Challenges in corporate HR recruitment
We’ve seen how Talent Acquisition Executives and Human Resources Departments are under a lot of pressure. Quite often internal teams are expected to deliver on a high number of briefs in a very short period of time. These types of unreasonable requests inevitably lead to discontent; briefs go unfilled and internal dissatisfaction is high. Meanwhile, time gets wasted on candidate research for briefs that couldn’t possibly be filled in such tight timeframes while TA and HR department’s true skills are not used to their full potential.
It’s understandable, then, that TAs and HR departments come to us to help them with their candidate research. If you’re considering outsourcing candidate research, read on for CEO & Co-Founder, Greg Simidian’s hard-won lessons for making offshore recruitment process outsourcing work for corporate HR recruitment.
What works and what doesn’t in recruitment process outsourcing?
Greg gave an honest, straightforward talk on what works and what doesn’t in offshore candidate research. Here are Greg’s five key takeaways:
1. Get clear on your objective
What are you truly trying to achieve by outsourcing candidate research? Do you want to lighten your workload? Are you bored with doing candidate research and would prefer to work on more higher-level tasks? Do you want to spend more time talking with clients and candidates?
This may seem obvious but as Greg points out “unless that question is just nailed at the beginning . . . then how do you know you’ve been successful at the end of that trial period or even in six months or 12 months in?”
Greg goes on to say that this is why Ally has learned the value of having regular check-ins on what success looks like for you.
2. Change your mindset from outsource to employee
Greg advises not to think in terms of ‘offshore’ or ‘outsource’ or in any other transactional way but to instead consider an analyst as your employee, as someone who is part of your business.
This mindset, according to Greg, “generates the most positive behaviours.” In Greg’s experience, when his team of bright, ambitious MBA graduates are treated as employees by clients, he sees “incredible results.”
Conversely, if meetings are skipped or check ins don’t happen as regularly as they should, this comes across as transactional, not human, and naturally impacts performance.
These meetings don’t need to be time-consuming but the entire process does need to be “led from the front.” As Greg points out “one of the mistakes that we made historically is when we win the hearts and minds of the principle who’s writing the cheque and maybe a senior consultant, but that doesn’t spread out to the other consultants served.” According to Greg, leaders guiding from the top is “probably the most significant kind of success criteria.”
Ways to include your analyst include adding them to your CRM, messaging platforms such as Slack, issuing a company email address and connecting on LinkedIn.
3. An aligned briefing process
In order to move away from a transactional way of thinking and to get the best results, Ally insists on having a face-to-face call. No brief is taken over email. Greg argues that “without a face-to-face call, you don’t get the nuance, the emphasis, the detail. There’s so much more information that can be shared on a call, even just 10 minutes.”
Another protocol, Greg urges you to try is to “ask your partner to write the brief.” Besides overcoming challenges, such as cultural or language level differences, this is just an excellent way to check if the brief has been clearly understood and avoids any miscommunication. Greg adds that in this process “the client will actually make amendments, not so much because the partner or we got it wrong, it’s just the discipline of seeing it written out by someone else means you make adjustments.”
Finally, Greg recommends having your analyst share some data profiles. Ally refers to these as “range finders” or “benchmarkers”. Again, it’s another quality check. Greg says that “this is the game changer in terms of what we call the quality jump.”
By reimagining the briefing process in this way, Greg assures that you will get up to 90% relevancy on your brief. What’s more, it only takes a small investment of time, just that initial 10-minute call.
4. Manage expectations
Sometimes when an internal issue is outsourced, there can be unreasonable expectations on what can be achieved. Greg often asks clients: “if you had a brand new relationship in your office, would you be expecting 90% after about two or three weeks?” In the same way, Greg cautions that setting up any new working relationship takes time. However, what you can expect is to see a steady improvement in quality and volume.
5. Keep it real!
Greg finished his talk by reiterating that when you’re outsourcing candidate research, you are putting “an unbelievably important part of your process” in your analyst’s hands. “So the more they feel at a human level connected to your organisation . . . quality goes high.”
Ally achieves this connection by scheduling a weekly review between analysts and clients, where you can discuss what’s working well and what isn’t. Greg refers to this as “a head up meeting” as opposed to meetings where you talk about specific projects. It’s a chance to complement impressive work and to tweak anything that needs improvement.
These reviews have led to some interesting outcomes. To begin with, Greg notes that analysts become more empowered to take their own initiative and do additional industry research. Even more importantly, it breaks down any cultural inhibitors, where the analysts feel more confident to double-check and interact with clients.
To watch Greg’s talk in full, please see the video.
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