acceptance
In addition to the increasing likelihood that candidates will renege on an offer, employers should also keep in mind the various notice period requirements in countries around the world, which could be anywhere from two weeks to six months, in some places. Clearly, half a year is an incredibly long time to keep someone engaged and excited about your business, especially when that candidate is exploring other offers and evaluating the benefits of each. So, how can you do it? Consider the following:
Focus on Employer Brand
It should come as no surprise that keeping candidates engaged after they accept an offer starts with the work that’s done prior to them even applying; maintaining a powerful employer brand is key to keeping candidates with you throughout the entire hiring process. More precisely, when a candidate receives a competing offer or a compelling counteroffer from their current employer, is what your company offers going to be enough to keep them from changing their mind?
To that end, it’s important that your organization presents itself—on social media, employer review sites and your careers site—in a positive light. You’ll want the candidate to be reminded of the value you offer—whether that’s in the form of benefits; flexibility; growth opportunities; diversity and inclusion initiatives; or otherwise—everywhere they look. The mental picture a candidate keeps of you in the back of their mind (or when someone mentions your company’s name) is make or break when it comes to them following through on an offer acceptance and showing up for day one.
Make Open Communication Standard
Lack of communication is one of the top reasons candidates ghost after accepting an offer, so establishing strong, open lines of communication from the start can make a huge difference in how the hiring process plays out. For example, encourage recruiters and hiring managers to communicate with candidates frequently by keeping them informed of their application status, providing updates on next steps and simply checking in to see if candidates have any questions. This can help build a sense of familiarity and rapport that is often lost when recruiters only communicate when absolutely necessary.
Your organization can also stand out from others by candidly asking candidates where they are in the hiring process with other potential employers. Then, depending on your recruitment timeline, you can adjust key interviews and deadlines to avoid losing your candidate to a competing job offer. A personalized offer letter for job candidates will place you ahead of competitors. This will also help you get an idea of whether your candidate is entertaining other offers that they may be more interested in overall; then, even if they do accept an offer from you, this can help you be better prepared for the possibility that they’ll renege and accept a position elsewhere.
Finally, the key is to maintain that line of communication even after the candidate has accepted an offer; if you ghost your brand-new hire, they’ll be more likely to ghost you in turn.
Get the Offer Out Fast
The more time your hiring process takes, the more time candidates have to consider taking other jobs. You’ve received a verbal offer acceptance; that’s great. Now, the time it takes for you to get official paperwork out and signed is critical. Engagement levels are highest at this point, and it’s critical that you get the offer out before the candidate has the chance to get cold feet.
If possible, get all of your organization’s internal approvals finalized prior to your verbal offer so that the official written offer can be sent almost immediately. If your organization has a lengthier process that cannot be shortened, then be sure to communicate that to the candidate so their expectations are set accordingly.
Utilize Thoughtful Touchpoints
Perhaps most important, maintain frequent communication with the candidate during the period between offer acceptance (whether verbal or written) and day one. This can include messages of congratulations from the hiring manager and anyone else they may have met and interviewed with during the hiring process.
Additionally, consider pairing your new hire with a current employee who can help them prepare for their first day. Or, in smaller organizations, set up a one-on-one meeting with a key leader to welcome them to the company. This can help the candidate feel connected to the team before they’ve even officially started—and will help keep the organization front of mind.
Redefine Onboarding & Start Immediately
When competing with multiple offers and long notice periods, beginning your onboarding process before the new hire officially starts can be a great way to keep them engaged and feeling like they’re a part of the team. For instance, if you’re in an office, consider sending your new hire a video tour or inviting them in for a real one. Or, if your team is planning to get together for an in-person or virtual happy hour, invite the new hire to join.
You can also send your new hire more information about your company, culture, employee resource groups and more to help them start feeling like a part of the team. Plus, what better way to foster a sense of connection and pride than by sending a welcome kit and some company swag? Finally, encourage the new hire’s colleagues and manager to reach out frequently to check in and express excitement for them to officially get started on the team.
The Whole Job Offer Package
Essentially, candidate experience is really about the whole package—from establishing a strong employer brand all the way to onboarding. How you present your organization—as well as how it’s perceived by the public—is paramount. Moreover, remaining front of mind for candidates throughout the entire hiring process (and especially post-offer) is critical so as not to lose them to competing offers or a change of heart. In today’s market, employers can’t afford to slip and miss any opportunity for communication, connection and engagement.
