Aug 05

Variance Is Sometimes Necessary in Quality Recruiting

By Chase Wilson Global Talent Acquisition, Recruitment, Recruitment Process Outsourcing No Comments »

For those that know me and my penchant for process mapping, quality control, and all things compliance, the following blog may seem out of character. This all started after perusing an article from the Harvard Business Review, March 2009 titled, “When Should a Process Be Art, Not Science”.

Any Six Sigma professional likely knows that the enemy of process quality is variation and the push in any quality initiative is to work to identify variation in a process that results in waste, errors, or bottlenecks. However, the aforementioned article highlights another perspective in that there are many processes—namely recruiting and sales—that have an inherent element of “art” that cannot be ignored. Executors of the recruiting process wrestle with an effort to maintain consistency while at the same time addressing the nuances that come with the art of recruiting.

In a previous blog posting (http://www.sourceright.com/blog/?p=71 ), I espoused the advantages of a truly experienced recruiter in the recruiting process. Lately, I’ve been questioning the efforts of so much of the recruiting industry to standardize, standardize, standardize. More and more RPO providers are working towards a shared services center model with a strong push towards a standardized, commoditized approach to recruiting. The has been done to, ensure compliance, improve economies of scale, implement repeatable best practices, with the end goal guaranteeing process consistency. For some RPO solutions, this approach may suit the client’s specific talent acquisition needs very well. Analyzing the recruiting process and the many components that directly impact it, there are two key areas that should work towards standardization:

• ATS – Commonality of technology ensures a one-stop shop for compliance auditing and requisition tracking

• Measurements – While the individual targets may vary based on position complexity, the metrics themselves (e.g. time-to-fill, diversity of candidate pool, recruiting cost efficiency, etc.) should be the same

But should the methods and tools utilized for the Vice President of Product Development requisition differ from that of the next Customer Service call center class? Naturally, the techniques and avenues a recruiter exploits recruiting for these two categories drastically diverge. Even the people (i.e. recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers) involved in each example likely differ greatly in expectations, experience, and earnestness. Furthermore, the current job environment might impact each hiring category in very different ways, in turn, transforming the way a recruiter might approach each hiring challenge.

Going even more granular, every requisition has inherent nuances that an experienced recruiter will recognize and adjust to accordingly. I’m not suggesting that the process should evolve with each requisition nuance, but the critical to quality goal in most requisitions, is a quality hire in the shortest amount of time possible. An experienced recruiter knows where the process boundaries truly exist to maintain consistency, compliance, and client satisfaction while at the same time achieving that end goal.

Dartmouth Tuck School of Business professors’ Joseph M. Hall and M. Eric Johnson, who authored the article mentioned above, recommend some practical approaches to this Art versus Science dilemma in a business process. They conclude that each has important value development roles in many business processes. They specifically describe the role of art as “allowing for flexibility, creativity, and dynamism that a purely scientific approach cannot replicate.”

Future leading edge RPO best practices and processes will incorporate the strengths of both recruiting art and science and be measured by the appropriate customer (art) and process (science) focused metrics to determine future solution quality levels and success.

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Jul 23

SourceRight Solutions in the News…with SourcingEdge and SourceRight Advisor

By Rebecca Callahan Contingent Workforce Management, Global Talent Acquisition, Managed Service Programs, Recruitment, Recruitment Process Outsourcing No Comments »

As organizations are becoming more sophisticated in sourcing talent and demanding better results from their sourcing strategies, SourceRight Solutions is reinforcing their commitment to providing workforce management innovations by offering greater transparency on contingent workforce trends and providing an exclusive edge in a highly competitive environment. 

SourceRight, recently announced the launch of SourcingEdge, a proprietary candidate sourcing methodology that is designed to help talent acquisition outsourcing clients gain a competitive edge in identifying the best and brightest talent from active and passive candidate pools. The SourcingEdge Career Networking Hub provides clients with rich talent pools; gives candidate access to thousands of job opportunities; provides career resources to aid in career searches; among other advantages.

SourceRight has also launched SourceRight Advisor for talent acquisition programs, a workforce analytics and thought leadership solution that draws on the company’s experience, aggregate business information, knowledge and scale to help businesses develop better-informed strategies to optimize their services and workforce management spend.  SourceRight advisor will deliver specialized expertise and guidance including policy, compliance, change management, market intelligence and supplier relations.

The launch of SourcingEdge and SourceRight Advisor is the next phase of the company’s commitment to continuously revolutionizing recruitment strategies and services for today’s emerging workforce population.

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Jul 22

Think Big Picture….

By Mary Anderson Contingent Workforce Management, Managed Service Programs, Recruitment No Comments »

When looking at a Managed Service Program and its supplier base, the high importance level of a strong partnership between these two entities, as they support a common client, is both logical and critical.  So it is really critical to “Think Big Picture” beyond who is your MSP solution provider….you also have to understand the caliber of suppliers and the state of the actual supplier partnerships the MSP provider brings with them.

