What is Elastic Outsourced Recruitment?

If your company is going to remain competitive, building an effective and agile recruitment process is imperative. Yet many organizations struggle with hiring the appropriate internal bandwidth, expertise, or budget to meet their talent acquisition demands. This is where Outsourced Recruitment can provide a strategic solution.

Recruitment outsourcing leverages external talent acquisition expertise – in the form of a recruitment agency – to augment and support internal talent acquisition teams. This flexible model allows organizations to tap into experienced recruitment capabilities without inflating headcount and payroll costs. Companies can easily scale up or down to match hiring volumes, transforming recruitment into a truly variable cost.

But is outsourcing part of your recruitment process the right move for your organization? In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about the Outsourced Recruitment model. It outlines the benefits, pricing models, how to determine if it’s right for your organization, and what to look for in a provider. You’ll also learn specifics around the Analytics Search approach to Outsourced Recruitment.

What is Outsourced Recruitment?

Outsourced Recruitment is the process of augmenting an organization’s talent acquisition staff with an external provider that will assume a degree of recruitment delivery.

Sharing similar capabilities with end-to-end Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), Outsourced Recruitment is often a more cost-controlled, adjustable, and high-quality solution to add agility, flexibility, and bandwidth to internal recruitment teams.

You can think of outsourcing recruitment as similar to outsourcing accounting or IT services. Rather than hiring a full-time employee to handle all recruitment activities, an organization can partner with a specialized provider who will manage certain aspects of the recruitment process.

When you optimize your recruitment processes, you free up your internal resources to focus on core business tasks, such as company hiring strategy and standardizing internal processes. The result is an optimized hiring process that leads to better-quality hires and faster time-to-hire rates.

How does Recruitment Outsourcing work?

Recruitment outsourcing is a forward-thinking solution to fill any gaps in your recruitment process. As shown on the image above, most organizations have relied on two models to add recruitment bandwidth and meet increased hiring demand: hiring additional recruitment staff in-house or working with external recruitment agencies/search firms.

Hiring qualified internal Talent Partners for in-house recruitment processes is effective for hiring in volume but inflates payroll and offers little flexibility during hiring downtimes. Working with external recruitment agencies offers flexibility but comes at the cost of paying expensive recruitment fees and is often not sustainable in volume.

Outsourced Recruitment is a unique third option to assist with hiring at scale, providing a controlled cost solution that offers the added benefit of adjusting capacity to meet hiring demand. Not only does this help identify top talent within your industry, but it also enables businesses to remain agile and responsive to changing market conditions.

Recruitment Outsourcing offers full life cycle end-to-end recruitment capabilities, including recruitment planning, strategic sourcing, pipeline management, strategic interviewing, and onboarding. This comprehensive approach ensures that every step of the recruitment process is handled efficiently and effectively, resulting in a streamlined and successful hiring process. The provider will also act as a dedicated point of contact to coach and manage performance of deployed staff to ensure that hiring deliverables are being met. 

What are the benefits of Recruitment Outsourcing?

Representing your Talent Acquisition function, recruitment outsourcing often brings an experienced level of recruitment professionalism, advanced recruitment frameworks, and acts as an ambassador for your candidate experience and employer brand.

Coming alongside a strategic partnership, as trusted advisors and out-of-the-box problem solvers, Outsourced Recruitment enables you to maintain a lean Talent Acquisition team while maintaining strategic cadences with key business partners. Whether you are trying to meet hiring demands or deflate internal recruitment payroll, Outsourced Recruitment agencies can help you better adjust bandwidth to the scale of hiring in a more cost-efficient manner. 

