Category: Talent Technology

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

Posted on by Kate
High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

Global RPO

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

An international hospitality brand—and longstanding PeopleScout client—was experiencing growing pains after an acquisition. The client needed to source, screen and hire an additional 20,000 staff for both corporate and on-site positions at hotel properties across multiple continents—bringing the annual headcount to 65,000 new hires. PeopleScout’s global RPO solution proved agile enough to seamlessly scale up to absorb the increased hiring volume, while hitting target service levels across regions.

90 % Customer Satisfaction Scores Among Hiring Managers
84 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for In-Market Roles
100 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for Corporate Roles

Situation

PeopleScout facilitates more than 65,000 hires annually for the hospitality brand, delivering RPO through a 350-member team across continents. Roles include management and hourly hiring needs in both corporate and in-market environments, including sales, accounting, technology, e-commerce, infrastructure, risk management, engineering, architecture, property management, customer service, housekeeping, culinary and more.

In addition to corporate hiring in the U.S. and Canada, we’ve recruited for their operations centers in the UK and India and hospitality properties spanning North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC.

Solution

Starting with a small pilot in 2007, our relationship has developed into a strategic partnership over 15 years. At the start, the client had disjointed hiring processes across regions. PeopleScout’s RPO team streamlined their recruitment processes and developed robust, standardized compliance practices across the entire recruiting program.

Following an acquisition in 2017, the client gained nearly 1,300 properties across over 100 countries. PeopleScout scaled our global talent acquisition program to ensure the established standardized processes and compliance practices were applied to the newly acquired properties, while keeping costs down.

PeopleScout seamlessly absorbed a 20,000-position increase and easily increased resources to meet a 50% increase in the scope of services. This included scaling our RPO solution to cover the end-to-end recruitment process for management positions for all hotel locations and the U.S. and Canadian headquarters. This allowed the in-house HR team to focus on training, workforce planning and employer branding.

PeopleScout also supported the client through three talent technology transitions over the course of the partnership, creating new levels of efficiency through automation. Plus, our in-house creative agency TMP assisted the client with their recruitment marketing efforts, creating attraction content in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Results

In just two months, PeopleScout was able to achieve the same level of performance at the newly acquired locations as they had at the legacy locations.

  • Created standardized recruitment processes and robust compliance practices across all in-market locations resulting in significant cost savings through efficiency
  • 84% time-to-fill targets achieved for in-market hires
  • Nearly 100% time-to-fill targets achieved for corporate hires
  • 90%+ customer satisfaction scores hit for both in-market and management hires
  • Achieved nearly 100% consistency in SLAs thanks to standardized operations across PeopleScout’s global delivery centers.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    International hospitality brand
  • INDUSTRY
    Hospitality, Travel & Tourism
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ANNUAL HIRES
    65,000
  • LOCATIONS
    Hospitality properties, corporate offices and operational centers across North America, Latin America, Europe and APAC
Let’s Connect

How Google Jobs is Taking On Talent Acquisition

Posted on by skatz

Google’s first commercial for the 2019 Super Bowl showcased Translate, Google’s language translation feature. Google’s second commercial of the night was also about the power of translation, only this time the focus was on helping veterans translate their military skills into civilian careers.

The aforementioned ad illustrated how Google for Jobs helps veterans and other U.S. service members quickly find civilian jobs by searching “jobs for veterans” on Google and then entering their military occupational specialty codes. They are then provided with search results for civilian jobs with similar skills to those used in their military roles. Now, a group of job seekers that had difficulty finding roles online can easily conduct a simple Google job search.

Launched in 2017, Google for Jobs, or Google Jobs, is a job search platform that goes well beyond simple search efforts by pulling relevant job-related data from multiple partners and company sites into one intelligent search function. In this article, we will walk through an explanation of what Google Jobs is, how it works, how it can affect talent acquisition and what to keep in mind before incorporating Google Jobs into your recruitment strategy.

What is Google for Jobs?

Google Jobs connects interested job seekers with relevant positions from job boards and career websites around the world. Google allows users to filter job searches the same way you can search for anything else online, with criteria like location, posting date, type of company, etc. It even includes pay estimates from several outside sources. With more than one-third of Google’s monthly searches coming from job-related requests, Google Jobs helps bridge the gap between job seekers searching for career opportunities and employers looking to provide them.

How Does Google Jobs Work?

Google Jobs pulls job board listings from around the web into its platform through partnerships with LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, Facebook, Monster and others. Postings on a company’s career site are also pulled into the Google Jobs engine. Initially launched in the United States, the platform is available to millions of job seekers from North and South America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

When a user searches for a job, Google serves up the most relevant job description, location, seniority, job types and salary content available courtesy of machine learning. Machine learning is a subset of AI that adjusts and learns without being explicitly programmed. Traditional Google search queries use algorithms to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages to find and present the most relevant, useful results to a user. Google Jobs’ search mechanism operates similarly, only its enhanced use of machine learning only retrieves results from job postings, which it lists at the top of a user’s search results.

If you start by searching directly in Google for “jobs near me for ‘Nurses,’” using Chicago as a location, roles with a few local healthcare organizations, along with 100+ more jobs, appear. Additional filters also are available, such as jobs posted in the “past 3 days” or “full-time” jobs. Users can view these filters at the top of the screen.

Google Jobs screenshot

If a user clicks to see additional jobs using the “100+ jobs” link at the bottom of the results page, this next screen appears:

Google Jobs screenshot

Users can then explore their Google Jobs search using the following features:

  • Jobs are displayed in the left column.
  • Filters are available across the top of the screen, such as title, date posted and type of employer. For example, if you click on “title,” related titles appear, such as a surgical or clinical nurse.
  • Pay comparisons are available at the bottom of the listing from other sources such as Glassdoor.
  • Alerts are available for your job search in the lower left-hand corner. You can turn alerts on or off with your Gmail account and save for future use.

How Does Google Jobs Affect Talent Acquisition?

Extending your recruiting strategy by integrating with Google Jobs benefits talent acquisition programs through increased reach, better candidate choice and reduced costs.

Expands Your Reach

Google Jobs expands your pool of candidates by crawling millions of job listings across the internet and presenting jobs relevant to a user’s inquiry that may not appear during a traditional search.

So, once you’ve posted your open positions on job boards integrated with the Google Jobs platform – your reach is instantly amplified.

