RPOlosophy

If you’re a member of Costco, the nation’s largest wholesale club, you probably know that Coca-Cola’s products are no longer on the shelves. Costco yanked the soft drinks to make a point. The two companies are haggling publicly over the price consumers pay for the beverages.

This unusual open squabble intensified when Costco posted signs in its soft drink aisle that read: “At present we are not carrying Coke products because we cannot provide the value our customers deserve.”

Quarrels between companies and suppliers could become more common. In this economy, organizations are looking for value and might, as a final resort, look to a public forum to get what they want.

So far Recruitment Process Outsourcing has been spared from public feuds. There are whispers about situations where companies and their RPO service provider have strained relationships but none of this has ever surfaced in the form of an article, case study, or press release. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in February of this year, I wrote Where a RPO firm “comes from” defines what and how they deliver. I hypothesized that most companies cannot escape their heritage. I analyzed pure plays, like Pinstripe, and other RPOs from the staffing, technology, and recruitment marketing industries. I concluded, in a somewhat pathetic way, that sometimes this can be a distinct advantage and sometimes not so much.

However, the other day, I saw a chart of the large food giants and the organic brands they own.

• Cascadian Farms is part of General Mills,
• Horizon is owned by Dean Food,
• Seeds of Change is a member of the M&M Mars family,
• Odwalla is part of Coca-Cola,
• And Boca Foods is a division of Kraft

At first this shocked me. In my naïve Whole Foods mentality, I just assumed most of these organic foods companies were entrepreneurial, pesticide/hormone free, tie-dye wearing free spirits. It never occurred to me that most of them were really owned by the established food giants and part of the NYSE.

Second and more importantly, this got me to thinking about the impact of acquisitions in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing industry. I began to wonder if a company could retain their heritage after an acquisition. And while I won’t regurgitate all the recent acquisitions in RPO (we all know the players and transactions), I will ask the most basic question: Read the rest of this entry »