In a competitive job market, it’s important for businesses to consider innovative approaches to attracting talent. As a business owner, you may not have the bandwidth or skill set to recruit essential roles for your business as you grow. If you don’t have an internal HR resource who can create and drive your recruitment efforts, Recruitment Process Outsourcing (or RPO) may be an effective solution. In this blog, we outline Red Clover’s RPO process and how we provide consulting support to companies in building their workforce.
RPO vs. Traditional Recruiting
RPO is when a company chooses to outsource its recruiting to an external partner. This can be done in a number of ways. A company may outsource for a single business function’s recruitment or they may trust the entire recruiting process to the external partner. Recruiting may be the only outsourced HR function, or a company may choose to completely outsource the management of HR to a consulting firm like Red Clover. We manage every aspect of the recruitment process for your company and are only invested in helping you grow your workforce with the right, talented people.
If you went with a traditional recruiter or placement firm, you are subject to their commission for every person you hire through them. 15% to 25% markup for a hire can be incredibly cost prohibitive, especially for small businesses. And recruiters only are involved in one step of the process – getting candidates in front of you. Beyond that, their focus is getting candidates across the line so they can collect their commission and move on to filling another role. It’s a business model based on volume and frequency, not necessarily quality. Alternatively, a firm like Red Clover can manage your entire HR function, and the RPO service is part of our overall service offering, so we own every piece of the recruitment cycle and subsequently provide seamless transition from candidate to new hire.
We don’t charge a fee for every placement. The cost is included in our engagement because our primary objective is finding the skilled talent needed to enhance your organization and add to the culture.
5 Steps in Recruitment Process Outsourcing
When you outsource your recruitment process to Red Clover, we deliver hands-on, full-cycle recruitment solutions for your business. We work directly with you and hiring managers to optimize your talent acquisition process, reduce the time to hire and improve the quality of your hires. We take a comprehensive and collaborative approach to enhancing your recruitment practices, from beginning to end. Here we outline how we innovate every step of how you attract and hire top talent.
1. Assessment of Hiring Needs
When going to market to fill vacancies, Red Clover helps you develop a strategic approach to talent acquisition. We help you avoid the “spray and pray” method of recruiting, where you post all your jobs and cross your fingers they attract quality hires. Instead, we work cross-functionally to assess your company’s business needs and use that information to create a well-developed, intentional approach to hiring. Not every role can be a priority, but we manage our consulting resources to make sure every business unit has the RPO support they need to fill their roles.
2. Writing Up a Job Description and Searching for Talent
Once we’ve outlined the why, when, and how of bringing your company’s open job roles to market, we work with you to review and update your job postings. A job posting serves two purposes – it’s a marketing tool that makes a candidate say “I want to work for this company” while clearly outlining the responsibilities of the job so the candidate says “I have the knowledge, skills, and experience to do this job for this company.” Too often, companies will just recycle job descriptions from the last time they tried to hire for the role, but the role has changed or there is outdated language or information. Having an outdated job description makes it difficult to find the right candidates for a position. With Red Clover as your RPO partner, you’ll only go to market when all stakeholders are confident the job description accurately reflects your company and what the successful candidate will be responsible for if hired.
Additionally, Red Clover, as part of its recruitment process outsourcing services, provides you access to the most qualified pool of job seekers out there. We leverage our LinkedIn Corporate Recruiter license so you can attract the best candidates through job postings but also through active candidate sourcing on LinkedIn! And in most cases, the cost of access to Corporate Recruiter is included in our engagement cost!
3. Screen and Interview Candidates
Screening and interviewing can be time-consuming. It doesn’t have to be! Red Clover leverages Spark Hire video interviewing solutions to help candidates move through the interview process faster while being efficient with the hiring team’s time.
Red Clover believes the best predictor of future behavior is past performance. We use behavioral interviewing as the best way to get quality answers from your candidates. Rather than asking hypothetical or philosophical questions, behavioral interviewing invites the candidate to speak about their past experiences so you can learn how they will act in similar situations in the job for which they are applying. A quick example – rather than ask “How do you develop employees who report to you?”, we ask “Can you tell us about a development plan you implemented with one of your direct reports?” This allows the candidate to provide specific examples, through story-telling, to understand how they will behave in the job. Getting better answers allows us to guide you in making better hiring decisions. We train your entire workforce in behavioral interviewing theory, so they can confidently apply this theory into their interview practices and candidate evaluations.
4. Evaluate Candidates and Make an Offer
Since Red Clover’s team has committed to a complete recruitment process overhaul, we’re with you every step of the way. Once you’ve identified your top candidates, we guide the decision-makers in an evaluation of these candidates, based on the feedback we’ve gathered throughout the interview process. We discuss their performance through the Spark Hire interview and the behavioral interviews and compare it to the needs of the position clearly outlined in the newly revised job description. We engage in a thorough debrief to ensure you are confidently making an offer to the right candidate. We also handle the offer process, verbally offering the position to your candidate of choice and providing you offer letter templates to ensure your employee documentation is compliant from day one.
5. Onboard the New Hire
Then, once the candidate accepts the offer, Red Clover provides a smooth transition for the candidate by also managing their new employee onboarding. We work with companies to develop onboarding processes where we address new employee administration but also focus on the new hire’s integration into the company. Since we focus on candidate experience throughout our recruitment process outsourcing, we work to extend a positive candidate experience into a positive employee experience, which in turn, enhances your employer brand, which makes you more attractive in a competitive job market, which then lets you attract quality talent!
Are You Looking For an RPO Provider?
If your business is dissatisfied with the traditional recruiting model, it’s time to reconsider how you approach your recruiting efforts. Red Clover’s team of qualified HR consultants is ready to help you innovate and invigorate your recruitment process, without the outdated and expensive cost model placement firms and recruiters still use. Want to learn more about our RPO service? Reach out!
