Able leaders understand the importance of getting the right people on board. They know, their success or lack of it is determined by the people who work for them.

Leaders rely on their HR (Human Resources) team to get them the right people. Traditionally, the HR team built a team of internal recruiters who draw internal referrals, work with their database of candidates, engage recruiting agencies and visit campuses to source the talent. Most often, they do not have the wherewithal to assess the attractiveness of their employer brand, the effectiveness of their talent acquisition process and the efficiency of what they do.

We need Specialists

It is worthwhile to raise these questions and challenge the old beliefs around the talent acquisition process. We live in the era of specialisation, and want to be specialists; we do not want to be a jack of all trades. How can an organisation be an expert in its core business and at the same time, an expert in recruitment which operates amidst a dynamic talent market?

Unlike functions like learning and development, accounting, IT administration and the like, achieving excellence in recruitment is a lot complex because external variables impact this pretty much like the function of sales and marketing, supply chain, new product development and the like. Hence, we need specialists who are deeply entrenched in the talent market and deal with the volatile and uncertain conditions of the talent market each day.

Small organisations often have their HR people handle all aspects of HR – recruitment, HR operations, employee development, performance management and organisation development. Even in medium-sized organisations, sometimes the HR people are expected to be all-rounders. Some of them have dedicated talent acquisition specialists or recruiters and ask the internal recruiters to hire for all levels and functions. This is quite a wide scope to handle for any recruiter!

We see innovation in recruitment happening at a rapid pace; employment contracts are changing; new kinds of workers and new types of engagements are evolving; technology and new tools are emerging, some of which could improve hiring efficiencies. How can we expect a recruiter to be able to keep track of the dynamic situation created by the rivals employing similar talent and at the same time, be effective in hiring a wide range of skills and levels, deploy the best systems, methods and tools to make the process efficient?

There is no magic wand. We need to rely on Specialists from RPO providers.

It is pretty much like engaging a maintenance service provider, logistics operator, PR consultant or marketing agency. We use them because they carry expertise, nurture relationships and can offer flexibilities in terms of scale, timing and scope.

• An organisation may be diversifying or expanding into a new geography or expanding its product line or simply scaling up fast in its current markets. It calls for finding new catchment areas and casting the net either wide or in new pools.
• Another organisation might be in the phase of optimising its resources and efficiency; so it could be laying off on one hand and at the same time, hiring for new skills and backfilling the critical roles.
• There could be situations where an organisation wants to hire using a new source such as advertisement on a particular platform, visiting a campus, starting a new hiring campaign such as train-and-deploy, gig workers, freshers, contract workforce or the like.

To succeed in any of the above methods, we need the recruiter to have the experience of handling the specific methods, understanding the skillsets being hired and proven expertise in hiring at the levels the organisation is seeking to hire. An organisation can’t build a team of recruiters who have specialists in each of these disciplines. Even if one has, these recruiters can’t be in touch with the reality of the talent market on an ongoing basis.

When do we call for an RPO provider? Is RPO right for your organisation?

We do not visit a doctor as soon as we catch a cold. If the cold persists for a couple of days, one considers visiting a doctor. Similarly, the thumb rule for calling for an RPO provider is when an organisation plans to onboard new hires more than 20% of its current workforce.

For example, an organisation has 500 people and it plans to onboard 100 people in the next 12 months to cater to the backfills and planned expansion. Since this is 20%, we call for an RPO provider to help us in putting together a strategy for each kind of role to be filled in, defining the pools to source from, recruiting methods for each category of hiring and executing all or parts of them.

Let’s take another example. A start-up has 20 people and has found an investor or a large customer which calls for rapid expansion. It needs to hire another 20 people in 3 months. We call for an RPO provider who brings in its experts to hire the range of people, build the employer brand and establish all that the organisation needs in the short-run as well as make them operational for the long term.

What does an RPO provide and other outsourcing methods don’t?

1. Analysis and planning:

RPO providers take responsibility for the overall outcome in terms of timelines, conversion ratios and costs. Other outsourcing methods take responsibility for delivering shortlisted profiles and coordinating based on instructions received from the employer organisation. Hence, the planning responsibility varies greatly and analysis in the case of RPO is much deeper while it is near non-existent in the engagements of contingency hiring or retained search mandates.