Google also provides developers and website owners access to the new “jobs search feature” where they can embed company logos, job seeker reviews, ratings and job details. This feature functions outside of organic and paid search on Google, so job postings are easier to find and more prominent than before.

And for organizations with smaller recruiting teams, Google Jobs helps level the playing field by allowing their job postings to appear organically to the same candidates as those advertising on job boards.

Filtering Out Unqualified Candidates

When a job gets posted online, recruiters get inundated with a torrent of qualified and unqualified candidates alike. Filtering through these resumes is time-consuming and reduces a recruiter’s ability to quickly identify quality job candidates.

With Google Jobs’ multiple filters, it is possible for recruiters to better target candidates and only receive the resumes that best align with specific roles.

For example, instead of receiving generic resumes for nurses, now it is possible to filter results so that recruiters only receive resumes from entry-level nurses with two-years of experience in a hospital setting who live in Atlanta and expect to be paid $35K-$70K annually.

Reduces Cost

Increasingly, the need to go to CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, LinkedIn and others to post your job listing is waning as Google Jobs principally provides the same service in a more cost-effective manner. The average cost of interviewing, scheduling, and hiring a candidate is thousands of dollars; this cost could be reduced if recruiters work with fewer third-party job boards and advertising partners.

Considerations

Before your job postings begin appearing in millions of Google searches, here are a few tips to get started.

Optimize Your Job Listings

Keep your descriptions short and specific. Avoid any internal jargon that candidates would not search for or know. Study other ads in the market to make sure your job description has some similarity. Also, check to make sure your listing is consistent with your employer brand.

Enhance SEO

Google Jobs is a powerful tool. However, to harness its full potential, you should make sure your job postings are optimized for search. This means making sure you are tagging the correct keywords, titles and other attributes.

Mobile Ready

Make sure your listings are updated for mobile search, where 90% of job seekers now search first. You can use the quick test Google offers to check to see if your website is currently mobile-optimized as well.

What to Keep in Mind?

Connect Your Job Listings

There are a few main paths to connect your listings with Google Jobs. If you post jobs directly through your website, you can connect directly with Google. However, this option requires some technical knowledge such as marking up jobs, crawling, indexing, enriched search, APIs and structured data. This direct connection path can also come through your applicant tracking system (ATS) provider. Another option is to work through a third-party to manage your postings, e.g. LinkedIn.

Remove Old Listings

Google may penalize your site if job postings that have been filled are still being displayed, so make sure you regularly remove old listings.

Understand Not Everyone is Involved (Yet)

Certain jobs may not be included in Google Jobs search results, as some job boards are not integrated into the platform. As of April 2019, job search giant Indeed has not yet partnered with Google Jobs, so any efforts talent acquisition groups have with Indeed remain separate for now.

Conclusion

Working with Google Jobs benefits talent acquisition programs through increased reach, better candidate filtering and reduced costs. Before integrating Google Jobs into your TA strategy, organizations need to optimize their job postings. Companies need to understand the pros and cons of managing a Google Jobs program in-house versus working through an ATS provider or third-party integrator. Most ATS providers are optimized for Google Jobs, but make sure to confirm with your vendor. Talent acquisition leaders can also consider using the ATS module within PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology platform, Affinix. Google Jobs is available today through Affinix.

Talking Talent: Applying Global Lessons in Talent Acquisition with Guy Bryant-Fenn

Posted on by skatz

Guy Bryant-Fenn doesn’t like to sit still. In the two decades he’s worked in HR, he’s moved from an IT search to PeopleScout’s APAC managing director, transplanting from London to Sydney along the way. This global recruitment experience has given him a future-focused point of view and humility – a value he says drives honesty, integrity, ambition and tenacity.

We spoke with Guy from PeopleScout’s Sydney headquarters about the biggest issues in the Australia and New Zealand talent market and how they are shaping the talent acquisition industry. In our open conversation, Guy shares how the lessons from innovation in APAC should influence leaders around the world.

What are the biggest challenges facing the Australia/New Zealand region in talent acquisition right now?

That’s a great question. There are numerous challenges facing Australia, New Zealand and the broader APAC market in talent acquisition at present. First off is the availability of talent. It really is a compressed market here. We’re seeing a lot of employment growth in the healthcare and social assistance market, construction, education and training and professional. As we look forward to 2023, we’re seeing projected growth of half a million jobs or more, and the challenge that lies within that is the availability of skilled labor to fulfill those roles.

What are some of the biggest trends that you’re seeing?

The biggest trends that I think we’re seeing are a reaction to the availability of talent. So, we’re seeing a high degree of recruitment solutions that are focusing on passive sourcing—not those active candidates in the market, but those left-handed astronauts out there that we need to tap on the shoulder and attract into our clients’ organizations. We’re seeing a keen focus on market insights to provide the information of where that skilled labor is, who they are working for and how we can best attract them. That is done by a symbiotic relationship between people and technology, which means using advanced AI technology and attraction strategies that are enabling the people components to drive that passive sourcing.

Another big focus is diversity and inclusion. Organizations obviously see the benefit of diversity within their companies, and they want to ensure that they have a workforce that is reflective of the national demographic. So, they’re trying to balance the lack of availability of talent within the market but also drive a more inclusive workforce.

The final piece for me is really a greater focus on attraction and assessment. Organizations are wanting to understand the perception of what they are saying to the market. How does their employer brand portray them as an organization? What are the values that they are speaking to within market, and how do those values really flow through to how and who and what they are assessing within the recruitment process?

It sounds like in dealing with these challenges and working with these trends, technology plays a significant role. So, can you tell me a little bit about the role that tech has in transforming the industry and tackling the biggest issues you’re seeing now?

Tech is increasing in importance across the industry. We’re seeing an emergence within the HR tech industry of technologies that sit across each element of the lifecycle. So, workforce planning tools, AI passive sourcing tools, various different assessment tools from personality profiles to realistic job previews, situational judgment – and they go all the way through to onboarding and employment. The trick for us as a provider is to ensure that we are utilizing the best of those tools that will enable the recruitment process but also drive automation and efficiencies that allow us to elevate our talent acquisition teams to act as more as a business partner or in an advisory capacity.

What are some lessons from Australia/New Zealand that leaders in other markets should be paying attention to and learning from? 

