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Soundbites | Catalyst
Recruitment process outsourcing: an abridged history
With more than two decades of experience in recruiting, David Mason, head of talent
acquisition at Santander, has watched recruitment process outsourcing evolve.
We spoke to him about the past, present and future of RPO.
What has been your experience of
recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)
and how has its role changed?
RPO started around 20 years ago and was all
about reducing agency fees, but over time, more
sophisticated clients started to realise the value in the
quality of people being brought into the organisation.
Businesses are becoming much more strategic about
how and where they’re acquiring resources.
What has driven this change: the RPOs or
their clients’ needs?
Some RPO companies have genuinely been
driving innovation in the marketplace, but it’s also
fuelled by talent acquisition leaders becoming
more knowledgeable and, in some respects, more
demanding. There’s certainly been a phase of doing
more for less. But that’s starting to be replaced by
nuanced measures where people are looking at
quality. Does that one person bring value to the
organisation? How do you measure that value?
How has the relationship between internal HR
teams and RPO consultants changed?
RPO used to be seen as a pure cost-play exercise
and, in the worst cases, it can still be seen as
‘outsourcing’. But with more sophisticated clients,
close working relationships have led to innovation
and better performance. We’re working much more
closely on strategic workforce planning and are
considering how the RPO can benefit the business
much more beyond “it’s cheaper than what I was
doing before”.
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How has technology changed RPO?
Technology has changed marketing approaches; they
are more advanced and targeted at the right kind of
individuals. It’s all done online. It has meant that we
are much better at targeting candidates. We also have
a lot more information on the market and where to
find people.
How has it changed the daily lives of
RPO consultants?
The good thing is that we have a range of tools to help
us talk to, engage and manage candidates and store
their information. We can search databases, build up
candidate relationship-management systems, gather
candidates and advertise roles much faster.
However, in some respects, it has made the
consultant jobs more complex. Managing that
technology in terms of being able to get the right fit
for a candidate, the hiring manager, and also making
sure that the RPO has a stable platform to work on,
is also very important.
Will RPO consultants become more integrated
with the businesses they work in?
Yes and no. Technology will make the nature of the
work more strategic, but there will be fewer people
servicing individual clients. They’ll start to do
much more consultancy work around areas such as
branding, selection and strategic workforce planning.
And the reason is that in terms of repeatable exercises
and some of the work that’s done today, a lot of it will
get automated.
What skills will future RPO consultants need?
A broad range of stakeholder skills. Recruiters will
need to stop being waiters or order takers and become
the sommelier. It’s all about being consultative.