So many RPO providers today are selling the “P” in the RPO formula, rather than the “R”. They are offering “off the shelf” solutions that appear glitzy and easy to “plug in”. And while these models fit a provider’s internal financial needs, the reality in most cases is they do not have the will or the experience to put forth effort to build flexible, customized solutions that a true RPO partner will seek in order to guarantee long term success. However, the unfortunate demise of many RPO engagements can be directly attributed to the fact that many RPO providers often do not listen well. An RPO provider who is driven by the passion to find top talent in the marketplace, who listens to the client and can evangelize that message out to the marketplace, is the one that can make the most strategic impact to your organization. While everyone wants more efficient processes, it isn’t process that gets you better talent. It is innovative, unrelenting recruiting that gets you the best people for your organization.
The difference between a successful and unsuccessful RPO often lies in the fundamental DNA of the provider. In today’s marketplace, the core of corporate recruiting has been turned into a processing and administrative function, rather than the hunt to find the best possible talent in the shortest time. For example, a vendor who is proficient in call center recruitment will find the leap to corporate/mid-level recruitment an enormous canyon to cross. Whereas, an RPO provider, whose roots are in executive search, and whose culture is focused on the relentless recruitment of top-tier talent in the marketplace, will succeed in upgrading an organization’s talent when compared to a firm that focuses primarily on the process of hiring less complex, high volume roles. RPO firms who evolved from true search are trained to dig and listen, to understand your business and then tell your “compelling story,” one candidate at a time.
In today’s economy, companies understand that they are engaging RPO providers for purposes other than supplementing recruiting needs. Utilizing an RPO engagement in a volatile economic climate can keep your organization lean and efficient. In a majority of instances, RPO will be a cost efficient measure. Companies who are looking for flexible, scalable recruitment solutions should recognize that cost is as important as price flexibility in terms of selecting a provider. An RPO provider should deliver savings, however a true RPO solution is an investment into the recruitment of quality hires. The real value of an RPO provider will be determined by its ability to deliver on business strategy through full client partnership.
Do you remember back to when you accepted your current or previous position? Why did you choose to join the firm? Research has proven we buy mostly on emotion, or the “feel” of something. The top marketing companies know they need to create an emotional connection with a buyer. An RPO provider is the face to your candidates and they are responsible for ensuring the superior candidate experience from first phone call, to interview day, to presenting the offer. Great candidates must feel at home from the very first contact if you want them to become great employees. RPO firms who evolved from search are uniquely trained to care for each candidate, recognize the value of successfully acquiring the best candidate, and ensure that all candidates have a positive “brand” experience in the process.
One Size Can Never Fit All
The best partner is one who listens to the client and then offers customized solutions which are relevant to their needs. The same then is true for the best RPO partner. They understand solutions are long term in nature and take work and mutual commitment. It’s like getting married and never taking the time to find out what the partner wants out of life. Just like in a marriage, compatibility, compromise and partnership is at the heart of success. Together, your goals, values and cultures need to fit well. As such, a successful RPO partner should be able to offer flexible solutions such as a best-in-class hybrid model. This may include integrating RPO staff with existing internal staff, focusing on process improvement and cost reductions, evaluating the workforce and changing the source mix.
Let’s face it - there is no mold that all companies fit. During the vetting process, it is very important to speak about the details of how a relationship might work. Be specific regarding operational issues. In order to truly succeed, partnership must go beyond just a client/vendor relationship to one that is vested in mutual success. Start listening to each other from the very first meeting and it will make the likelihood of success much greater.
Erik Karff, Manager of Marketing and Social Media for Allegis Group Services, recently held an exclusive interview with Nancie Whitehouse, Chairperson of the International Association for Corporate and Professional Recruitment (IACPR), on the role of the organization in the executive search field and the upcoming conference in NYC on October 23rd through the 25th.
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: I own a consulting firm that specializes in talent acquisition called Whitehouse Advisors. I partner with clients that are anywhere from start-ups to fortune 50 companies and across industries in helping them improve on their recruiting strategies and processes. We launched the company in 2005 after my career in both corporate and executive recruiting over about a 20 year period. Before that I was Director of Search Strategy for General Atlantic Partners, a leading global private equity investor in high growth companies. Prior to that, I spent 18 years in the retained executive search business with both large and small boutique firms.
Erik Karff: Fantastic, and can you tell us a little about why the IACPR is an outstanding conference and organization and a little history about the organization and what your vision is for the future.
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: Sure. Well you know, the organization has morphed many times during its lifetime and our mission is just as relevant today as when we were founded. The mission is to provide the senior level recruiting community with opportunities to network and discuss best practices and really build cutting edge expertise in a very collaborative environment. And interestingly, it is still the only organization where retained search and corporate recruitment professionals can come together in a protected environment of complete trust and sharing. We have a very strong non-solicitation policy that does protect our members so it allows them that level of comfort in talking about things that are very near and dear to their corporate hearts.