2. Extensive job marketing and Employer Brand building:

Employer branding is crucial for an organisation’s long-term success and has a tremendous ROI (returns on investment). Recruiting partners or recruiters representing the firm have the moral responsibility of conveying a realistic job preview, communicating the value proposition for an employee (EVP) and demonstrating the traits of the organisation culture and values to every potential candidate they engage with. When the organisation works with a score of agencies, freelancers, naïve recruiters and a bunch of recruiters who often attrit faster than the organisation’s average, the organisation’s employer brand is at risk. RPO providers take the responsibility of messaging with consistency and realism; thus, building the employer brand most desirably.

3. Sourcing and engaging talent:

Building a talent pipeline is a crucial enabler of the organisation’s success. This has to be done in a proactive manner rather than trying to source candidates on a need basis as and when the hiring managers ask. RPO players can only match this expectation because of the engagement terms. Other methods of outsourcing do not facilitate this because their remuneration is linked with the success of hiring and specific role to be filled.

4. Candidate assessments:

All providers know the importance of hiring the right talent and hence, assessing them right. However, the terms of engagement in contingency hiring or retained search, the providers have a short-term view and are not directly motivated to search through the talent market with a fine-tooth comb; rather they pick the best among the talent they can lay their hands on.

In the case of RPOs, the engagement period is typically long and the delivery team is deeply embedded with the organisation; thus, the team works in better alignment with the company’s long-term interest.

5. Candidate care:

The impressions we leave on candidates’ minds contribute significantly to building the employer brand of an organisation. All leaders understand this and often do not pay the attention this deserves. As a result, organisations suffer from irrevocable decay as human bodies do from lifestyle diseases. It is supercritical that organisations that are high on recruiting (number of onboards in a year is more than 20% of the workforce) take this seriously and get the recruitment engine to demonstrate the character the organisation stands for.

What can an RPO provider do – various engagement models

Every organisation’s context is unique; however, what remains unchanged at the heart of TA strategy is to get the right talent at the right time. Hence, the RPO provider has to understand each organisation’s context and develop a solution that addresses their needs. Typically, they bring to the table a repertoire of capabilities starting from strategizing such as defining the talent pools to source from, methods to deploy and processes to handle the market dynamics. Typically, these strategic strands are co-created by the leaders of the organisation and the knowledge of the talent market that the RPO providers bring to the table. Execution is the most crucial component of an RPO project.

• Sometimes, organisations take a few recruiters from the RPO player and direct them to fulfil their recruiting needs. This service is typically known as ROD (Recruiter On-Demand). This engagement provides flexibility to the organisation in a way that they can get their recruiting work done as a short-term solution.
• There are situations when organisations get specific parts of recruiting outsourced to an RPO player, for example, coordinating interviews, getting reference checks done, hiring from campuses, coordinating with offered candidates until their onboarding. In such cases, the engagement terms are focused and limited to the deliverables agreed and the focus is efficiency in terms of cycle time, impact vs efforts and costs. We call these Focused RPOs.
• There are end-to-end recruiting projects where the RPO player gets all aspects of recruiting process executed as an extension of the employer. They get fully embedded in the organisation and work towards reducing cycle time, improving conversion ratios and adhering to the timelines. These are Full RPOs or E2E RPOs (end to end recruitment process outsourcing)

As a result, the organisation’s messaging of the value proposition to the potential candidates in the talent market gets standardised; the perception about the organisation’s response and attitude towards potential and current employees gets shaped. On the whole, the organisation’s employer brand persona gets sharply defined.

How much does an RPO cost?

RPOs deliver value not only in the short term in terms of meeting the hiring standards and timelines but also long-term value in terms of building a strong employer brand. As any organisation wants, it must pay the RPO provider right. Typically, an RPO has the following costing elements:

• A fixed fee under the title of project management
• A variable fee that is linked to the activities performed, measured in certain units. These units could be the number of candidates interviewed, candidates offered, joined and retained after a guarantee period.
• Bonus payments linked to certain KPIs (key performance indicators) such as candidate feedback score, conversion ratio, cost per hire or any such strategic elements
• Reimbursements of direct costs incurred

The overarching idea is to optimize costs and deliver value both in the short-run and long run to the organisation. Steve Jobs and several other leaders have rightly said, “Hiring the Best is your most important Task.” One needs to partner with RPO providers to get the best talent consistently.

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Every crisis is unique and poses its own uncertainties. Businesses with resilience are able to balance their long-range plans with short term goals; for any crisis at hand, they plan in advance to deal with possible scenarios. How can one develop this playbook?