I’ve lived and worked in Australia now for eight years, having come from the EMEA market, and what I continuously enjoy is the lateral thinking of talent acquisition leaders across Australia and New Zealand. We are not afraid to look at things through a different lens, take the best of the learnings from the Americas and EMEA and rightsize that for the Australia/New Zealand and broader APAC market.

We are also seeing a faster adoption and emergence of total workforce solutions, where providers have a view of both permanent and contingent labor across their enterprise. That’s partly because of lateral thinking, but that’s also because we are smaller in scale and can be more agile which allows for us to innovate quickly.

What are you most excited about for the future of talent acquisition?

We touched on it in pockets throughout this conversation—the advancement of technology is an exciting component. I firmly believe that there will always be a human element in what we do, but how can we continue to create that symbiotic relationship between people and technology and really evolve and advance our solutions?

An example of that for me is evolving the planning element of what we do from a data and insights perspective. Right now, organizations are working on their resource forecasts driven by a demand plan. Where we will see this evolving to is true workforce planning, future-backed workforce planning, where organizations will be able to predict the resources that they need – one, two, three years out. We will also see the emergence of that workforce planning component flowing across the whole recruitment lifecycle, and it will enable us as a business to ensure that we are driving those passive candidate pipelines.

We are setting ourselves up across both our attraction and assessment strategies to really enable our clients’ business objectives and ensure that we are executing talent at a strategic level and acting as a true business enabler for our clients’ organizations. What I’m most excited about is really the elevation of talent acquisition to that level, and it can’t happen quickly enough.

Recruitment for Retention

Posted on by skatz

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” It is perhaps the most time-worn question in a job interview. But if the candidate answers that if they are hired, they will be happily working in your organization, the odds are against this ever happening. Why? The average time workers in the U.S. remain in one job is just 4.2 years. And in other leading economies, the average single job tenure can be similarly brief. In the UK, workers change jobs every five years, while in Australia, the national average job tenure is just three years and four months. In Canada, the average length is 8.5 years, but the averages vary widely depending on the industry.

For those hoping to attract and retain top talent, these figures can be familiar – and a cause for concern. When human resource professionals look inside their organizations and identify employees who have defied the statistical average, staying with the company far longer than five years and contributing significantly to its success, they wonder “how do I get more of them?” With low unemployment making many job markets the most challenging in recent memory, there is genuine urgency not only to retain the best talent but to find a way to attract talent that will stay with an organization for the long-term. In other words, there is a need to recruit to retain, but how?

Know Your Talent: Why They Leave and Why They Stay and Thrive

Like many organizations, your company may already have an employee retention program in place. Enterprises are making considerable efforts to retain talent, and the processes they deploy to improve employee retention can also be incorporated into your recruitment process.

For example, it is relatively common to have exit interviews with departing workers to better understand why they are leaving the organization. When a sufficient number of exit interview results are available and evaluated, trends can emerge that can lead to actionable items to improve employee retention. Certain common traits or characteristics may also appear among those who voluntarily leave their jobs.

Less common, but potentially just as valuable, is the “stay interview.” These interviews with current employees allow them to express their concerns before they are in a position to leave, which can help leaders address issues and take steps to retain top talent.

And just as exit interviews can bring into focus the characteristics of those who quit, the stay interview can help identify the traits of those who remain and thrive. Once a group of long-term successful employees is identified, a stay interview can be designed for this group with the goal of identifying why they have remained with the company, what factors have contributed to their success and what characteristics many or most of them have in common. Identifying these characteristics in your candidate pool during the recruiting process could be an indicator of future success.

In today’s tight job market, if you are not working to identify candidates with the characteristics that have been proven to lead to long-term achievement in your company, your competitors probably are. SHRMreports that “Many organizations are seeking more of a ‘whole person’ gauge of candidates, experts say, assessing not just skills or intellectual horsepower but also personality traits, cultural fit and motivational drivers that can prove the difference between candidates who thrive over the long run and those who quickly derail.”

Predictive Analytics: Unlocking the Key to Recruitment for Retention

Predictive analytics is a type of data analytics that uses data to find patterns and then uses those models to attempt to predict the future. Consider the most basic data you likely have about a single employee who worked for your organization and left after five years. A sample of data points could include:

  • How they were sourced
  • Their addresses over their tenure at the company
  • Their education and certifications
  • Previous employers

These data points alone may not provide insight into why this employee joined your organization and why they left. But, if just these pieces of information were aggregated for all your employees, both past and present, here are a few insights which could be determined:

  • Is there a correlation between how an employee is sourced and their tenure at the organization?
  • Do employees who live far from the workplace quit sooner than those who do not?
  • Do employees from certain schools or that have particular certifications stay longer with the company than others?
  • Are there previous employers which produce more long-term employees than others?

The information found in even one of these examples could be built into your recruitment strategy and have a meaningful impact in recruiting talent that will remain with your organization.

The right technology using predictive analytics can provide effective recruiting insight, as PeopleScout’s Allison Brigden explains:

“In this tightening talent market with unemployment rates at record lows, predictive analytics is emerging as an essential AI tool for employers looking to stay ahead of the competition. Predictive analytics allows employers to use the power of data to make predictions about candidates and drive efficiencies throughout the entire talent acquisition process…

Predictive analytics can’t tell you what will happen, but it shows what is likely to happen based on past trends. It’s as close as employers can get to predicting the future.”

Solving for Retention

The dilemma faced by a major auto retailer was challenging but not surprising. The annual turnover rate in the retail sector is much higher than the national average in the U.S. With a 50% turnover rate and a need for 10,000 annual hires, there was an immediate need for drastic improvement

PeopleScout partnered with this automotive retailer and was able to rapidly address their turnover challenges by implementing the following solutions:

A Standard Hiring Model

An uneven hiring process was replaced, and a standard hiring model was put in place that included consistent OFCCP compliance and standardization across the company.

An Efficient Process

PeopleScout deployed a time-efficient screening process which focused on the quality of the candidate, with a guaranteed response from recruiting teams within 48 hours of application. To quickly present candidates to hiring managers, PeopleScout implemented block interview scheduling with great success.

Hiring Diversity

To help source and engage more diverse candidates, PeopleScout developed a comprehensive network of community organizations for partnered recruitment.

In-Region Recruiters

Collaborative relationships between recruiters and the client’s area managers were fostered by in-region placement of PeopleScout recruiters.