I think the organization does a number of things. First of all we really encourage fostering stronger collaboration between the corporate talent acquisition leaders and retained search professionals. I believe we offer the best content at both our chapter meetings and our annual conference. I have been a member since 1997 and a chair person since 2006 and one of the things that I particularly appreciate about this organization is that it is intimate enough for everyone to get heard and to ask questions and get answers to particular challenges that they face in their own work environments. In a very, very large organization you can kind of get lost and not get your own needs met or build the kind of relationships that we allow our members to build.
We have an outstanding Board of Directors; it’s a diverse board so both sides of the community have a very strong voice. And we have a fabulous annual conference committee that works extremely hard from year to year to make sure that the content of the conference is not only timely and relevant but it’s looking forward, and my vision for the future of the organization is to maintain the standards that we have kept so high over the years, we have not only standards for ourselves but for our membership. We provide content and real life solutions and that is something that we really want to maintain in the near and distant future.
We have supporting tools, like our talent strategies update newsletter that showcases different scenarios both from the conference and topics of interest. We have a wonderful tele-topics series where we come together in a teleconference type environment and we showcase professionals who offer, again, very relevant and timely content that are important to our members like assessments. Also, we discuss what to think about in terms of assessments so that before you even go to a particular type of assessment or tool you know the questions to ask and how to approach vendors. You ask the questions that senior managers are going to ask. So it gives you a comprehensive view of topics especially in our tele-topics series.
Erik Karff: Fascinating. Where can folks find the tele-topics series?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: The tele-topics series is available on the website. We have a list of all our up -coming events and our particular topics of interest. It is simply a matter of registering online and dialing into a number when the tele-topic is held. Most of the time our format is that the person who is doing the presentation will present for a half hour and then we open up for dialogue to anyone on the call to ask their own questions and challenge any issues that someone might have brought forth. It’s a very interactive process.
Erik Karff: You spoke a little about the intimacy of the organization and the intimacy of the events that the organization sponsors, what do you do to maintain that intimacy and why is it so important?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: We have a rather comparatively smaller membership than some of the other much larger organizations and associations and we like to keep it at a fine balance of 50% corporate talent acquisition people and 50% retained executive search to make sure there is a balance in perspective and a balance in dialogue. Second, our conferences are typically 150 people and we like to maintain that so when a speaker is giving a presentation, it isn’t a lecture, it is an interactive dialogue where during the course of the presentation our members can feel very comfortable asking direct questions as it relates to their work challenges. So we really strive in our chapter meetings and at our annual conference to make people feel comfortable in that setting so they can pull all the information they possibly can and go home with actual useful tools that they can implement quickly.
Erik Karff: These are some very compelling reasons. Could you share with us some of the successes you have had with the approach?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: In successes, what do you mean particularly?
Erik Karff: In general, when you have people who are not really lecturing but giving talks and connecting with the audience, and what you have seen as real benefits of that.
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR:
Erik Karff: You spoke about how the IACPR is unique…can you elaborate further on this? Just in thinking about how it is unique for search professionals and how it is unique for corporate talent professionals. What is the value that the IACPR can add to both of those groups?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: First of all, when you have a stronger collaboration between those two groups you’re going to really improve on the relationship as a whole but you are also going to improve the quality of communication between the two sides that are partnering in the search process. It improves the overall quality and the effectiveness of the search process. There is more transparency and there is more ability to identify the potential challenges earlier on in the process. There are more opportunities to share creative solutions. The more transparency, the fewer surprises there are. I think it’s easier to get a common vision of what an ideal candidate looks like and using real world language to define competencies and fit as opposed to using language that is unique to the corporate client and the search professional has trouble translating that into the real world. There’s better opportunity to agree on the parameters of the process and I think there is a better opportunity to understand the ownership in a successful process. Knowing all of this up front and having a clear pathway for communication and transparency along the way will really ensure if that is done well at the beginning of the search. When talking about the added value for both sides, I think each brings to the IACPR unique strengths and challenges and the more we can share that the better we will be at creating partnerships to do better search work in general.