Candidate Screening Solutions for High-Volume Hiring in Healthcare
A leading pediatric hospital in America received a high number of applicants and engaged PeopleScout for screening and presenting quality candidates for open positions.
Increased Candidate Screening Volume
Worked Closely with Client to Create Valued Partnerhip
Sourced Candidates for Cultural Fit
Situation
This not-for-profit pediatric hospital needed to improve candidate screening processes. This included a focus on quality as it was important to the client to hire for the right cultural fit. Skills and positions in scope included clinical housekeepers, admissions and customer service staff.
Solution
PeopleScout’s team learned the client’s niche healthcare HR technology platform and utilized it to efficiently screen and track candidates.
PeopleScout worked closely with the client’s internal HR team to screen and present candidates who possessed the right mixture of hard and soft skills to ensure each potential hire was the right cultural fit for the organization.
At the client’s facility, everyone from clinical staff to housekeepers interact with children suffering from illnesses and their families. PeopleScout’s RPO team screened candidates carefully, looking for compassion, empathy and the ability to work well with children.
Results
Increased Candidate Screening PeopleScout screened and hired 400 candidates annually for the client.
Valued Partnership The client highly valued the relationship with PeopleScout; many of the client’s hiring managers had it written into their contract that PeopleScout was the only RPO provider they would work with.
Provided Attentive Care & Compassion for Others This engagement was about more than sourcing great candidates for open positions. The program was supported by mutual values of service to one’s community and compassion for others.
At a Glance
COMPANY: Not-for-Profit Pediatric Hospital
INDUSTRY: Healthcare
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing
ANNUAL HIRES: 400
ABOUT THE CLIENT: This U.S.-based not-for-profit healthcare client system has engaged PeopleScout for healthcare RPO since 2015.
I’ve tried to hide from the inevitable and deeply wanted to write about anything other than the ONS’s recent UK Labour Market overview for fear of adding to the pervading gloom of economic news. But as a recruitment professional, and as a worker, the findings are too stark and too significant to ignore.
The main impact is for employees, not employers, with a grim picture of pay in real terms falling at its fastest rate in over a decade as the cost-of-living crisis bites. This might lead to churn as those in work seek higher paying opportunities to maintain, not improve, their lifestyles. And they might well have choice—a record number of job vacancies have been recorded (again) in the UK. It is certainly a challenge to businesses that, while “pay is growing strongly as companies seek to attract people to work for them,” salaries are still falling well behind rates of inflation, putting ever more pressure on investment.
Higher Salaries Won’t Fix the UK’s Talent Shortages
It will be very difficult to use salaries alone to mitigate against the lack of supply the UK jobs market is seeing. The current position is indeed incredibly tight and exacerbated by ever increasing levels of economic inactivity: a “missing million” from the workforce. I’ve been guilty of viewing this as being driven by a positive choice to work less for lifestyle reasons (which does happen), so the view here of (rising, long term) ill-health keeping people from work was especially sobering.
What’s next? Follow the long-term graphs, and you’ll see repeatedly that economic slowdown = reduction in job vacancies.
It seems obvious that we can expect that again—an overall cooling of the job market as businesses reduce spend towards the end of the year. Does that mean recruitment will get easier? In some cases, yes: but the longer-term picture also shows critical talent shortages sticking around, driven by economic and demographic factors. Without an emphasis on connecting more people with work through education, training, and flexible support, recruitment efforts (and economic growth) will fall short.
This is what Peter Bendor-Samuel of Everest Group calls, “the cow behind the pig”: the bigger long-term challenge that can’t be ignored while digesting the smaller, short term one (for this analogy to work you have to imagine you are a python—or just read Peter’s blog it’s very good).
White knuckling the short-term in the hope that fewer people will be needed is a complacent talent strategy, where a winning one means a continued focus and investment in finding and keeping outstanding talent. Smart organisations must hold that course as much as possible in the face of slowdown, recession, stagflation and other economic headwinds.