Cost reduction

The popular belief is to plan cost-cutting, some add a tinge of sophistication to it by calling it cost-optimisation. Certainly one needs to challenge the established practices and norms in the company right from employee benefits, salary hikes, bonuses, travel policies to the choice of suppliers, work procedures and tools – hardware as well as software.

There are hundreds of avenues to reduce costs in any organisation. Sometimes, people apply the 80:20 rule and ignore the details in the small items. However, a bunch of them might be easy to cut and when reduced as a bunch, there is a substantial impact. The challenge is to spot them.

Cross-functional teams could be formed to review the items of cost – large to small in terms of the impact delivered by each of those cost items. They can think of alternates that could cost the organisation lesser, re-engineer a work process which will save costs. They can recommend measures such as a moratorium on payments, restructure benefit plans and temporary renegotiation of commercial terms to conserve cash and cut costs.

Customers have the answers

Often organisations become inward-focused and deploy a significant amount of energy in the area of cost optimisation. However, there is an opportunity when customers have a new need. Businesses need to spot them and try to fulfil those and thus, add new revenue streams. We see FMCG companies launching sanitisers, apparel companies bringing out face masks, consumer tech companies venturing into health-tech. All of this has been possible since they listened to their customers and moved quickly to seize the opportunity.

Companies have innovated to make work from home a possibility, several universities have made their teaching online, companies have become more aware and committed to their social responsibilities and used that lever to popularise their offerings. Again, all of these could happen because they listened to emerging situations with their customers and responded by innovation.

As millions of neighbourhood shops, small businesses, daily-wagers and gig workers around the country are looking forward to get back to their sources of livelihood, they need to listen to their customers, figure out the changes in their demands and be ready to cater to them. In the same way, we need businesses to keep a tab on the changes and spot the opportunities. Seizing the opportunities faster than the others is resilience and adaptability. Great organisations and leaders can drive their teams to this, everyone must strive to get there!

No alternative to productivity enhancement

Times could change and business models could become irrelevant. Some businesses will face the pain more than the others. For example, in COVID-19 pandemic of our times, airlines, railways, entertainment and hospitality have been impacted severely while sectors like healthcare, power, telecom, steel and food are not impacted as much. However, there are tectonic shifts taking place in the way customers feel the need to buy a product, the quantities they buy, their payment methods, preference of owning the products and consumption patterns.

We see innovation taking place at a great speed in terms of technology, systems and processes to make the products or services better and cheaper, financing easier and faster, distribution smarter and after-sales service effective. In each of these areas, companies could have opportunities to find new partners, invest in new areas and even acquire companies.

Every company might not be able to access capital for M&A or new equipment and systems or acquihire talent. However, each company can review the current methods to innovate new ones, identify pockets of inefficiency to get rid of those parts of the business or let go the people who do not have the skills and potential to come up the curve.

Companies have to think how the future will look like for them and hence determine what skills will be essential for them to not only survive but excel in that. So, they need to train their people for the future and get ready to stand up to the new challenges and opportunities.

The event is global and has a deep impact on revenue streams of companies. However, in a matter of a few quarters, consumer demand will be back on track albeit with some changes. The resilient and agile companies will be quick to ready themselves and seize upon the opportunities. History will be written about the excellence exhibited by these leaders. Let’s rise to the occasion!

Further reading:

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The metaphor ‘World is Flat’ was made popular by the American journalist and author Thomas L. Friedman in his book ‘The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century’. Here the world was viewed as a level playing field in terms of commerce, wherein all competitors have an equal opportunity.

Globalization 1.0, during which countries and governments were the main protagonists. Globalization 2.0 which lasted from 1800 to 2000, was an era where the global market is born and here the “dynamic force driving global integration” is multinational companies. Globalization 3.0 will continue to shrink and flatten the world.

From Outsourcing and offshoring to supply-chaining has enabled new business models to take over and rule the modern economy.

Friedman defines ten “flatteners” that he sees as leveling the global playing field:

#1: Collapse of the Berlin Wall – 11/9/89:

Friedman called the flattener “When the walls came down, and the windows came up.” The event not only symbolized the end of the Cold War but also allowed people from the other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream. “11/9/89” is a discussion about the Berlin Wall’s coming down, the “fall” of communism, and the impact that Windows-powered PCs (personal computers) had on the ability of individuals to create their own content and connect to one another. At that point, the basic platform for the revolution to follow was created: IBM PC, Windows, a standardized graphical interface for word processing, dial-up modems, a standardized tool for communication, and a global phone network.

