- Blogs & Articles
Choosing between RPO vs. a recruitment agency in Singapore
Ask any HR generalist or professional they spend the most time on, and they will likely tell you recruitment.On-boarding activities that clients can choose to outsource such required background checks, offer letter generation
Time spent on recruitment will be amplified if the organisation decides to launch a new business unit or division. The requirements increase with any initiative to deepen or pivot human capital.
Regardless of whether your organisation has an internal talent acquisition function, it’s always good practice for HR leaders to re-evaluate their existing recruitment strategy and compare it with other recruitment options as part of an annual HR strategy-setting session. This will help clarify if the existing recruitment strategy remains fit for purpose.
For ease of comparison between working with an RPO and external recruitment agencies, I have listed a few key aspects for HR leaders to consider when deciding whether to work with an RPO or external recruitment agencies.
With the RPO market expected to grow 22 percent across APAC, including Singapore, now’s the time to consider the implications of both models. (See note 1.)
Partnering with clients on recruitment KPIs
With the broad overview of recruitment across your organisation, an RPO solution is well-placed to raise issues in certain business units where additional attention is required from HR or business. This may include long lead time to interview, or diversity challenges. It could also include skills development areas, such as interviewing skills for hiring managers.
Within most recruitment agencies, clients may be dealing with multiple account managers. This may cause reduced visibility of recruitment bottlenecks or issues in various parts of HR operations or other business units.
Cost of hiring
Having an in-house talent acquisition model means you have a high-level of fixed HR costs. If hiring volumes drop unexpectedly, you can be left with surplus resources and therefore unnecessary cost in your business. Likewise, scaling up at short notice can be a major challenge for many in-house talent acquisition teams.
Another aspect to consider when coming off a recruitment scale-up and returning to normal recruitment levels, is that it can leave you with extra resources which you then need to manage. Consider the financial costs and effort involved when shedding additional headcount, for example when carrying out redeployment or retrenchment exercises.
With an RPO model, the model is designed to easily scale recruitment resources up and down, in line with hiring volumes, so it keeps cost structures flexible and not fixed.
Unless your in-house model can directly source 95% or more of your total roles and less than 5% agency usage, RPO models are typically less expensive. They commonly achieve 95% or higher direct sourcing levels.
Quality of hire powered by innovation
The definition of quality of hire differs from organisation to organisation. Nonetheless, it’s critical for your organisation to identify your own interpretation, to ensure you hire the right person for continued success.
Innovation plays a key role in driving quality of hire. This topic comes up often in industry conversations, including many which were held at our recent Dynamic HR Singapore event.
On a strategic level, six steps can be taken to develop a successful quality of hire programme:
- Create a compelling business case to secure executive buy-in
- Identify business critical job families
- Determine the most relevant quality of hire metrics
- Collect data and undertake analysis
- Present findings and provide change recommendations
- Act on change recommendations and conduct annual reviews
These insights come from a global benchmarking study conducted by Hudson RPO and the HRO Today Institute.
We are often asked to help clients develop a custom set of quality of hire metrics. These can be used as key performance indicators when implementing an RPO solution.
At Hudson RPO, we pride ourselves on being innovative and forward-looking. We’ve invested global resources into scouting the marketplace of recruitment productivity tools, such as automated reference-checking and interview-scheduling or using AI in recruitment. Armed with this curated portfolio of recruitment technology services and tools, we’re able to provide clients with best-fit HR technology consultancy.
You don’t often find external recruitment agencies investing resources into recruitment tools for the benefit of their clients. The extent of technology uptake in the agency landscape tends to be limited to use of an ATS.
With Hudson RPO, we’ve got our own ATS, InGenium, which we use internally. We’re also able to offer InGenium and wider tech consultancy to clients.
Time spent on recruitment invoicing
With part or all recruitment centralised with RPO, you get a single point of contact when it comes to invoicing or discrepancy follow-up, reducing the administrative burden on HR and Finance.