With consumer experience heralded as the prime battleground for businesses, it’s not all about technology. According to PwC, 74% of European consumers want more human interaction in the future, but only 46% agree that the employees they interact with understand their needs.
And the stakes for customer-facing staff keep rising.
With 71% of customers paying more attention to corporate values in 2022 than they did in 2021, 89% of customer experience (CX) professionals confirm that their contact centre agents are expected to be better versed on their brand’s stance on social issues compared to a year ago.
Plus, there’s a real focus on personalised, non-scripted engagements. Boston Consulting Group research shows that NPS scores are 20% higher for businesses that deliver a high level of personalisation, compared to those that don’t.
Candidates Want a Consumer-Like Experience
These trends are mirrored in candidate expectations of your recruitment process.
Take these stat—80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services, and 65% find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising.
Snap.
Plus, 79% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family. Negative reviews can have a significant impact on consumer behaviour, making 92% of consumers less likely to use a business.
Same in recruitment.
So, if we check what consumers want from a great digital experience, it’s likely to mirror candidate aspirations.
The key contributors are – the Three S’s – Speed (94%), Seamlessness (92%) and a Sense of Control (92%). Combine that with an individualised experience (83%) and you’ll have a winning strategy.
Is it time to review your candidate experience through a consumer lens?
For job seekers this is often good news. There are more roles available, with higher salaries and greater flexibility (especially in relation to remote working), plus there’s an emphasis on training, upskilling and creating a great working culture. Candidates can sit back and take their pick—after all, they are the ones in demand. What employers need is more job seekers—and it’s entirely possible that they can proactively increase that supply.
Talent Acquisition Has New Rules
McKinsey calls this the “New Talent Game.” Employers are now competing not just with each other, but with the wider array of work experiences on offer—not to mention locations. I’m based in Bristol, and for half a decade all my people were too. Now I am nabbing talent from other regions of the UK. Plus, people are increasingly making the (often temporary) decision not to work at all—to, as George Michael would have worn it, CHOOSE LIFE.
How do you win in that context? Organisations must redefine their attraction and recruitment strategies and build an employer value proposition (EVP) that takes employees’ whole lives into account and makes work a more positive choice. What is clear is those candidates are only coming back on their terms: workplace flexibility, adequate compensation and reasonable expectations about performance.
Winning with RPO on Your Side
As a leading, global talent partner for a diverse range of businesses, PeopleScout’s RPO solutions have long been designed to amplify employer brands with a recruitment approach that focuses on an enhanced candidate experience. The missing talent can be won by placing the employee experience at the heart of your talent strategy, and I’m proud to say in Q1 2022 we are re-delivering hundreds of employees each month into the consumer and retail sectors for our client partners in the UK, with fulfilment trending positively each month.
It hasn’t been easy – but we are playing the New Talent Game to win.
Whether your organization is thinking of outsourcing some, most or all parts of your recruitment, an RPO partner can help. It’s not just about outsourcing your recruiting, it’s important to find the best partner to help manage the people, process, technology and strategy behind your talent acquisition function, which touches every employee, team and department within your business.
So, how do you know if RPO is the right choice for your organization? In this article, we’ll cover three questions to ask to understand how your company can benefit from RPO.
Why RPO?
RPO is a cost-effective and scalable talent acquisition solution. Whether you’re looking for a regional solution or a multi-country partnership, RPO has been proven to boost the ability to hire at speed, manage the employer brand, streamline the candidate experience and maximize economies of scale across geographies.
Here are just a few of the benefits of RPO:
Improved Candidate Quality
Your RPO partner can help you boost your number of qualified candidates and the quality of hires. In fact, according to Aberdeen Group, 81% of best-in-class organizations say RPO helps to fill their skills gaps. This keeps hiring managers happy and helps your organization achieve its goals while also boosting retention.
Better Candidate Experience
You want your recruitment process to leave every applicant, regardless of whether they get the role, with a positive experience. Your RPO team will provide consistent and honest feedback throughout the recruitment process, so they know exactly where they stand and what comes next.
Improved Hiring Manager Experience
Your RPO team reduces the administrative burden on your hiring managers by taking over résumé and CV screening, candidate assessment administration, initial interview steps, candidate communication and feedback tasks. RPO partners prepare hiring managers for interviews, provide them with feedback and identify any candidates at risk of dropping from the process so managers can make informed decisions.