#2: Netscape – 8/9/95:

Netscape went public at the price of $28. Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the Internet from its roots as a communications medium used primarily by “early adopters and geeks” to something that made the Internet accessible to everyone from five-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. The digitization that took place meant that everyday occurrences such as words, files, films, music, and pictures could be accessed and manipulated on a computer screen by all people across the world.

#3: Workflow software:

This is Friedman’s catch-all for the standards and technologies that allowed work to flow. It is the ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved, as stated by Friedman. Friedman believes those first three forces have become a “crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration.” There was an emergence of software protocols (SMTP – simple mail transfer protocol; HTML – the language that enabled anyone to design and publish documents that could be transmitted to and read on any computer anywhere) Standards on Standards. This is what Friedman called the “Genesis moment of the flat world.” The net result “is that people can work with other people on more stuff than ever before.” This created a global platform for multiple forms of collaboration. The next six flatteners sprang from that platform.

#4: Uploading:

Uploading involves communities that upload and collaborate on online projects. Examples are open source software, blogs, and Wikipedia. Friedman considers the phenomenon “the most disruptive force of all.”

#5: Outsourcing:

Friedman argues that outsourcing has enabled companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components that can be subcontracted and performed in the most efficient, most-cost-effective way. This process became easier with the mass distribution of fiber-optic cable during introduction of the World Wide Web.

#6: Offshoring:

This is the internal relocation of a company’s manufacturing or other processes to a foreign land to take advantage of less costly operations there. China’s entrance in the WTO (World Trade Organization) allowed for greater competition on the playing field. Now such countries as Malaysia, Mexico, and Brazil must compete against China and one another to have businesses offshore to them.

#7: Supply-chaining:

Friedman compares the modern retail supply chain to a river by pointing to Wal-Mart as the best example of a company that uses technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and shipping.

#8: Insourcing:

Friedman uses UPS as a prime example for insourcing, whereby the company’s employees perform services – beyond shipping – for another company. For example, UPS repairs Toshiba computers on behalf of Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub by UPS employees.

#9: Informing:

Google and other search engines and Wikipedia are the prime examples. “Never before in the history of the planet have so many people – on their own – had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people,” writes Friedman. The growth of search engines is tremendous; for example, Friedman states, Google is “now processing roughly one billion searches per day, up from 150 million just three years ago.”

#10: “The Steroids”:

The steroids are wireless, Voice over Internet Protocol, and file sharing and are used on personal digital devices like mobile phones, iPods, and personal digital assistants; on instant messaging; and on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Digital, mobile, personal, and virtual as well as all analog content and processes (from entertainment to photography, to word processing) can be digitized and therefore shaped, manipulated, and transmitted; and these processes can be done at high speed with total ease; mobile can be done anywhere and anytime by anyone; and can be done by anyone.

Friedman argues that the winners will be those who learn the habits, processes, and skills most quickly—and there is nothing that guarantees it will be Americans or Western Europeans permanently leading the way.

One advantage that the billions of people that have only recently joined the “playing field” enjoy is that they do not have to “worry about all the sunken costs of the old systems.” They can skip stages of development. Chinese use more cell phones than Americans, in part because they “skipped over the landline phase.” The world’s economy is changing, and that change is largely being driven by individuals rather than governments because individuals can now meet and interact using online services. People used to rely on visas to travel to areas with opportunities, but now, people can collaborate and innovate remotely without having the need for travel.

As we stand today, the world on one side is trying to adjust with an ageing Japanese and European population and on the other side, the millennials are becoming the primary driving force in rising economies like India. This successful transition in the workforce regime has been possible for a number of factors like seamless connectivity, the older generation finding it difficult to keep the pace with the technological development and innovative ideas taking over traditional ways of running businesses. There are younger CEOs and older people are reporting to them. We are moving from the norm of seniority to meritocracy. Thus, making the world flatter in the process.

The ugly heads of people with extreme beliefs and religious fanaticism keep propping up time and again. But ideologies and beliefs which are far flung from the ground reality are finding it difficult to suppress information. The new and more open world is about information, the real deal is now in the terms of meaningful data. The shift in power is now in terms of who has the right information at the right time or so to say before-time. That is the reason why data analytics, machine learning are becoming indispensable for any firm.

We are moving towards a world with more efficient labour, optimised productivity and assisted intelligence. With cryptocurrency, the world is shrinking further and further. Technologies like blockchain are promising enough to make transactions more secure, yet transparent and cull down the barriers of information.