Transparent Reporting

Continuous improvement was driven through transparent reporting and analysis for the client’s executive and field leadership.

The Results:
  • PeopleScout hired 10,000 employees in the first year of the engagement.
  • The technician turnover rate improved by 5% and retail turnover by 6%.
  • Hiring diversity improved by 40%, including an increase of 2% for veterans and 6% for female hires.

What’s NEXT: Prescriptive Analytics

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Imagine your day as a lead recruiter for a major retailer. You have delivered successful results, but sometimes you get bogged down with small details. By the end of this month, you need to fill 27 requisitions for store managers and customer service supervisors – a pretty normal workload that you’re used to.

At 8 a.m., you look at a weekly dashboard report sent by your VP that describes how you are performing against monthly recruiting goals. You are doing well, but you have to turn it up a bit more. Ten of your requisitions are new, five are in the interview stage and eight are in the offer stage. You know how to manage this – you are a pro – but there is so much to do.

From 8:21 until 10:59 a.m., you respond to several calls, filter so many resumes you lose track, and perform a couple phone screens; it makes it hard to take a minute and plan with this type of pace.

By 3 p.m., the day has flown by and you now need to spend time reviewing your activity log for the day. In an ideal world, you’d clear your plate of your morning tasks and instead spend time building candidate relationships. However, you remind yourself that this type of pace and workload is true for most recruiters.

At 4:30 p.m., you receive some predictions from your finance team of where you need to shift your focus. This will help you manage your time better, but to be honest the data would have been more helpful if you had received it last month. You love reading the color-coded strike zone reports though and take note of how long it is taking to fill some of your harder-to-fill roles.

By 5:30 p.m., you leave feeling like you’ve done your best to tackle the day and made some real progress. You are putting out fires and making everything work, but what would be really helpful would be a prescription telling you what and where to attack each day to help you achieve even better results and be more efficient.

Maybe your prescription could look something like the following:

Prescriptive Analytics

Prescriptive Analytics is Next

In our story, the recruiter received several different types of information, but the amount of disparate data was still unhelpful in the recruiter’s daily work. What our recruiter needed was some form of prescriptive analytics metrics to figure out where to focus their time.

What does prescriptive mean in the context of analytics? Prescriptive analytics solutions make predictions and answer questions related to “what to do” and why some action will take place. Prescriptive analytic output also delivers results from different options to help support various decision paths.

Prescriptive analytics solutions are only beginning to enter the mainstream world of talent acquisition. Rob Wells, managing director of Workday in Australia and New Zealand said, “The most innovative companies are relying on analytics in their HR programs and those that are implementing prescriptive analytics will reap the biggest rewards.” Gartner predicts that the prescriptive analytics software market will reach $1.1 billion by 2019. InformationWeek lists resource optimization, broadly termed as matching resources such as people and goods with an organization’s needs (e.g. talent acquisition), as a strong target for growth.

Prescriptive analytics is more easily understood in context with its relationship to descriptive and predictive analytics.

Predictive vs. Prescriptive Analytics

While predictive and prescriptive analytics sound alike, prescriptive analytics is the more advanced solution of the two. Prescriptive analytics builds on predictive analytics forecasts and transitional analytics solutions such as diagnostic analytics to evolve toward overall better decisions.

Predictive analytics today is more widely deployed. Predictive analytics uses data to find patterns and then uses that information to make forecasts that can shorten the recruiting process and produce stronger hires. While predictive solutions produce forecasts based on existing data, prescriptive solutions answer problems. As Gartner states, companies should ask “What can we do to make ____ happen” – prescriptive analytics helps answer that question.

Talent Analytics Adoption: Most, Some, Few

Descriptive Analytics

Receiving detailed data on past behavior equates to descriptive analytics. Most companies have this today.

Most organizations, up to 90 percent, are using some type of basic analytics function such as descriptive analytics. This is a common activity in talent acquisition as well. Descriptive analytics activities in talent acquisition looks at activity related to candidate generation, like the volume of candidates, time-to-close, cost of the candidate search and source-of-hire.

Predictive Analytics

Reviewing predictions of what might happen is predictive analytics. Some companies have this today.

Giant retailers such as Amazon are known for their predictive analytics solutions that manage data, inventory and customer needs. Some recruiters in talent acquisition have also begun to use predictive analytics tools. Predictive analytics throughout the sourcing process is also integrated into PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology, Affinix.

Prescriptive Analytics

Knowing where to act and how to move in a specific way is prescriptive analytics. Few companies have this today.

The healthcare industry has seen success using prescriptive analytics. One company implemented a prescriptive analytics solution that analyzed the number of obese patients and then added cholesterol and diabetes risk levels to customize specific treatments. A few early possibilities are evolving for prescriptive analytics in talent acquisition. Prescriptive analytics could help predict learning paths for employees, helping to extend their tenure at an organization. Recruiters can also anticipate when candidates might ghost an opportunity – known as a candidate’s joining probability – and get a prescribed solution to fix the situation.

Challenges

As prescriptive analytics models enter the talent acquisition world, what are some implementation challenges to keep in mind?

  • Price. Right now solutions are targeted and priced more for larger organizations.
  • Talent. Many in-house analytics teams may not have enough people with the right skills to implement a prescriptive analytics solution. In fact many organizations are still struggling with adopting predictive.
  • Buy-In. Organizational buy-in to implement a solution like prescriptive analytics is critical. Many organizations are still in the consideration stage for predictive analytics as mentioned and are not ready for prescriptive analytics offerings.

Preparing Your Prescription

How should you prepare for the use of prescriptive analytics? Regardless of your organization’s readiness for prescriptive analytics, you should keep the following planning tips in mind:

  • Review your current analytics capabilities. Where is your organization in its analytics “journey?” Are you delivering complex or more simple descriptive analytics functions today?
  • Evolve your analytics business case. What problems can you solve today, what would you like to solve in the future? What tools will help you meet different challenges?
  • Assess potential vendors. Some vendors may say they are selling prescriptive analytics solutions but are not. Terminology across AI, machine learning and different analytics terms is sometimes misused. Do your due diligence to find out if your vendor can deliver the results you need.

Key Takeaways

  • Prescriptive analytics is the most advanced stage of business analytics currently available after descriptive and predictive analytics solutions.
  • While prescriptive analytics may not be used widely in talent acquisition, the potential for this next-generation analytics offering is promising.
  • To prepare for prescriptive analytics implementation, assess your company’s existing analytics challenges and determine if prospective vendors are prepared to help you with the analytics problems you want to solve.