Other benefits of hiring an Outsourced Recruitment agency include:

• You can offload the entire recruitment delivery function to expert Internal Talent Acquisition Partners. Outsourced Recruitment may assume responsibilities for coaching and performance tracking against your goals while providing a weekly cadence to discuss hires and weekly and monthly reporting. Outsourced Recruitment agencies are skilled at working through recruitment processes and resolving talent pipeline bottlenecks.
• Maintain a lean but mighty talent acquisition team. Offering flexibility to avoid significant or inflated recruitment payrolls during slow hiring periods. Outsourced Recruitment agencies offer a forward-thinking solution to help avoid overextending on recruitment staff – and experienced providers often play a part in elevating more efficient internal teams with direct exposure to new recruitment strategies in social recruitment, diversity sourcing, candidate prospecting, and more. 

• Allowing you to hire at scale with controlled costs. Normally, an Outsourced Recruitment agency doesn’t assess placement fees of any kind. Instead, the pricing model is a fixed hourly rate, giving you total control in adjusting the scale to meet hiring demand. In addition, many organizations will see a significant reduction in employee costs using Outsourced Recruitment services. In total, typical outsourcing recruitment services and costs are often well worth the investment over hiring permanent internal staff. 
• Greater access to technology and recruitment frameworks will expand talent pools. While Outsourced Recruitment usually plugs into the end client’s technology infrastructure, you should also expect their team to leverage additional tools. At Analytics Search, we bring powerful sourcing tools that can increase response rates and exposure to passive candidates. Additionally, our team deploys formal social recruitment, diversity sourcing, talent mapping, and talent reporting frameworks that can help elevate your internal team.

What are the Recruitment Outsourcing pricing models?

Outsourced Recruitment and other RPOs have a wide variety of pricing options, including management fee models, cost-per-hire models, cost-per-slate, and cost-per-transaction models, all of which invoke a placement fee per position filled.

At Analytics Search, our pricing model is on a fixed hourly rate, giving you complete visibility and control over your recruitment spend. Any form of Outsourced Recruitment embeds professionals assigned as a direct extension of your team. At Analytics Search, we believe strategic advisory doesn’t align with placement fee models. Our pricing model was built to act in your best interest instead of creating a partnership motivated by placement fees.

How Do You Know If Outsourcing Recruitment is Right For Your Company?

When determining if Outsourced Recruitment services are viable for your hiring and recruitment process, employers should evaluate their current recruitment bandwidth against their upcoming hiring volume. 

Whether there’s an oversaturation of internal bandwidth or insufficient recruitment capacity, Outsourced Recruitment may provide more adjustable hiring support. Often, if partnering with a provider is well-suited for your organization, your needs should generally fall within one or more of the following:

• Added Recruitment Support: a leading Outsourced Recruitment provider typically offers a fast implementation to increase agility and provide recruitment support during periods of increased hiring demand. 
• Better Management of Recruitment Spend & Payroll: Outsourcing Recruitment can lead to an increased return on investment for each dollar invested in talent acquisition. Most Outsourced Recruitment agencies offer vetted and experienced Talent Consultants to help customers manage end-to-end recruitment with fewer resources and headcount.
• Maintain Lean & Flexible Teams: Working alongside Outsourced Recruitment providers can offer a strategic option that may reduce employment costs and avoid inflating payroll during slow hiring periods. Plus, as an Outsourced Recruitment solution handles the recruitment process, you can turn your attention toward other strategic initiatives.

Tips for Choosing an Outsourced Recruitment Provider

When selecting a Recruitment Outsourcing agency, you want to ensure a seamless transition that doesn’t add stress to your organization. However, the search goes beyond just the recruiting process – expert providers should know the recruitment industry, hiring processes, and other strategic solutions.