The world today is flat, technologies will make it flatter as we move ahead. With the rise of Industry 4.0, Globalization 4.0 will kick-in and completely wipe out the barriers. Automation and Artificial Intelligence are bound to play a crucial role in this regard.

You may also like to read:

Leveraging Analytics in HR

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You need the best talent on-boarded and retained to fulfill your ambitions. Do you hire them by your own team or get a service provider to do the job? Or you take a combination approach? While it could be safe to go for a combination or hybrid approach, let us have a formula that determines when to do it in-house and when to outsource. There are multiple factors: cost, efficiency, returns on investment, expertise, capacity, focus on core business, flexibility to match the peaks and troughs of hiring demand. Can we organize these factors into a simple format that facilitates easy decision-making.

Do you have a talent strategy?

This is not a rhetoric question. Talent strategy gives a clear idea of the roles and the number of people for each role they need to hire during the year. And for each role, they should know what competencies they require, the budgets, timelines and where the desired talent is available. They must also have a path for each role to develop and progress further. Not many organizations have this clearly defined and agreed among their top management.

Ideally, you should know the roles which give a competitive edge to the organization. These need not be the senior-most roles in the company. Depending upon the strategy, the competitive advantage of your army could be the foot soldiers or in some cases, it is the Generals; and in some other cases, it could be the mid-level managers like Captains and Majors. Irrespective of the level, the roles which give you the edge in the market, need to be the focus of the Board. Specialists must be deployed to fill these roles. Even when you have a team in-house sourcing talent, you get internal references and you have your own database of candidates, you outsource the activity to an expert organization to deploy one uniform method.

There are roles which are essential for the day to day functioning of the organization. You look for efficiencies in this case. Most often, you would have outsourced these roles to a Staffing company. A well-oiled machinery can service these requirements well. Do you run this machinery in-house or outsource?

The answer lies in the cost vs benefits. Typically, the fully-loaded cost of a recruiter in India is  1.0 to 1.5 million INR per annum for a company. This figure does not consider the opportunity costs. These are just the direct costs such as wages, tools, infrastructure and the cost of supervision. Many organizations fail to see the hidden costs associated with a full-time employee, let alone the opportunity costs. If the cost savings by in-sourcing recruitment are higher than the direct costs, it is a no-brainer to set up an in-house team to acquire talent.

How confident are you in attracting talent by yourself?

Top talent is not easy to come by. Depending upon the skill-set being hired, the depth of experience being looked for and the demand-supply situation for that kind of talent, candidates behave differently. When your target market for talent is experiencing extreme levels of demand (too high or too low), candidates are likely to have many questions regarding the opportunity. They feel at ease in asking questions to a third-party than the potential employer. Hence, such queries are best addressed by your recruitment partner rather than by your own team. If you haven’t outsourced recruitment in such cases, you are missing out on the best talent.

Sourcing candidates is just one of the many steps in the recruitment process. However, this is one of the most crucial steps. How confident are you about the expertise and capacity of the in-house team in attracting the best from the market? Depending upon the role that you are trying to fill, your Recruiting partner deploys the recruiter who regularly fills such roles. It is most likely that the agency will be able to do a better job in attracting the best than your in-house team.

You may have an in-house team filling a set of roles which are non-strategic but essential for day to day functioning. Let us assume that the cost vs benefits equation is in your favour and hence, you are happy to run the engine under your direct supervision and control. What do we do to ensure that the best talent is being picked up and at the optimum cost? We need to benchmark our processes to ensure that they are fit for the purpose.

Do you have the intent?

Leadership intent and belief plays an important role behind the decision of outsourcing. If your context is short-term, the answer is simple : you have to do everything hands-on, fight multiple battles at the same time, minimize cash outflows and ignore the opportunity cost. If you think in the long term, you have to decide what is strategic and what is not; secondly, you need to evolve a talent management strategy and execute it accordingly. Often leaders do not find the bandwidth to define the strategy for the talent attraction, assessment and development. Hence, their execution steps in recruitment become haphazard and hence, inefficient.

Leaders in HR, Procurement and Finance negotiate with a service provider on aspects like replacement guarantee, ownership of candidate, scope of work, MIS, penalties and so on. Unfortunately, they do not find the time to discuss talent strategy, employee value proposition and market trends. In-house team or an outsourced team, both need investment of time and efforts to co-create talent attraction ideas and fine-tune talent acquisition processes. That calls for not only an intent but also deep commitment.

In summary, ask yourself the 3 questions and decide what you should outsource. Needless to mention, these are strategic and deeper questions than the run-of-the-mill ones such as hiring plan timelines, numbers and expertise to hire. Outsourcing or doing it in-house is an important decision. The questions which help making this decision better be tough!