Talking Talent Leadership Profiles: A Q&A with David Wilkinson, Boeing Global Talent Acquisition

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David Wilkinson spends a lot of time in airplanes, and that’s not just because he works for Boeing. In global talent acquisition at the aerospace giant, he has lived and worked in London and Dubai and now leads his team from Mesa, Arizona in the U.S. While a lot of people talk about globalizing talent acquisition, David actually lives it.

Regardless of whether he is looking towards the future of Boeing in the deserts of the U.S., the drizzle of the UK or the heat of the UAE, he is a talent champion. He’s also a member of the PeopleScout community. For this issue of PeopleScout NEXT, we caught up with David on an early morning call to learn about his insights on the future of talent acquisition.

What is the mission of Boeing Global Talent Acquisition?

Our journey is to become global talent champions. To us, that means delivering best-in-class solutions that unleash the full potential of Boeing’s people, products and services.


I’m really excited by that mission because it requires us to celebrate and champion talent at every opportunity. It also acknowledges the fact that it is a competition for talent, and we’re here to win.

What are some of your priorities as your team looks to the future?

The two things that I really think are the needle movers for us are operating globally and embracing an intentional use of talent technology. We are excited to work with PeopleScout and other valued partners in pursuit of those goals.


One of our main priorities is evolving our approach to talent technology. We’re working towards a holistic end-to-end technology strategy that will use data-driven insights to inform our experience and activities. I’m hoping that strategy will enable our teams to deliver the best experience every time, at every touch point.

What tools, methods and strategies are you exploring to achieve your approach to talent technology?

For me, the single greatest opportunity is technology. It’s also our single greatest dependency.


We’re adopting Workday globally. Given our scale, this is a significant endeavor. It’s been a two-year project, and we’re going to implement in 2019. So, our focus is on maximizing every opportunity that this change offers.


I see great potential for more intentional tools usage. When you implement a brand-new technology, you can be more intentional about that technology and the way you use your tools, processes and systems. What does that entail for Boeing talent acquisition? It means looking at artificial intelligence, business automation, access to real-time data and more.


We also see opportunities in technology to enable our global journey. Working in talent acquisition in London for eight years, Dubai for 10 years and now the U.S., I’ve learned that there are very, very few truly global tools. What’s big in the U.S. might not be big in Europe and may not be used at all in Asia, for example. This is an important opportunity for us and one that I believe will truly impact the candidate experience.

What are you most proud of in your role at Boeing?

I have been really lucky to lead some great teams globally, and specifically, I’ve been really lucky with Boeing to lead teams in London, Manchester, Delhi, Bangalore, Dubai, Riyadh, Nepal, Beijing, Tokyo, Mesa, Chicago and Seattle. Each of these experiences has influenced my personal development.


When I look at Boeing’s mission to Connect, Protect, Explore and Inspire Our World Through Aerospace Innovation, I embrace the global nature of that mission and the power of connectivity. We want to connect, protect, explore and inspire the world.


My experience and my career journey across the globe demonstrate the power of connectivity. I’m proud to be learning and developing alongside teammates in Mesa and nationwide. So, I’m most proud of the global nature of my role and the journey I have been on – and how I have personally and professionally developed throughout that process.

What are you excited about for the future of talent acquisition?

It’s a similar theme – the opportunities provided by global technology and the opportunity to operate as a team that is globally efficient, locally relevant and resolutely focused on the candidate and user experience.


The opportunities that come with a global talent approach are long established. We know that, for example, there are a million graduates in India. There are also 200,000 Chinese nationals who pursue further education in the U.S., but they have yet to truly be embraced because it is difficult for employers to hire them.


We need to make it easier for talent to move around the globe, and even if you just look on a local scale, we need to make it easier for talent to move around the country. Then we need to make it possible for workers who have been influenced and enriched by an experience in a new location to return home with a more global perspective and stronger than when they left. That’s huge.


I’m energized daily by our mission to become global talent champions and to embrace an intentional use of talent technology. As I look to the future, that is what I’m most excited about as we evolve our partnership with PeopleScout and other valued partners.

2018 In Review: PeopleScout Thought Leadership

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Throughout 2018, we’ve written about some of the biggest trends in talent acquisition and workforce management. As we head into 2019, we’re looking back on some of the most important topics of the past year.

RPO, MSP and Total Workforce Solutions

Total Workforce Solutions in Practice
Drivers and Benefits of Total Workforce Solutions
Four MSP Trends to Make your Program More Effective
Hospitality Staffing: RPO and Hospitality, a Perfect Blend
Positive Global Economic Growth and Its Impact on Talent Acquisition
The Value of Globalizing your Recruitment Strategy
A look into the Gig Economy
Contingent Employment Arrangements: The Implications of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Survey
The Contingent Workforce Landscape: Trends and Strategies
Considerations When Sourcing Talent Globally
Expanding the Talent Landscape by Recruiting Virtual Employees
How the Skills of the Future will Impact Enterprise Recruitment Teams
How to Create a Workforce Equipped with the Skills of the Future
Wages and Recruitment: The Pressure is Building
Prospects for the Class of 2018
Changing Workforce Demographics: Aging Talent

Candidate Experience

How to Improve Your Candidate Experience
How to Create and Provide a Positive Candidate Experience
Four Factors Impacting the Way Employers Interact with Candidates
How (And Why) to Effectively Recruit Recent Graduates
Removing Barriers to Employment for the Long-Term Unemployed
Through the Grapevine: How to Create and Manage an Employee Referral Program
Rethinking Candidate Generation Strategies
Employee Retention: Combating Turnover
Ghosting in the Workplace
Strategies for Building an Effective Talent Community
The Long-Term Unemployed: Your Untapped Talent Pool

