Outsourcing or “right-sourcing”?

Let’s face it…RPO, or recruitment process outsourcing, can be the source of pretty intense arguments, both pro and con. And usually, the way it shakes out is that those who are selling RPO services are “pro” and those in the trenches are “con”, and it’s left to someone at an EVP or the C-suite level to pull the trigger and actually get a deal done, usually as a cost-cutting measure.

But why? “Back in the day”, when I had nothing but a set of marching orders to hire 400 - 500 folks a quarter, four recruiters, no ATS, and enough resumes to paper the Great Wall of China, it didn’t take long before I figured out I wasn’t going to hire my way out of this situation…and that I needed help.

So I contracted with an ATS vendor. I contracted with a research firm. I contracted with a marketing group. I contracted with both executive and contingent search firms to augment what I was doing in-house. I contracted with an assessment testing vendor. A background check vendor. A drug screening vendor. At the end of each pay period, my folks got paid through a payroll vendor, who integrated with the data that sat on a technology platform we’d purchased through yet another vendor, instead of building our own. You can see where I’m going with this - virtually every aspect of the recruiting process was “augmented” by what we’d call today as outsourcing. The company outsourced it’s payroll (as I bet yours does as well), and we outsourced some of technology needs. And we were a Fortune 500 software company!

Could we have built it all ourselves? Sure. And spent tens of millions of dollars, and taken several years doing it. We didn’t call it outsourcing then. I wouldn’t call it outsourcing now. I call it “right-sourcing”.

And yet too often we find ourselves sitting across from the table talking about recruitment process outsourcing with an HR VP and/or a recruiting director or VP who don’t think twice about outsourcing the processing of every single resume that comes into their organization - a database of talent that, in terms of value, is perhaps second only to their customer lists - or outsourcing the very payroll and benefits that keeps all their employees coming to work each day, and yet who feel that to “outsource” some or all of their recruiting or staffing function would be to lose control of something that they feel is too important to leave to some one outside the organization. Even if what they’re doing inside the organization isn’t working.

The problem isn’t with the loss of control. It’s with the perception. And that perception starts with some of the baggage that the word “outsourcing” has in our own industry. You see, we’re already outsourcing. Businesses outsource all sorts of things. Because they don’t think of it as outsourcing - they think of it as “right-sourcing”.

And if your organization looks at RPO as a loss of control, rather than another tool to make your “seat at the table” more credible, then think about right-sourcing. Sure, you can do it all. But is that always the best way?

Michael