Get Well Qualified People For Your Job

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Companies consider talent as their competitive advantage. Leaders believe that machines, technology, capital, knowhow and processes can be acquired easier than talent. Various studies have proven that acquiring talent is one of their major challenges. Should organizations build their internal capability to hire for themselves or rely on external agencies?

Needless to mention that either method has its own pros and cons. The solution lies in the old saying – ‘horses for courses’.

When do you build inhouse capability?

Some think of talent acquisition as a critical success factor and hence, they must deal with this strategic task inhouse. They cannot outsource this to anyone. Some leaders think that the skills that they are hiring are rare to find and assume that nobody other than an inhouse team can invest their energies in finding those needles from the haystack. We find another argument in support of inhouse hiring when the company doesn’t want many people to know that it is hiring for the particular role.

All these are myths! Rather one should use a simple 2×2 matrix to decide the strategy.

Decide if talent acquisition is strategically important for the organization’s results and secondly if it impacts operational metrics of the organization.

For an airline, in-flight catering is an important function but not strategically important; neither it impacts the operational metrics of the airline in a significant way. However, for a restaurant, it is not only a strategic value but also important operationally. Given this example, one knows that a restaurant has to have inhouse capability to prepare the food.

Outsource when Recruitment is Strategically Less Important but makes an Impact on Operational Metrics of the firm

Leaders choose the top few levers (typically 3 to 5) which are strategically important for the organization. Recruitment may not figure there in the list. However, recruiting the right people on time could be important from operational perspective such as servicing customers, running important errands, completing tasks with speed and accuracy. In these situations, one must leave it to experts than invest energies inhouse to focus on something which is not on the strategic agenda item. The external expert knows how to minimize the cycle time, increase process efficiency and optimize the quality.

This is like a company outsourcing its cleaning needs to an agency; hiring people for sales support, sales promotion, administrative tasks, customer service, maintenance and several other non-core activities through an outsourced agency; back-filling vacant roles.

Outsource and Build Strategic Partnership when Recruitment is Strategically Important but does Not make an impact on Operational Metric of the firm

Organizations take up new projects or have ongoing needs to back-fill vacancies or have a few key roles to fill. These are strategically important for the organization because future revenue streams are linked with the success of these. And most of the times, these do not impact the operational metrics of the organization in the short term.

In these situations, leaders make the mistake of building an inhouse team to deliver on these. Such an effort becomes not only a distraction for the senior leaders but also is an expensive proposition. Moreover, these teams turn inefficient over a longer period of time, say 2-3 years.

The solution here is to build a strategic partnership with an outsourced player who provides high mindshare for the engagement, considers it important for them, works as an extension of the organization, stays efficient and competitive, leverages on its knowledge of the market and works under an objective framework of governance.

Plan it yourself if Recruitment is a Strategic Lever and Impacts the Operational Metric

The top leaders of an organization may feel that getting the right talent on-board is one of their critical success factors and moreover, recruitment impacts the operational metrics of the firm. This situation shows hiring is high on strategic importance and at the same time, has a high impact on the operational metrics such as revenues, cycle times, error rates and so on.

This is like an assembly shop for a car company, kitchen for a restaurant, design shop for a consumer product company, engineering team for a manufacturing company. All these have to be done inhouse.

Planning for recruitment is critical and it must not be confused with the implementation of the plan. Once the organization is clear about the kind of people it needs, the timelines, the critical attributes and the value proposition for a prospective employee, execution starts. Many a times, organizations fail to plan this well and hope that the plan will evolve alongside the execution. If this happens well, it is just a sweet coincidence and cannot be repeated.

For an organization providing services to its customers, it needs to have the right people at the right time. The situation here scores high on both the dimensions : strategic importance and operational impact. Hence, the organization must own the critical piece of planning the talent acquisition process and managing it.

Stop Recruiting if it is Not on Strategic agenda and does Not Impact the Operational Metric of the firm

If nobody cares about recruiting, the firm has to eliminate the function and not even think of outsourcing either. This is simple decision because it scores low on both the dimensions: strategic as well as operational importance.

Talent Acquisition as a process is to be outsourced when it appears on the strategic agenda of the firm or when it impacts the operational metric. Keep the planning function inhouse if it is on the strategic agenda as well as impacts the organization operationally. Leaders have to take a clear stance!

Get Well Qualified People For Your Job

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