Healthcare HR

Healthcare Workforce and Recruiting Trends to Watch
Six Things to Expect from your Prospective Healthcare RPO Partner
Paging All Doctors: Effective Physician Recruiting Strategies and Tactics
Rural Healthcare: How to Recruit and Attract Clinical Talent in Rural Areas
How to Use Pre-Employment Assessments and Testing in Healthcare Recruiting
Leveraging Recruitment Marketing to Attract Healthcare Talent
Healthcare HR Technology To-Do List
Healthcare Recruiters: How Technology is Improving Healthcare Recruiting
How To: Sourcing Healthcare Workers
Healthcare Recruiting Lexicon
Medical Staffing: How to Engage and Retain Healthcare Workers
Recruiting a Traveling Nurse: What You Need to Know
Healthcare Workforce Planning: What You Need to Know
Finding the Right RPO Provider for Your Healthcare Staffing Needs
Six Tips for Healthcare Recruiting
Talking Talent Podcast: Navigating the Talent Acquisition Challenges of a Major Hospital Expansion
Talking Talent Podcast: How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare
Talking Talent Podcast: Addressing the Workforce Gap in Nursing
Talking Talent Podcast: How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Ebook: How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Ebook: Healthcare Recruiting Lexicon

Technology

Reducing Unconscious Bias with AI
How to Leverage Workforce Analytics in Workforce Planning
Virtual Reality: Enhancing the Candidate Experience
Workforce Planning: Leveraging Workforce Analytics for Deeper Insights
How Robotic Process Automation is Reshaping Recruiting
Predictive Analytics: A Powerful Talent Acquisition Tool
How to Use Chatbots to Improve Recruiting
Talking Talent Podcast: Using Robotic Process Automation to Streamline Recruiting Processes
Talking Talent Podcast: Using Predictive Analytics to Hire Best Talent Faster
Talking Talent Podcast: How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare
Ebook: Using Chatbots to Improve Recruiting

Talking Talent with PeopleScout, our Podcast

How Many Requisitions Should a Recruiter Carry?
How Employers Can Learn to Translate Military Resumes and Hire More Veterans
Addressing the Workforce Gap in Nursing
How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Using Robotic Process Automation to Streamline Recruiting Processes
Using Predictive Analytics to Hire Best Talent Faster
Navigating the Talent Acquisition Challenges of a Major Hospital Expansion
How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare

Military and Veteran Hiring

Military Spouses: How to Hire the Overlooked Talent Pool
Building a Veteran Onboarding Program
Talking Talent Podcast: How Employers Can Learn to Translate Military Resumes and Hire More Veterans
Ebook: Best Practices for Hiring Veterans

Ebooks and Whitepapers

Best Practices for Hiring Veterans
How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition
Using Chatbots to Improve Recruiting

Compliance Corner

Washington State’s Paid Medical and Family Leave Program
Sexual Harassment
Department of Labor Office of Compliance Initiatives
California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018
Ban the Box Update
Arbitration Agreements
Worker Classification in the Gig Economy
Salary History Update
CAN-SPAM, CASL and More
GDPR
HR Compliance Trends for 2018

Four Factors Impacting the Way Employers Interact with Candidates

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Across the globe, employers and candidates live in an accelerating state of change. Adapting is difficult for both workers and employers, but the process of changing strategies as an organization is more complicated. There are legacy systems in place – especially for large organizations – and traditions can become entrenched. Remaining nimble is a challenge. For that reason, it is important to watch the employment landscape and respond with smart and targeted strategies.

In this article, we will explore four factors driving changes in the way that employers interact with job candidates: the digital transformation, current global economic conditions, shifting trust and privacy expectations, and the changing landscape of job boards.

1. The Digital Transformation

In a study by Gartner, 80 percent of executives reported that they have a digital initiative underway and 69 percent believe that they need to become significantly more digital to remain competitive.

According to McKinsey, 51 percent of job activities can be automated, but fewer than 5 percent of jobs are can be completely replaced by machines. The report also determined that the pace of change is so rapid, that by 2030 as much as 14 percent of the global workforce could need to change occupational categories.

Employers need to respond by finding candidates who can lead through change and learn and adapt – rather than candidates who only excel at a job as it exists today. This is becoming even more difficult as top candidates are in high demand due to record-low unemployment rates in many major global economies.

Fast Company reports that in May 2018 employers posted 314,000 tech job openings and only filled 8,700 of them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also projects employment of software developers to grow 24 percent through 2026, faster than the average for all other occupations.

What does this mean?

Employers need to be able to attract and identify the candidates of the future – the people who have the skills and mindset needed to drive success into the future. That means developing an employer value proposition, or EVP, and an employer brand platform that is unique, authentic yet aspirational, and dynamic, sharing your EVP with your target audience, using innovative, data-driven strategies to attract candidates for the future and assessing candidates to identify those with a growth mindset.

2. Global Economic Conditions

In the decade since the start of the global economic downturn, many countries have recovered and now have competitive, candidate-driven markets for talent.

In the U.S., the unemployment rate is down to 3.7 percent. In the UK, it is down to 4.0 percent. There are strong employment numbers around the world. In a competitive market, employers need to be proactive about attracting both active and passive candidates.

Additionally, people are starting to feel more comfortable leaving their jobs, which is both an opportunity and a challenge for employers. It means that you have an opportunity to bring in strong candidates, but it also means that some of your strongest employees could leave for greener pastures.

With all of the press coverage about the state of the global economy, in-demand candidates will also recognize that the hiring landscape has changed. This, coupled with the potential for multiple offers, means that top candidates will have higher expectations – not only in regard to salary but also the purpose, mission and culture of the employer they choose.

What does this mean?

Employers around the globe should look for the best talent and use innovative assessment techniques to identify those who derive purpose from the work done by the organization and who are passionate about the mission. Employers should also ensure their offers and workplace culture lives up to and exceeds the expectations of the best candidates, and they should invest more in retaining top talent.

3. Shifting Trust and Privacy

Candidates are growing more cautious about which organizations they trust and who can have access to their personal data. Candidates in the U.S. and Europe have been exposed to political disinformation campaigns that left many reevaluating their sources of information. Additionally, privacy issues at Facebook have motivated many candidates to increase their social media privacy settings.

As a result, research shows that many people have grown to distrust traditional advertising from brands. Instead, more people are relying on recommendations from friends and relatives, according to Nielson. Forbes reports candidates are asking more about reviews on Glassdoor and issues that they read about online like turnover rates and layoffs. Consumers are also taking steps to avoid ads, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that 80 percent of adults in America use at least one ad blocking method.

While most candidates have some information available online for employers to find, some of the most tech-savvy are cutting back. According to Pew Research, 74 percent of American Facebook users have either taken a break from the site, adjusted their privacy settings or deleted the app from their phone. Another survey found that half of consumers in the UK don’t trust anyone with their personal information.

