RPOland

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow Barry on Twitter @bddiamond

In his book, “Tomatoland,” Barry Estabrook covers the history of the grocery store tomato in the United States. The narrative is a scathing portrayal of South Florida’s tomato growers and their tactics to achieve total bland uniformity.

To commercial tomato growers, bland uniformity is perfection. And it starts with hard, tasteless, green balls that barely dent when they fall off a truck at 60 miles per hour and that must be gassed to achieve the sick-pink hue they present in supermarkets.

Additionally, regulations actually prohibit growers in the southern part of Florida from exporting many of the older tasty tomato varieties because their coloration and shape don’t conform to what the all-powerful Florida Tomato Committee says a tomato should look like.

What is happening in the tomato world is tragic and I believe, as the RPO industry matures, we must be conscious not to make the same mistakes made by others. Many companies have taken the entire "flavor" out of their products and services (just bite into a supermarket banana or tomato) because they believe homogeny is the path to almost limitless market opportunities and profit.

However, what about those of us (and it is a growing segment) that want more and see specialized and uniqueness as a value. Why should we be limited to commoditized, generic products and services when we clearly see significance and greater ROI in customization. In all things including tomatoes and RPO, you get what you pay.

As Recruitment Process Outsourcing grows larger and larger, there is a challenge all service provides face. The challenge is we need to avoid the temptation of sacrificing what makes us special at the expense of just being bigger. Our services must remain client by client centric in order to maintain our loyal and delighted customers. We must always put quality ahead of quantity.  We cannot become like the large Florida tomato farmer who said, 'I don't get paid a single cent for flavor, I get paid for weight.”

Honestly, I do fear that some day RPO will become mass produced and available at ever corner human capital supermarket. And when that happens the only thing left for me to do is write my book entitled “RPOland, The History of RPO and How Bland Uniformity caused its Demise."

To Go or Not Go RPO Bananas

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow Barry on Twitter @bddiamond

There are so many lessons to be learned from others on how or how not to run a successful RPO business that it sometimes becomes difficult to pick. Over the years I’ve tended to fixate on those examples which we clearly want to avoid. I believe that by understanding bad business models and then doing the opposite, we are much more likely to be successful. The current state of the banana industry provides the latest example of a dire business strategy that recruitment process outsourcing service providers can learn from and steer clear of.

Dan Koeppel, the author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, recently published a story in The Scientist magazine claiming that the type of banana that most Americans eat may be doomed and on the brink of disaster.

Why you ask? Because the banana industry is a monoculture based on cloning. This monoculture was devised to drastically drive down the cost of bananas and make them the cheapest of all the supermarket fruits. So even though there are over 1,000 banana types, the only one we eat is the Cavendish banana.

Now, the Cavendish banana is seriously threatened by something called Panama disease. And because of cloning that means that when one banana gets sick, every banana gets sick.

This monoculture is a recipe for disaster and yet the nothing is being done because the banana companies believe that they can come up with some quick fix (chemical) to fight the disease. What we are observing is human denial. Human denial is unfortunately a very common occurrence and banana companies are run by humans.

I believe there are many RPO service providers who are running their business like the banana industry with a singular, one size fits all recruitment outsourcing product offering that is very low cost but also highly susceptible to issues and problems. The banana model may work ok for awhile; however, as conditions change and the service provider remains static the ROI and success quickly fades. So while cheap in the beginning, the end result may prove to be far more costly if the RPO program is doomed to partial or complete collapse.

When I look at the business of bananas, I see how not to run a RPO business. So here’s to more variety of bananas on supermarket shelves and more customized and customer-centric Recruitment Process Outsourcing programs.

For more on RPO and Bananas, check out Jeff Jurinak’s blog on Talent Boost.

Applying Schnoz Research to Recruitment Process Outsourcing

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow Barry on Twitter @bddiamond

How many different shapes of human noses are there?

The correct answer is 14, according to Abraham Tamir, an Israeli scientist.

Tamir set out to count, sort and categorize the shapes of human noses mainly because no one had ever done this experiment before.

Analyzing the shape of noses fulfilled both his scientific curiosity and his artistic appreciation for the contours and appearance of this vital part of human anatomy. Tamir also likes looking into topics that others have not yet investigated -- and the nose seemed, well, ripe for the picking.

So my curiosity led me on a scientific investigation of RPO solutions. I decided I needed to know how many different kinds of Recruitment Process Outsourcing offerings there are in our industry.

Since my research time was limited, my experiment lasted only 15 minutes in duration.

My Hypothesis: I could find and aggregate more RPO product and service names within the designated time frame than there are types of noses.

My Results: Success. I found 18 solutions in 15 minutes of searching. Names I discovered during my trial were: End-to-end RPO, Hybrid RPO, Enterprise RPO, Selective RPO, Lifecycle RPO, un-RPO, Project RPO, Global RPO, Customized RPO, 2nd Generation RPO, Optimized RPO, Complete RPO, Adaptive RPO, Modular RPO, Initiative RPO, On-demand RPO, Precision RPO and Strategic RPO.

However, in reality, there should be one kind of RPO solution; one that is customized and client-specific. Generic and standardize RPO services (with fancy sounding names) may appear (or sound) good but the overall ROI is not nearly as impactful as a try tailored RPO solution. 

RPO adjectives like Optimized, Adapative or Strategic are quite meaningless if the solution is not client-centric. It should be about the client and all too often it  more about the RPO firm (and their limitations).

Perhaps some service providers might be open to renaming their RPO offerings more appropriately Vanilla RPO, Basic RPO or Simple RPO.

 

 

 

This is the Nixon nose - It was seen in 0.8 percent of noses in the research.