Many times, a supplier in one common client may be found in multiple client accounts of MSP providers. Occasionally, a top performing supplier with the ability to provide the quality talent a customer needs may only be found in one client.  MSP Supplier participation lists at customer locations typically have been “built” by absorbing the current supplier base already on the ground at a client. Unfortunately though, you can get some great suppliers included in a new MSP solution, you can also get some not so good. You can, and often do, get the good, the bad and the ugly.

But what if a MSP provider already knows all about the bad and the ugly supplier characters out there in the marketplace?  Giving a new client the ability to avoid bad and ugly choices or changing those choices in a new MSP engagement? What if, through a stringent screening and qualification process, the supplier with the most competitive rates, the strongest ability in staffing capabilities and the best reach for a particular client geographic coverage areas walk in with the MSP provider?

A triangular benefit occurs: The MSP provider smoothly implementing a supplier program with companies familiar with its processes; suppliers gaining a new client to their portfolio they know they have the ability to support; and, a client that gets a seamless transition in supporting their contingent hiring!

Furthermore, a stronger and longer lasting partnership between MSP supplier and its supplier partners develops outside of just an individual client, with acknowledgement and reward tied together by a long-term partnership focused on the clients’ needs and requirements.  Leading Japanese business organizations have, for decades, managed successful long-term, high quality partnerships thru what is know as “keiretsu”.  Maybe a little of this long-term partnership philosophy needs to be the standard operating practice delivered by solutions in the MSP industry today.  And clients need to more deeply evaluate the “keiretsu” depth of the MSP’s supplier partnerships.

Think Big Picture…..The MSP solution is only as good as the partnership management capability of your MSP provider and the caliber of suppliers willing to do business with them, long-term.

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Jun 24

Don’t Forget the Importance of Supplier Satisfaction in a Successful MSP Engagement…

By Wendy Linden Contingent Workforce Management, Managed Service Programs, Recruitment No Comments »

Recently, Staffing Industry Analysts rolled out its 2010 VMS/MSP Buyer and Supplier Satisfaction Survey, seeking a brief “Net Promoter Score (NPS)” opinion and rating of VMS/MSP solution providers like SourceRight Solutions and its competitors. Now, many will automatically focus on what the buyers thought; who had the most customer responses; and, were buyer satisfaction levels a high or low rating on the quality of services provided. After all, the customer is the most critical satisfaction perspective in any business transaction, right?

What may be a more telling result from this industry satisfaction research however is the NPS satisfaction opinion of the staffing suppliers who participate and support MSP engagements. For any participating supplier, there is certainly an advantage of having access to a known volume of customer spend with managed competition. This is true regardless of the MSP models/engagements, though admittedly, some models can provided more attractive returns than others for a supplier.

For sure, the surveyed buyers will definitely be focusing on the overall quality of their MSP program/engagement, which would include supplier delivery performance to predefined service level agreements and other metrics. But when a supplier is rating the quality of a MSP engagement, what might be the business perspective of their opinion?

Opportunity. Fair Access. Participation Levels. Efficient, Managable Process. Profitability. And, equally important, a Collaborative Partnership.  An MSP program cannot succeed without the strength of some “highly satisfied” supplier partnerships that support a mutual MSP customer. Suppliers may be similar in staffing service offerings, but every organization is unique in its history, experience, capability, business operations and point of view. MSPs need to engage their staffing supplier community beyond the required SLAs and KPIs. Ideas for process and program refinement, improvement and optimization come from open lines of communication and a shared, common interest to provide the highest levels of quality services to exceed a client’s staffing needs and requirements.

So look for SIA’s announcement of their 2010 VMS MSP Buyer Satisfaction Survey results in the next month or so, but carefully review the accompanying Staffing Supplier satisfaction results to get the complete picture of industry leading MSP program/engagement performance.

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Jun 17

SourceRight Advisor Innovation Bulletin: Leveraging Alumni Portals to Access Reliable Quality Boomerangs

By Wendy Linden Managed Service Programs, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, SourceRight Advisor Bulletins No Comments »

Developing and leveraging client alumni portals cost-effectively produces reliable quality talent pools for business organizations and their MSP/RPO workforce service provider.  After decades of aggressive, successful implementations of disintermediation strategies, it makes perfect sense to access known talent pools now willing to engage in new, flexible employment arrangements.  Why only use traditional talent acquisition value chains when cost-effective and sometimes more reliable and flexible alternatives are available by leveraging an organization’s proven human network and business community.