Beyond reactions from candidates, employers also face increasing regulations. The GDPR, or EU General Data Protection Regulation, took effect in May 2018. It requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. TechRepublic reports that 61 percent of compliance professionals say they’re concerned that the reduced data availability and new requirements of GDPR could impact future sourcing and recruiting. In the U.S., California recently passed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. These laws are popular with voters, and employers should expect privacy concerns to be a continuing issue.

Despite these issues, Forbes reports that HR teams still have more data now than ever before. Employers benefit from the growing amount of data available, but they should keep in mind its limitations.

What does this mean?

Employers should work to build an authentic EVP and employer brand platform to gain trust and buy-in from candidates. This should include the development of brand ambassadors who can reach candidates who are skeptical of traditional information channels. By developing an employer brand platform that takes advantage of peer-to-peer networking, employers can break through the walls put up by ad-blocking software and ad-skeptical candidates. The authenticity of the message is key to appearing more trustworthy.

4. The Changing Role of Job Boards

The role of job boards is also changing rapidly. Google Jobs makes it easier for candidates to search for job postings the same way they search for everything else on the internet – and candidates have grown to expect this. According to Forbes, the second page of Google search results accounts for only 6 percent of all website clicks. This means that to ensure your target audience can find your available positions, you must have job descriptions optimized for search.

Inc. reports that Google’s preference for relevant text- and video-based content will also apply to Google Jobs results. Employers need to be SEO-savvy to get postings in front of candidates. Additionally, many candidates now search for jobs using the same search engines that supply information like Glassdoor reviews and news stories about your organization.

Job boards and aggregators have also changed in response to Google Jobs. Candidates no longer need to search a variety of job boards to find postings that match their skills. Because of this, for our UK client base, we are already seeing a decreased return on investment from job boards which has decreased our own spending.

What does this mean?

Employers need to be able to respond quickly as the job board environment changes. Google Jobs has only been available in the U.S. since 2017, and it was only introduced in the UK in 2018. This means there are still more changes to come. Employers should constantly evaluate which job boards bring in the most high-quality candidates in a cost-effective way and consistently adjust their strategy.

Where to Go from Here

In response to this rapid change, these four factors should be seen as challenges and opportunities, not barriers to success. Employers can use strategies like employer branding, new ways of generating candidates and assessments built for the future to set themselves apart. 

Reducing Unconscious Bias with AI

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Last winter during a bitterly cold rush hour, a father and son were in a terrible car accident off the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago. Tragically, the man died before help arrived. Paramedics were able to successfully transport the child to the nearest hospital where he was brought into an operating room for surgery. The surgeon entered the room but immediately stopped saying, “I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son.”

Who was the surgeon? His mother. This slight variation of the surgeon’s dilemma story helps illustrate how unconscious bias works. Every day people unknowingly form opinions about others based on minimal input; this is known as unconscious bias. These thoughts are usually based on deeply held beliefs. No one wants to be biased, but it is part of being human. Unconscious bias can be related to race, gender, age, religion, sexual preference, veteran status, disability status, socio-economic status, college attended and many other attributes. In fact, at least 150 different unconscious bias types have been identified and studied.


In this article, we’ll explore ways that unconscious bias appears in talent acquisition, review how AI can be used to reduce bias in the recruiting process and share tips for how to select an AI partner that can help employers reduce bias.

Unconscious Bias in Talent Acquisition


While employers strive to uphold legal standards for equal employment opportunities, unconscious bias issues in talent acquisition still exist.


Unconscious bias can occur at many stages throughout the recruiting process. For example, a recruiter may unconsciously write job descriptions that appeal more to a certain group of people. A recruiter looking for an IT developer might advertise a role as a Java Ninja, which could discourage women from applying because the title uses more masculine language.


During the candidate screening process individuals might also experience affinity bias, a specific type of unconscious bias that occurs when someone with a certain background is favored. An instance of this might include a hiring manager seeking candidates with an MBA from a particular school. At a company level, bias can even extend to citing a company’s culture fit as a reason to hire a certain type of person, i.e., hiring only younger workers.


When unconscious bias spreads across a candidate pool, bigger risks, such as a lack of organizational diversity, may emerge. A Deloitte study found that a diverse workforce is twice as likely to meet or exceed a company’s overall financial goals. Another study by Catalyst cited a 34 percent higher return to shareholders for companies with more women in executive positions.


Without a diverse workforce, organizations run the risk of possible legal action. A recent age discrimination lawsuit against three large technology employers claimed millions of older workers were allegedly blocked from seeing Facebook job ads because of their age.


Outside of legal action, companies also face the possibility of accidentally harming their own recruiting efforts. Silicon Valley has long been accused of having a less than diverse workforce. However, 47 percent of millennials say they prefer working for a diverse company.

How AI Can Reduce Bias in the Hiring Process


Artificial intelligence can decrease unconscious bias in recruiting practices in two key ways.

  • First, as a sophisticated pattern detector, AI can find bias across millions of data points.
  • Second, when potential candidates are identified, AI can catalogue profiles based only on certain skill sets. AI can also be programmed to ignore all demographic information, like zip codes, race or gender.

While many vendors today offer AI-enabled capabilities for tasks such as interview scheduling or candidate communications, using AI specifically to reduce the challenges of unconscious bias is still emerging. Montage recently launched Unbiased Candidate Review that helps companies reduce discrimination during the selection and interview process. Unbiased Candidate Review, part of Montage’s on-demand voice and video interviewing solution suite, includes hiding the candidate’s identity and voice until a hiring manager enters feedback on the candidate.


Another example of fighting bias through AI includes the story of entrepreneur Iba Masood. As a native of Pakistan that graduated from college in the United Arab Emirates, Masood had a difficult time finding a tech job after graduating. She was not from the traditional pool of young, male, Ivy League candidates that seek developer roles. So she created her own AI solution, TARA, to combat bias in the tech recruiting process. Today, candidates that use TARA’s online freelancer marketplace are judged only by the code they produce. Companies looking to find project-based developers bid based on the current skills needed for a project with no knowledge of the candidate’s socio-economic or previous professional background.