The number of invoices that HR and Finance will have to process, verify and approve will depend on the number of agencies engaged. This part of recruitment ops can get out of hand very quickly.
Onboarding activities outsourced
Clients can choose to outsource a range of onboarding activities. These can include background checks, offer letter generation, or internal IT access requests. External recruitment agencies are unable to do this due to clients’ IT security and privacy standards.
One-stop recruitment service
With a nimble approach, we can tailor our recruitment offering to meet the needs of clients. The eventual RPO solution could encompass temporary recruitment, contract recruitment, or permanent recruitment, or any combination.
Some external recruitment agencies offer permanent recruitment, either by themselves or through affiliates. However, most external recruitment agencies lack the flexibility to offer temp-to-permanent recruitment.
Do you need to hire a lot of people very quickly? Often an RPO can assemble large recruitment teams at very short notice, which is sometimes hard for an in-house team to do. This is because most RPOs have an RPO servicing them and they use this function to build pipelines of recruitment talent for their own business to enable them to resource solutions for all clients at short notice. They can also borrow resources from less-active accounts to help with urgent requirements to scale up.
For example, Hudson RPO had in the past assembled a team of 55 within six weeks for a client who was embarking on a large recruitment project.
Considering what’s best for your recruitment strategy
So, what makes sense for your business? Agency, RPO, or perhaps a blend of both models? The answer will depend on your organisation’s needs and what’s happening across your industry and the wider Singapore talent market.
Notes
Recruitment Process Outsourcing Market in APAC to Post 21% CAGR Through 2022 (Technavio). http://www2.humanresourcesonline.net/rpo-market-in-apac-could-post-21-cagr-through-2018-2022/
Sign up to receive the latest recruitment insights and Hudson RPO news.
Related articles
Thanks to strong growth, Hudson RPO opens new office in China
We are delighted to announce the opening of a new office in Pudong, Shanghai.
The new location features lovely offices and room for further expansion, said Brad Brenner, General Manager for China.
Thanks to strong demand for recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), the team in China has grown by more than 50 percent.
The additional headcount led to the opening of a new office in one of the country’s largest cities, Shanghai.
Brad recently spoke with Recruiter magazine about business growth in China, saying: “China hiring remains strong, employers are posting large numbers of positions across a wide variety of industries and competition for employees remains high.”
The biggest opportunities within the Chinese market tend to focus on technology recruitment and health sciences recruitment, he said.
Manufacturing recruitment and hospitality recruitment are also driving growth, he added.
From talent sourcing to helping businesses scale rapidly, discover how we serve the Chinese market.
Related articles
Hudson RPO identified as a Leader in NelsonHall’s NEAT vendor evaluation for RPO
OLD GREENWICH, CT – Hudson Global, Inc. (“the Company”) (NASDAQ: HSON), a world leader in recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) that operates under the brand name Hudson RPO, today announced its positioning as a leader in NelsonHall’s NEAT vendor evaluation and assessment of global RPO providers. Being positioned as a leader is the highest designation in this third-party evaluation tool.
Hudson RPO is identified as a leader in all six RPO provider categories. The categories include overall positioning, delivery innovation, technology innovation, candidate experience, sourcing candidates, and geographic footprint and scalability.
“Since 2013, Hudson RPO has frequently ranked on the NEAT vendor evaluation, a testament to our ability to meet growing buyer expectations as the market evolves,” said Jeff Eberwein, Chief Executive Officer of Hudson RPO. “Ranking across all categories demonstrates that we are a well-rounded, dynamic provider. As a partner, we can demonstrate a longstanding track record of supporting our clients’ strategic growth objectives.”
Nikki Edwards, Principal HR Analyst with NelsonHall, said “Our NEAT evaluation found that Hudson RPO proactively demonstrates its commitment to clients by adapting and tailoring RPO services and technology and tools according to their individual needs.”
