RPOlosophy

With the list of RPO suppliers increasing exponentially year after year, it seems like RPO is becoming more of a commodity.  From staffing companies with a RPO division to agencies buying a RPO firm to traditional pure play firms to new start ups, the list grows longer and longer.  The longer the list gets the tougher it is for companies to syphen through and find the right partner.  This seems to be leading to more and more RFP’s and more and more decisions made solely on price. 

If Human Capital is one of the most important pieces of your organization Read the rest of this entry »

Hint: ABBA has the same thing in common.

Please share your answers. I will either reveal the winner or provide the answer this Friday

And the answer is:

Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB)

Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid (ABBA)

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

The winner answer of “they’re all acronyms” was submitted by Mike Marschke

I was speaking with a colleague of mine the other day who specializes in identifying, driving, and managing talent pipelines for many Fortune 500 companies across the US. Mike commented that with the increasing number of active candidates in the market, and with many HR departments reducing headcount, those left ‘holding the bag’ of applications may feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of candidates they are receiving. (See visual provided by Mike Marschke) Without the proper tools and processes in place, these recruiters may greatly reduce or even eliminate any communication with candidates. This would be a big mistake. Read the rest of this entry »

My co-blogger, Anne Bucher, is responsible for many of the client implementations at Pinstripe.  She has the unique skill to take a complex hiring system and reduce it to individual components, which, in my opinion, makes her a RPO Reductionist.

Unlike Descartes, who believed things could be understood by taking its pieces apart, studying them, and then putting them back together to see the larger picture; Anne believes Read the rest of this entry »

“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.” Karl Marx

With today being Darwin’s birthday, I thought it appropriate that we look at the evolution of RPO.

It all started with RPO (this is how our industry was named) or just sourcing and screening candidates, then we added hiring logistics and became EPO (employment process outsoucing), and now our services encompass the process from Requisition-to-Results (R2R™) or as some like to say “from req. to check”.

My question to the RPOlosophy community is “What’s next?”

Last week I was traveling and had 2 great customer loyalty experiences.

Why do I use ‘customer loyalty’ and not ‘customer satisfaction’ or ‘customer service’? Because in the words of sales trainer and author Jeffery Gitomer “Customer satisfaction is worthless, Customer loyalty is priceless”. I fully buy into this philosophy. (FYI – this is the title of one of his books and is a must read for anyone in business.)

But back to the story…. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend sent me this blurb from Inc. Magazine (January 2009) and the numbers did not surprise me. However, I was taken somewhat by the last sentence (conclusion).  While I know that raises and bonuses are few and far between, has anyone experienced or have knowledge of employers cutting starting wages or salaries for new hires? I haven’t seen this to any large extent; however, I’m curious to know if companies are leveraging the current economic crisis and making major starting wage and salary adjustments.

“The number of job seekers relative to open positions in the U.S. surged in 2008. At the end of October, there were 33 people looking for work for every 10 openings in the U.S., according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. In contrast, at the beginning of the year, there were only 19 job seekers for every 10 open positions. The latest numbers reflect the widest gap between jobs and people looking for work since September 2003, the end of the so-called jobless recovery that followed the dot-com meltdown. The news for employers is obvious: “Workers will be willing to take wage concessions,” Shierholz says.”

Most companies cannot escape their heritage. Sometimes this can be a distinct advantage and sometimes not so much. RPO firms are no exceptions.  Here are the 4 major RPO supplier legacy categories and some insights. Read the rest of this entry »