A vast amount of research indicates that the American workforce has changed resulting in a rise of independent, career-minded workers which is driving significant implications for the U.S. employer.  SFN Group’s Emerging Workforce Study took an in-depth look at employee motivations, expectations and their viewpoints on success and failure, and further explored the divergent aspects of the “emergent”, independent workforce compared to the traditional “job-security focused” worker.  This research has consistently found a growing segment of “emergent” independent workers who seek a new and different employment compact. (Info link: http://spherion.mediaroom.com/pressroom/index.php?s=41)

Concurrently, it’s no secret that we can’t keep all of our employees forever so the opportunity then becomes how we maintain a long-term affiliation with them.  Staying connected to former employees is a low cost, high value opportunity for a variety of reasons including:

  • Reengagement potential of known and proven alumni talent
  • Maintaining a competitive edge by tapping into flexible working arrangements for full time and/or “project” based needs and requirements
  • Direct “disintermediation” reduction in talent acquisition sourcing costs and time to a productive engagement
  • Further cost reductions with on-boarding, job-training, production start-up and other general assimilation costs when engaging alumni workers
  • Reduction in disengagement, off-boarding expenses
  • Tapping into and leveraging the alumni’s referral network
  • Corporate ambassadorship (spreading the goodwill, maintaining the corporate image/reputation)  

Alumni Resource Centers are a great way to optimize your relationship with your alumni talent. The deployment of a company branded Alumni Resource Center portal allows your SourceRight staffing service recruiters to mine a proven talent pool of high quality engaged “boomerangs” (returning alumni talent). The result is faster time to fill/hiring periods of high quality, proven, known talent with cost effective talent acquisition and engagement.

Incidentally, Alumni Portal/Resource Centers are being established by many business organizations with the outsourcing of the entire deployment and management of the Alumni Resource Center program…..from managing the program’s content relevance and the building of the talent pool, to managing job postings and matching the candidates to the actual jobs/projects, etc… This allows the organization to focus on running their own business with the right talent at the right time for the right costs.

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Jun 10

SourceRight Advisor MarketTrends Bulletin: Shorter Term Contracts Leveraged for Cost Control & Savings

By Wendy Linden Contingent Workforce Management, Managed Service Programs, Recruitment, SourceRight Advisor Bulletins No Comments »

Our top trend this month: Shorter term contracts, specifically in the Professional and IT space.

This trend has emerged because of clients’ cost control needs and requirements; which allows access to higher dollar talent over a shorter period of time, primarily focusing on critical projects with priority budget allocations. Since most contingent talent is still presently in great supply, it’s working. This short term contract engagement strategy provides important financial management flexibility to support any uneven economic business cycles in the near-term.

But as the market continues to turn and more budgets constraints are relaxed, demand will start to dictate whether this strategy remains a viable option. When the business environment turns more active/competitive, those organizations with longer term projects will always be able to capture more of the supply of available, high quality, talent.

Other important emerging trends:

  • Social Media boom in the workplace, driven primarily by business organizations, is producing lots of project work for content and design development.
  • Small/local staffing companies are aggressively vying to partner with big MSP players, who are becoming strategic “Channel Masters” of significant volumes of spend in the staffing industry
  • Increases in industrial spend (SFN Group has seen a 26% increase recently in this space)
  • H1-B restriction for companies who received TARP funds spurring growth in outsourcing suppliers
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Mar 17

It’s not easy being the Contingent Talent Gate Keeper….

By Wendy Linden Managed Service Programs 1 Comment »

Imagine an overloaded procurement manager, with strategic critical projects and responsibilities interrupted frequently with meetings about new projects, new RFPs, new contracts to review and sign, and managing up to their company’s “C” level leadership.

This procurement professional also happens to have the privilege of refereeing the buying process of contingent labor, engaging staffing suppliers, perhaps, negotiating price and helping onboard resources from staffing firms. And dealing with whatever performance issues the staffing firms or their temporary staff resources may have…..all in a community of hundreds to potentially thousands of contingent, contracted resources……welcome to procurement morphing into full-blown human capital management.

Oh, and they have to field multiple, daily incoming calls of staffing suppliers looking for an opportunity to do business with their company. Maybe the human resources department used to perform this function, but the trends show more and more procurement departments have taken on this entire responsibility, from procurement to vendor/contract management.  Breathing and eating become optional today for the procurement “guy” or “gal” in charge of a company’s temp staffing resource solution.

The scenario is an oft noted reason for the inception of a MSP/VMS program. Frankly, there are a lot of great reasons: cost containment, risk mitigation, supplier performance metrics, rate card normalization, and consistency of process, to name a few.

Centralization of contingent workforce procurement by engaging a MSP and/or VMS solution gives the procurement folks a fighting chance to survive and capture sought-after strategic goals and objectives. These solutions provide clients with workforce management expertise for their procurement team, so they can focus on their strategic procurement goals and responsibilities. It also can help offload the intricacies of a contingent hiring process and workforce administration/compliance for companies’ hiring manager community.

The client’s outsourced MSP/VMS team becomes the eyes and ears to a contingent labor procurement process, a team and process that is customizable by software, by hiring process, by pricing schemes, by the shaping and management of supplier performance. And, a team backed by in-depth market knowledge and expertise in applying best practices for a streamlined, flexible program.

And a little room to breathe!

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