Within the last year, Hudson RPO has been named to other notable industry rankings. In late 2018, the company was named to the HRO Today Baker’s Dozen list of top global RPO providers, ranking No. 1 for implementation and No. 2 among Asia Pacific providers. In March of 2019, Hudson RPO and our client AstraZeneca Australia were named Innovative HR Team winner by HRD Magazine.
About Hudson RPO
Hudson Global, Inc. is a leading total talent solutions provider operating under the brand name Hudson RPO. We deliver innovative, customized recruitment outsourcing and total talent solutions to organizations worldwide. Through our consultative approach, we design tailored solutions to meet our clients’ strategic growth initiatives. As a trusted advisor, we meet our commitments, deliver quality and value, and always aim to exceed expectations. For more information, please visit us at www.hudsonrpo.com.
About NelsonHall
NelsonHall is the leading global analyst firm dedicated to helping organizations understand the ‘art of the possible’ in IT and business services. NelsonHall provides buy-side organizations with detailed, critical information on markets and vendors (including NEAT assessments) that helps them make fast and highly informed sourcing decisions. And for vendors, NelsonHall provides deep knowledge of market dynamics and user requirements to help them hone their go-to-market strategies. NelsonHall’s research is based on rigorous, all-original research, and is widely respected for the quality, depth, and insight of its analysis.
5 steps to being better prepared for your job interview
- Blogs & Articles
5 steps to being better prepared for your job interview
Congratulations! You have been selected for an interview at Company XYZ. Now what? Are you nervous? Has it been a while since you’ve gone for an interview? Or maybe you have had a few interviews but didn’t get selected to move on to the second stage.
It’s normal to have butterflies in your stomach. Here are some things you can do to feel more confident and better prepared.
1. Keep a copy of the original advertisement
I’m surprised when a candidate asks me to send them a copy of the job description once they’ve been contacted for an interview. Perhaps they are not aware that many companies delete the job posting once they have a strong candidate pool.
Asking for a copy of the job description may give the recruiter the impression that you indiscriminately apply for many jobs, hoping that something eventually sticks. Or perhaps you are disorganized.
Recommendation: For each job that you apply for, immediately make a copy of the job description. The first impression that you want to give at the interview is that you are organized, have a good understanding of the job profile, and are a great match for them.
2. Research the company
What do they do? Have they been in the news? Imagine how impressed the interviewer will be if you can demonstrate that you understand their company. Being able to intelligently discuss the firm’s successes, challenges, and growth areas is a huge advantage to making a great impression!
Recommendation: Research the company in advance. Understand their mission statement. Find articles written about them or the industry. Think of pertinent questions to ask at the end of the interview.
3. Talk to the receptionist
You would be surprised how much you can learn from the receptionist. Furthermore, did you know that many hiring managers will ask their receptionists what they thought of you and your possible fit for the company’s culture?
Recommendation: Be positive. Smile at the receptionists. If they are not busy, make small talk, and make a good impression.
4. Bring 2 extra copies of your resume
There will be times when the interviewer may have forgotten or misplaced your resume. Or perhaps a second interviewer was added to the meeting at the last minute, and they need a copy of your resume.
Recommendation: Bring at least two or three copies of your resume to the meeting. It will give the interviewer a positive impression of how well prepared you are. Also, you may need to refer to your resume if the interviewer asks questions about a certain line or paragraph.
5. Anticipate interview questions
Research the most common questions asked during job interviews. Prepare examples of answers you could give to tough questions. The interviewers are looking for instances where you personally added to the solution of a problem, rather than hearing about what the “team” did.
Recommendation: Even if you were part of a team that got the results, be ready to clearly identify how your personal input was a part of the solution.
Being prepared for your interview will make you feel more confident and allow you to make a good first impression. Research, anticipate questions, and remember to smile. Good luck!
Sign up to receive the latest recruitment insights and Hudson RPO news.