Reduced Time-to-Fill
The longer a position goes unfilled, the more likely your business is to experience productivity loss—and loss of revenue. RPO teams are able to find candidates and fill roles faster by building and maintaining talent pipeline, providing quick access to qualified talent. By streamlining and optimizing recruitment processes, improving the time-to-hire and retention rates, RPO providers can increase your recruiting return on investment and deliver real cost savings to your bottom line.
Improved Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
In their global Diversity Wins report, McKinsey revealed organizations in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity outperformed laggards by 36% in terms of profitability. So, it’s imperative that recruitment is an element of your DE&I journey. RPO teams are knowledgeable about different talent attraction options and can expand to new job boards, social media groups, online forums and events to engage more diverse candidates. Plus, RPO recruitment companies understand the regional nuances of DE&I issues. For example, in some countries like Poland, it is not legal to ask candidates their ethnicity, gender, etc.
If you’ve decided to that RPO will be a good for your organization, you may be wondering how you go about choosing the best provider. Below are just three things to consider in order to make RPO a truly transformational model for your business.
Partnership
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in 30 years of developing talent acquisition programs, it’s that no two organizations are the same. That’s why it’s important to look for an RPO partner that is collaborative, that will listen to your ideas and take the time to truly understand your business and pain points.
We hear a lot from clients who have worked with other providers who tried to squeeze them into their standard program, and it just doesn’t work. RPO creates efficiencies and improvements to the candidate experience through repeatable processes, but these processes should be adapted to your unique needs and challenges. Look for an RPO partner who understands the balance between consistency and customization.
Talent Advisory
The success of your recruitment program starts with your employer brand. Many RPO providers offer talent advisory solutions that help you to develop and improve your employer brand, EVP, recruitment marketing approaches, candidate assessments and more.
So often we see companies who have agencies that execute recruitment marketing campaigns separate from their RPO program. However, with this siloed approach, the agency is less likely to be held accountable for their campaigns leading to high quality candidates entering later candidate journey stages like interviews and assessments. On the other side, the RPO partner has limited means to provide feedback on the campaigns and the impact the ads have on recruitment outcomes. By having both functions under one partnership, you get a holistic program that not only attracts candidates—but truly delivers against your hiring goals.
Look for a partner with in-house resources (not one who outsources to an agency) who takes a consultative approach to maximizing the effectiveness of your whole talent acquisition program, beyond just filling vacancies.
Technology
Digital transformation has hit HR and recruitment, bringing an influx of new solutions to the market that offer a range of benefits. RPO partners increasingly offer tech consulting and can show you how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics can boost your ability to attract top talent.
Some RPO partners have proprietary technology, like PeopleScout’s Affinix™, while some offer expertise in well-known platforms. Look for a modular approach that can integrate with your existing systems, so you can continue to benefit from existing investments and grow your recruitment tech stack as your needs change. Any technology you implement must comply with data privacy regulations in all regions where you’re recruiting, including any rules about where data can be stored. A SOC 2 certification is a great way to tell that a vendor takes information security seriously.
In this era of tight competition for talent, augmenting your recruiting capacity and ability with an RPO provider could be a crucial step for the future of your business. When it comes to RPO, there is no single best option, only the option that best aligns with your organizational needs. By understanding your current recruitment challenges and requirements, you can find an RPO partner with right capabilities to support your global recruiting goals.
We’re all aware of the recruitment challenges facing NHS Trusts across the UK with 40,000 registered nursing vacancies across the NHS in England alone. This is compounded by a sharp rise in people leaving the profession. According to the Nursing & Midwifery Council, 14,000 people left the register last year—up 27% on previous year.
And whilst sharper marketing and investment in building a more distinctive employer brand will certainly help increase the pipeline of quality healthcare job candidates, Trusts can look closer to home for some quick wins.
Optimising Your Healthcare Recruitment Strategy
Talking to HR leaders in Trusts across the UK, it’s clear that for many, recruitment is still a linear, administrative model, designed to move applicants through a process.
Compare that to a more commercial model where recruitment business partners work closely with stakeholders to understand current and future needs. These recruiters provide an agile, high-touch approach, which keeps candidates engaged throughout the process.