Erik Karff: You spoke about basically the value of the dialogue between the two groups and creating clarification around language, better defining roles and generally the transparency, and I think that speaks very much to the value of creating a dialogue between search and corporate professionals, can you speak a little more to those points? If there is anything that you want to bring out or left out previously?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: Many clients that I have had and have seen still harbor an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality. Some hiring managers are very worried about that. It creates a disconnect between the parties themselves but a successful process. So I think that having this type of environment that fosters the relationship and good communication is going to do a lot of good work in reducing those kinds of us vs. them mentalities and I think will work much more productively together. At our conference we talk about not only how to establish effective partnerships but we look at all the different things that affect those partnerships. For instance, what will you expect and how are you equipped to face the challenges down the road? We’re looking at new research on why top candidates choose their organizations and what is their decision to leave. We have a very interesting new panel about what candidates think about the recruitment process, and what will social media play in finding a new position. I think the corporate talent acquisition leaders need to understand the candidate mindset. Another thing is how to build and sell a compelling employer brand. If you don’t have a strong employer brand in this market you’re going to get lost and you are seriously at a disadvantage when it comes to your competition. Many companies do this well, some don’t and some don’t do it at all. There is a dual education process here, number one how to do it, and how to do it better for those who are doing it to a point already. We have innovative approaches to employee engagement. Not only how do you keep your talent, but keep them interested and excited about what they are doing and feeling great about the company. We have two modules on diversity and what has appened to diversity in this market. Have diversity programs gone away? Have they performed well? What are we doing with those kinds of programs and are there new strategies that we need to think about. We talk about executive compensation and if executive compensation in your company is allowing you to really be competitive. Not only how you pay, but how you pay your individual employees, what their needs are and how they are motivated. We always have a session, an open mic presentation where everyone in the room can talk about what is important to them and what challenges they face. It becomes a very interesting part of the conference because people feel very comfortable talking about the truth of what goes on behind the scenes.
Erik Karff: Can you speak to about how the conference has evolved from when you first started doing it to now, and what people can expect this year and what’s new?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: I think what has evolved are the issues that talent acquisition professionals face and have been forced to face and some of those are issues that have been outside the realm of a traditional corporate recruiting professional. I think our topics have become quite different and the level of sophistication at which we deal with these topics is improved. I think it appeals to a much more strategic audience and our content is geared toward leaders in this profession.
Erik Karff: Thank you. Now who is speaking at the up -coming conference and how and why were they chosen?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: We have quite a number of speakers and people who are both individual speakers and we have panels that we have put together. We really take a very close view at the beginning of planning our conference to make sure that the panels are balanced to make sure that we are devoting the right kind of attention to the most relevant topics. One of our topics is called facing the perfect storm of human capital change. Our speaker is going to be Tom Casey who is a managing principal and a discussion partner for a new book that is called Talent Readiness: The Future Is Now. It is going to be very interesting to see his take on this particular topic. He will do very well talking about solutions to harness the unique skills and attitudes of the new labor market. We have five generations in the workforce today, so there is a whole new landscape and Tom is going to talk about some of that. We have partners from Towers Watson. One panel is going to be on retention. The practice leader for organizational research Sean Connelly is going to be talking to us about retention. To balance that we have a speaker from Price Waterhouse Coopers, Scott Stevenson and he is going to talk with us about research that he has done and real world examples on employee engagement. Not only why people stay but what can enhance people to become fully engaged and much more involved. Then in the afternoon, we have a Motorola Solutions case study which is going to talk about employer branding. The Senior VP of Human Resources for Motorola Solutions, Michelle Carlen is going to be our speaker. Then we do have the candidate panel that is going to be chaired by Paul Marshaw who is VP of global talent acquisition for PepsiCo. That will be about the candidate experience. The end of the first day is our open mic forum which is always interesting and a lot of fun.
The next day we have a team from Mercer that is going to talk with us about diversity analytics. The next generation approach to building an effective work force. So workforce diversity as it were is not just about limiting legal risk but also a very important part of a talent acquisition strategy. Then we are going to continue that discussion called Diversity After the Storm which is how have diversity initiatives weathered the economic downturn? We do have a wonderful panel who will address that. Finally we have innovations and compensations. Not only how to attract top talent but to retain it this year and beyond and we have a panel to address that as well.
Erik Karff: Fantastic. Last question is what will folks who attend the conference learn and walk away with?
Nancie Whitehouse, IACPR: What we pride ourselves on is being able to deliver presentations and solutions that people can implement the next day they get back to work. It’s not a lot of corporate theory and it isn’t academic in nature; we talk about what is really going on in the world and we want people to go back with ideas that they can implement without tremendous cost and time and really be able to work with immediately. Also, we want people to leave with things that are going to improve work processes and how people look at talent acquisition and strategy and really help our members make good contributions to their individual organizations.
Erik Karff: Nancie, thank you, this has been a very insightful and compelling discussion and we are looking forward to posting this on the AGS and InSearch World Wide blog. Thank you for everyone that is listening and has checked out this posting. Nancie thank you very much for your time.
Click here for more information on the IACPR.