Potential AI Risks


While promising as a solution, AI algorithms need to be built appropriately and monitored frequently to make sure AI does not perpetuate the bias it was programmed to erase. As AI emerges to help reduce unconscious bias, several groups, including federal agencies, are observing AI’s impact to make sure risks are appropriately addressed.


Some of these groups include the following:

  • The AI Institute, which reviews AI’s ongoing impact on society.
  • Explainable AI, which focuses on tracing the reasoning of AI algorithms back to its human creators so links are not lost.

In addition to these formal groups monitoring AI, organizations can take steps to make sure the correct AI processes are in place. Because AI is constantly evolving, errors in an AI platform’s logic can quickly grow, making problems hard to trace. This is especially true if errors are made at the beginning of the process causing the common problem of garbage in, garbage out. However, there are strategies teams can put in place to reduce risk:

  • Recruiting teams can combine their expertise with data gathered from AI to produce more inclusive job descriptions and candidate pools in the future.
  • Bias can also be reduced by setting strategies internally to identify and eliminate bias through training and other programs.
  • Organizations should assign diverse teams to build AI algorithms so a wider set of ideas is represented in the AI’s output.
  • Finally, companies should conduct ongoing audits of AI algorithms to test that efforts related to AI are progressing appropriately.

How to Select and Evaluate an AI Provider


When assessing enterprise AI partners for your organization, make sure to review the following:

  1. Ask questions. If a potential partner isn’t willing to explain how its algorithms work, walk away. A good partner is prepared to support your business and will be able to articulate how the solutions work in terms you understand.
  2. Understand the vision. Not all partners will be experts in your industry. However, from a technical perspective, ask to see a long-term product roadmap to understand plans for the company’s product evolution and what kind of influence you may have into the roadmap features.
  3. Agree on the support model. Make sure the partner has a thorough understanding of how you operate and how AI folds into that process. Share what is critical to you and ensure they’re ready to commit to supporting those items for you. Without this, your support of your own clients could be affected.

Expanding the Talent Landscape by Recruiting Virtual Employees

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With very low unemployment in many of the world’s major economies, those seeking to attract talent should explore the benefits of recruiting employees that work from home. Since a number of these countries, such as the United States and the UK, are considered to be at “full employment,” where nearly everyone who wants a job has a job, the traditional formula of recruiting in the market where a company is located may no longer be as effective as it has been in the past. And since the top reason for quitting a current job is to increase wages, employers face the challenge of meeting candidate expectations for higher pay based on local salary ranges.

While remote work may not be viable for some positions, expanding the pool of candidates outside a specific geographic area allows employers to take advantage of the growing trend in telecommuting as well as potentially reduce attrition, decrease cost-per-hire and even improve productivity.

The Virtual Workforce is Substantial (and Growing)

A study by Global Workplace Analytics and FlexJobs released earlier this year reported that 3.9 million U.S. employees, or 2.9 percent of the total U.S. workforce, currently work from home at least half of the time. This number is up from 1.8 million in 2005, an increase of 115 percent. And as of 2017, 43 percent of U.S. workers worked remotely at least occasionally, up from only 9 percent of workers in 2007.

Growth in remote work is not limited to the United States. In the UK, one in seven people work from home, according to the Office for National Statistics. In Canada, nearly half (47 percent) of employees work from outside one of their employer’s main offices for half the week or more. And in Australia, the number of people who work from home has risen to 30 percent. The significant percentages of telecommuters is not the case for all economies. Eurostat reported earlier this year that working from home was slightly more common in the Eurozone than in the EU as a whole. And some non-Eurozone countries have a negligible virtual workforce. Bulgaria has only 0.3 and Romania just 0.4 percent of its workers working from home, as an example.

A Deloitte study on Global Human Capital Trends reported that 70 percent of employees value telecommuting, but only 27 percent of employers offer this option. Therefore, companies that provide opportunities for telecommuting may have a competitive advantage in attracting talent.

Reducing Employee Turnover and Increasing Productivity

While study results vary, there is evidence being offered that working from home can increase employee retention. One study by OwlLabs found that companies that support remote work have 25 percent lower employee turnover than those that don’t.

A study conducted by a Stanford University professor set up a control group between office-based workers and those were allowed to work from home. As the Harvard Business Review reports:

“Half the volunteers were allowed to telecommute; the rest remained in the office as a control group. Survey responses and performance data collected at the conclusion of the study revealed that, in comparison with the employees who came into the office, the at-home workers were not only happier and less likely to quit but also more productive.”

The professor noted that “The results we saw at Ctrip, (the company studied, which is the largest online travel agency in China and the owner of other travel sites worldwide including Trip.com) blew me away. Ctrip was thinking that it could save money on space and furniture if people worked from home and that the savings would outweigh the productivity hit it would take when employees left the discipline of the office environment. Instead, we found that…Ctrip got almost an extra workday a week out of them. They also quit at half the rate of people in the office—way beyond what we anticipated. And predictably, at-home workers reported much higher job satisfaction.”

Providing the option of working virtually can be a crucial factor in retaining valuable talent. If an employee needs to relocate temporarily for family reasons, such as caring for an older parent, or permanently due to a spouse’s job transfer, the employee can remain with the company by working remotely. Having this option available allows the employee to remain with the organization while the employer retains experienced talent and saves the costs of hiring and training a new worker.

Cost Savings for Employers and Employees

This same Stanford study showed that the company saved $1,900 per employee working from home over nine months. Remote workers allow employers to save money on furniture, parking, office space, insurance costs and other expenses. Global Workplace Analytics’ research shows that a typical employer can save more than $11,000 per year for each half-time telecommuter, the result of a combination of increased productivity and reduced real estate, turnover and absenteeism.

The cost benefits of remote work also extend to employees. Those working remotely save on commuting expenses, depreciation on their vehicles if they drive and gain the time back that would normally be spent going to and from work.

Can Remote Work Be a Solution for Your Business?

The difficulties of recruiting locally and the potential returns of developing a remote workforce may be attractive, but it is also uncharted territory for many companies. How would you source candidates throughout the nation and even beyond? Can you develop recruiting processes, including interviewing, that are effective using video and other tools if you have only relied on face-to-face meetings until now? And once a candidate is hired, how will you manage the onboarding process remotely? The answers to these and many other questions confronting a company exploring a remote workforce option can be provided by a recruitment process outsourcing company (RPO). An RPO can provide the experience, technology and expertise to ensure your success as you remove the geographic limits of your talent pool.