At PeopleScout we are working with one Trust to understand where high impact interventions can be made which improve candidate experience and ensure a higher number of permanent hires. This has been carefully balanced against a reduction in spend to ensure zero additional cost.
Healthcare Candidate Experience Diagnostic
My final piece of advice? ‘Mystery shop’ your own recruitment process through the eyes of a candidate by applying for a job. I guarantee it’ll be an illuminating experience.
The application process has changed dramatically throughout the years. Yet, some aspects seem eternal—like the fact that employers often start with lots of people at the top of their recruitment funnel and need to make sure they get the right people to the bottom.
But, the world is changing, and the pace of change is accelerating; candidates expect a simple, efficient recruitment process, and employers need workers who are digitally fluent and can adapt easily to change. Reskilling is also becoming even more important.
Plus, there’s also a strong focus on fairness, transparency and equality—with blind reviews of applications, diverse interview panels, and selection processes centered on the need to demonstrate competencies and alignment with the role.
Therefore, in order to adapt to today’s ever-changing landscape, it’s vital for employers to focus on a candidate’s potential to grow and adapt to future needs, as well as the skills and qualities they have today. To that end, throughout this article, we’ll share four steps for building a better assessment process—because not only is assessment the key to a more productive workforce, but it’s also essential to a workforce that’s more resilient and able to stand the test of time.
Step One: Shift from Experience to Potential
In a bid to prepare for the unknown, employers need to shift their focus away from candidates who have prior experience in a role and toward those who have potential. That’s because the employees who can demonstrate flexibility and resilience will be the ones who are best able to ride the wave of uncertainty.
Specifically, McKinsey & Company predicts that higher cognitive skills—such as creativity, critical thinking, decision-making and complex information processing—will be the most in-demand traits in the future. In fact, the need for these skills is predicted to grow by 19% in the United States and by 14% in Europe by 2030—up from already sizable demands. Furthermore, the same research also predicts the fastest rise ever in the need for advanced IT and programming skills, which could grow by as much as 90% by 2030.
As such, organizations that want to be at the forefront of innovation need to start thinking creatively about how they can tap into the vital perspectives of diverse minds. To lead a sector, outrun the competition, and truly innovate, employers need to stop looking for people who fit and start looking for people who add. Likewise, bias—conscious or unconscious—needs to be removed from the process. Besides, although they might seem like they come with a higher risk factor, people who do things very differently can create exceptional outcomes. So, instead of always asking, “Who can do the job?”, employers should be asking, “Who can take us further?”
Step Two: Reap the Rewards of Great vs. Good
Transforming candidate assessment and selection is an investment, but the business case has never been more important. Plus, many of the current processes and tools are subjective and don’t focus on differentiating between good and great hires. With this in mind, are organizations and hiring managers equipped with the tools they need to make the right decisions?
Additionally, better performance predictions will lead to better outcomes, and investing in the right tools can deliver multi-millions in cost benefits. In essence, an employer with a more agile and adaptable workforce is in a far better place to achieve competitive advantage—as well as the kind of employee satisfaction that attracts more high-achieving, agile candidates. In this way, quality hires have a substantial influence on business performance.
However, despite rigorous testing, chemistry sessions and multiple interviews, it can still be quite difficult for employers to understand whether an individual would actually be effective in a role—thereby making bad hires surprisingly common.
Conversely, getting great people—the people who go above and beyond the role criteria—is really good news because it has a profound effect on quality of output, which is truly beneficial to the business. What’s more, while great employees are valuable in and of themselves, they also drive wider team performance, inspire others and make it easier to recruit other great people.
Step Three: Build Better by Thinking Bigger
So, if we’re going to build a better and fairer candidate assessment process, we need to find a way to:
Measure potential, rather than experience, because we don’t know what the future looks like.
Identify the behaviors that are required to separate those who will actually be successful from those who present well during an interview.
Distinguish between good candidates who meet the criteria and great candidates who will take an organization further.
Give candidates a clear and authentic picture of the organization and the role so that they can self-select out of the process if the opportunity isn’t right for them.
Include candidates who might have non-traditional experiences or career paths and assess them equally.
Assess candidates fairly and without subjectivity or bias.