• Strategic Sourcing: In today’s market, it’s critical not to rely solely on inbound applicants but to have a well-balanced source of candidate generation channels. Talent sourcing is a must-have skill to help attract net new candidates to your talent pipelines.
• Talent Reporting: You want to ensure a full-circle communication cadence with a dedicated Client Director focused on monitoring performance-driven KPIs to ensure your hiring deadlines are on target.
• Recruitment Marketing: To provide you with the greatest ROI possible, an experienced Recruitment Outsourcing agency will help guide your job advertising spend into channels that generate the highest quality exposure.
• Strategic Advisory: You will want to ensure that the strategic advisory with your key stakeholders is transparent, collaborative, and credible and acts in the best interest of your organization. Experienced outsource recruitment professionals can often provide increased visibility into potential hurdles and obstacles that may need to be addressed throughout your hiring needs.
• Candidate Experience: As a direct representation of your employer branding, you want to ensure that candidates are interacted with to the highest standard possible. This includes proper expectation setting, a proactive and open line of communication, candidate dispositioning, and overall respect for their candidate journey when interviewing for your organization.

Why Trust Analytics Search for Your Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Analytics Search offers one of the fastest Outsourced Recruitment implementations in the industry to support lean and efficient talent acquisition teams for our customers. With on-demand experienced Talent Partners and Strategic Sourcing experts, we help you navigate the entire recruitment function and talent acquisition process by seamlessly managing your talent pipelines from prospect to hire.

Built for Elasticity, We Offer External Talent Acquisition Solutions that Adjust to your Hiring Demand 

• We make strategic advisory both collaborative and digestible using our talent reports.
• Increased passive candidate recruitment with our candidate sourcing tools.
• Established social recruitment, diversity sourcing, and talent mapping frameworks.
• Ensure candidate experience doesn’t skip a beat as an extension of your team.
• Full-circle communication cadence with a dedicated Client Director focused on monitoring performance-driven KPIs.
• No placement fees and up to 40-60% reduced employee costs for many of our customers.

Ready to learn more about how Outsourced Recruitment services from Analytics Search can help? Schedule a consultation with our Sales Professionals and learn why leading companies trust us as their premier Outsourced Recruitment provider.

FAQs

Why hire an Outsourced Recruitment solution for my company’s hiring needs?

Hiring the right candidates for your company can be a time-consuming and expensive process. Outsourced Recruitment solutions offer a cost-effective and efficient way to manage your recruitment needs. By partnering with an experienced provider, you can save time and money while ensuring high-quality talent for your organization.

Do Outsourced Recruitment Providers charge placement fees per hire?

Outsourced Recruitment providers often have various pricing structures, including cost-per-hire models.  At Analytics Search, our Outsourced Recruitment costs are incurred at a fixed hourly rate, giving you added control over your recruitment spend. 

What should I look for in an Outsourced Recruitment solution?

A quality Outsourced Recruitment vendor will have the expertise and resources to handle all aspects of the recruitment and hiring process, from candidate sourcing to onboarding. It should also be able to adapt to your specific business needs and provide a personalized approach. Look for a provider with experience in your industry and a proven track record of success – including an underrepresented talent pool and key recruitment technology such as an applicant tracking system.

Do Outsourced Recruitment agencies use an Applicant Tracking System?

Many Outsourced Recruitment agencies plug into their clients Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) as part of their business strategy. ATS systems allow for easy candidate resumes, applications, and communication management. They also provide valuable data, analytics, and even Artificial Intelligence to help optimize the hiring process. When considering an Outsourced Recruitment solution, ensure they have experience using ATS systems for project-based outsourcing and meeting your future hiring needs.

Do Outsourced Recruitment solutions work with internal recruiters?

Yes, Outsourced Recruitment work can integrate seamlessly with internal recruiters and other stakeholders in your company’s recruiting and workforce planning. In fact, many companies choose to use a hybrid approach where they combine the expertise and technology of an Outsourced Recruitment provider with their own internal recruitment team. This is especially beneficial for larger organizations with high volume hiring needs or those looking to fill specialized permanent hires.

​​Is Outsourced Recruitment the same as an RPO provider?

RPO providers, or Recruitment Process Outsourcing providers, are a type of Outsourced Recruitment solution. However, not all Outsourced Recruitment providers offer the same services and level of business transformation as an RPO company. Outsourced Recruitment services typically augment and support internal talent acquisition teams by assuming a degree of internal recruitment delivery.