Related articles
Manufacturing recruiters: try these 3 tips to find great talent today
- Blogs & Articles
Manufacturing recruiters: try these 3 tips to find great talent today
Imagine you are a production supervisor walking the floor of a manufacturing facility. Order changes come quickly, and you need to immediately reprogram the machines. Plus, you are responsible for quality control and maintaining safety requirements.
Checking phones on the production floor is strictly prohibited. At day’s end, you enter the designated area for online access. More than 100 emails await, and you answer what you can before leaving.
Imagine it’s a candidate-short market. You are a recruiter trying to contact this production supervisor/hiring manager about an amazing candidate that the organization needs to action right away or risk losing. If recruiting isn’t viewed as a major priority, how do you get the hiring manager’s attention?
This scenario is common in manufacturing, an industry where open production roles can put product quality and even employee safety at risk.
Account Director Anne Payment, who leads the recruitment team for a large pulp and paper manufacturing company, knows how to create a more nimble and efficient manufacturing recruitment process.
She explains: “The manufacturing candidate pool has narrowed, particularly in specialty industries like pulp and paper. Recent mergers and acquisitions have further narrowed the field, and the paper industry also has an aging workforce.
“In the past, hiring managers could take more time with candidates. Today, it’s simply unrealistic to keep a solid engineering candidate waiting for six weeks.”
Manufacturing recruiters: do you also face this kind of predicament?
Discover three tips that can help all manufacturing recruiters find top talent against the challenging backdrop of modern manufacturing.
Set up the communication flow for success
Some smaller adjustments may seem obvious, but don’t always happen. Yet, they can make a real difference in a candidate market where timing is significant.
Anne recommends you educate hiring managers on why recruiting needs to be a priority.
She explains: “Their day-to-day-jobs are so demanding, sometimes they aren’t seeing the bigger picture about why recruiting and resume review need to be a priority. One, because we want the best talent, but two, because open roles will affect their day-to-day responsibilities. It’s harder to impose quality control and even abide by safety requirements when you are short-staffed. Having an HR business partner and other more senior stakeholders on the client side reinforcing this message can help drive the message. “
It’s a 50-50 partnership of course, and recruiters need to adjust to hiring managers’ schedules. For the most urgent needs, recruiters should text the hiring managers so that when hiring managers leave the floor, a text immediately prompts them.
Production hiring managers tend to check email in the morning prior to walking on the floor.
Anne gets terrific results by building that awareness into her approach. She says: “Our recruiters either get up early or schedule candidate interview invitations to send early morning. We’ve found that this increases the acceptance rate on the first try.”
Plant the seed while candidates are young
Young people aren’t thinking about manufacturing—particularly in niche industries such as pulp and paper. For professional roles, Anne recommends that companies have a college recruitment team and offer internships with training beginning sophomore year. Target the three or four closest schools. Bring in interns to learn the industry at a time when they are contemplating what career path they wish to pursue.
For both professional and non-professional roles, attend career days at local high schools that might serve as feeders, particularly for labor jobs. Educate students that labor roles pay well with the opportunity for advancement.
Also, students don’t realize the innovative aspects of working in manufacturing.
Anne says: “At my organization, IT professionals are programming massive machines and constantly seeking ways to optimize process efficiency and reduce waste, which makes the process more environmentally friendly. Find things that will resonate with what young people want in their careers.”
Be open to other industries
In a candidate-short market, hiring managers need to be open to candidates from other, similar industries.
Anne says: “After several mergers in my industry, there are only four major players left in the market. Making experience in our industry a deal-breaker is no longer realistic. Candidates with backgrounds on similar machines used by chemical, steel, or other manufacturing companies, may acclimate easily to our machines. To fill the role with high quality candidates, it’s important to be flexible.”
Discover more tips for recruiting manufacturing employees, including ‘walking the floor’ to build top relationships that translate into candidate leads.
Sign up to receive the latest recruitment insights and Hudson RPO news.