Finally, employers need to be able to identify and select candidates who are motivated and energized to be productive at work. And, the way that we do all of these things is by assessing for passion, purpose and mindset.
Assessing Passion, Purpose & Mindset
Traditional assessment processes assess for capability, behavior and results. These terms are defined as:
Then, when these aspects are combined with new measurements that focus on purpose, passion and mindset, we can better predict the success of candidates and determine the candidates who are more engaged and likely to be a better hire for employers.
Let’s dig into those new descriptors and what they mean.
Purpose
Purpose is a candidate’s alignment with and willingness to contribute to the vision and values of an organization. For example, one study reported by McKinsey found that, out of 100 variables, employees reported that seeing purpose and value in their work was their most motivating factor—even more so than compensation. Notably, this is especially important for younger workers.
Clearly, ensuring that applicants understand the organization’s purpose and consider how aligned they are with that throughout the assessment process engenders a sense of belonging and partnership that underlies both great performance and job satisfaction.
In this way, assessment tools can be built around the organization’s vision and values so applicants have a chance to form an appreciation of them from their earliest contact with the organization. Then, if they don’t share the same values, they can choose another path. However, applicants who see an affinity with their own values will begin to feel the engagement and inspiration that will drive job success and satisfaction—even before they’re hired.
Passion
Passion is a candidate’s enthusiasm, enjoyment and commitment to mastering the requirements of a role. When an employee is passionate about a role, they’re engaged. Even so, most employers don’t have a method to effectively understand what a candidate is passionate about.
For this reason, during the assessment stage, employers need to find ways to reveal an applicant’s natural passions—which are often in the form of strengths—and find out if these are aligned with the role requirements. Then, they’ll be able to determine whether the candidate is likely to be a high performer who will want to commit the effort needed to succeed in all aspects of the job. Interviews, assessment center exercises, and immersive online assessments are excellent vehicles for exploring and observing applicants’ innate strengths in relation to the role. Similarly, self-evaluation tools can also be used to help applicants consider their own strengths and whether the role will offer sufficient opportunity to use and demonstrate them.
Mindset
Mindset is a candidate’s belief about themselves and their basic qualities, although these beliefs are rarely measured by employers. The two types are defined as:
Fixed mindset: The belief that one’s talents are innate gifts and not malleable.
Growth mindset: The belief that one’s talents can be developed through education and effort.
It’s thought that people with a growth mindset achieve greater success because they’re focused on learning and believe that they can get better and develop new skills. It’s worth noting here that organizations can have a growth mindset, too. For instance, organizations with a growth mindset are more likely to fill vacancies internally, whereas organizations with a fixed mindset automatically advertise in the external market.
When assessing mindset, we’re looking to understand a candidate’s strengths and attitudes in relation to learning, feedback, resilience and adaptability. Of course, there are many ways to do that; just keep in mind that it’s less about what candidates may have done in the past and more about how they approach their work and develop and broaden their competence.
Step Four: Think Outside the Checkbox
By focusing purely on the capability, behavior and results of candidates as they’re presented in front of the recruitment team, today’s more traditional interview and assessment process can be challenging for both candidates and employers. That’s because, while these measures can predict the future success of certain candidates in specific roles, change is now constant—which means that better, more well-rounded assessments are a must.
For instance, a more blended assessment during the pre-screening allows employers to shortlist candidates based on several different attributes at the same time. The candidate can then forego multiple stages by demonstrating different attributes at the same time. This way, employers can get a clear picture of the different strengths and weaknesses of the entire group of candidates in order to make informed decisions about which candidates are best to bring forward to the interview stage.
The talent landscape and the world around us renders current assessment processes ineffective. As such, employers need to embrace a new approach that both ensures that candidates are assessed appropriately and also empowers them to make good decisions.
To that end, passion, purpose, and mindset can have as much influence on performance as a candidate’s core intellect, achievements and behaviors. And, by building these factors into the assessment of a potential employee, employers can select from a diverse pool of candidates based on each individual’s potential, as well as their current performance.
Unfortunately, most employers aren’t assessing for all of these factors, so they’re missing out on a comprehensive look at candidates. In the end, the question your organization needs to consider is this: In a rapidly changing world, what is the cost of maintaining the status quo?
