The term ‘outsourcing’ is to HR teams, as ‘Voldemort’ is to Harry Potter. However, there are many benefits of working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner.

There tends to be a lot of confusion around the intentions of an Outsourced Recruitment Partner – we don’t want your HR teams to be made redundant. In fact, one of the key benefits of working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner is the complete opposite – which brings me to my first point:

• HR teams have time to focus on HR

Attraction, engagement, assessment and on-boarding are just a few of the many aspects under the remit of Recruitment. Generally, HR teams aren’t trained to be the best at all of them – this would require a lot of your HR and economic resource.

This is one of the benefits of working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner – it’s their job to be the best at all things Recruitment.

The stress is taken off of your HR team, allowing them to focus on your current personnel – this can help to boost your retention rates from an internal perspective. Consider this: if your HR team didn’t have to worry about recruitment, what else could they be doing?

On top of this, the right Partner will enhance the capabilities of your HR team. Using the right recruitment metrics and providing you with useful Management Information, the right Partner will allow you to learn as you go, and understand why things are done how they are.

Now, I’ve mentioned how HR teams aren’t usually experts across the board in Recruitment. This can be detrimental to the quality of your candidates, and reflect negatively on your employer brand. So, the next few benefits of working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner – drum roll, please…

• The Quality of your Candidates

The time-constraints and a lack of expertise that bear down on HR teams can lead to a decline in the quality of your candidates.

One of the benefits of working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner is that they will have a specialist team dedicated to your Recruitment – this will result in a higher quality of candidate being put forward.

• The Perception of your Brand as an Employer

As I touched on in the previous point – there tend to be time-constraints, as well as a lack of expertise, with Recruitment for HR teams. You should consider how the candidates’ recruitment experience will reflect on your employer brand.

Not sure how it will? In one word – negatively. A bad candidate experience gives the impression that you don’t take pride your brand, or in enhancing your brand. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools in any companies’ arsenal. However, it’s not always powerful in a positive way.

The right Partner will reflect your brand in a positive way – exactly how you want it to be reflected.

• The Time-to-Hire in your Recruitment

This stands to be a challenge for the majority of in-house Recruitment teams. Your time-to-hire can be influenced by the time-constraints of HR teams. The lack of expertise can mean that each application takes longer to be screened and the appropriate action taken.

A long time-to-hire can create the two points above:

• Your employer brand will be reflected negatively – “it took so long to go through the process, and I was eventually rejected anyway. What a waste of time.”
• High-quality candidates will drop out – you don’t want your best candidates to receive job offers from other companies, simply because they’re in your process for a longer time.

One of the benefits of working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner, much like with the above two points, is their specialist team. This specialist team, with their expertise and the time dedicated to your Recruitment needs, will drastically reduce your time-to-hire.

Okay – so, we’ve covered how working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner will free up time for your HR team to operate as a HR team. Then we touched on the benefits to the actual Recruitment process. But, what you’re all waiting for:

• Cost vs Value

It’s a common misconception that Outsourcing will save you money. This is probably because it’s how most Partner’s will pitch themselves.

However, whilst it’s possible to save yourself some money with Outsourcing – this isn’t always the case. Hence why this point isn’t titled “Cost Reduction”. Instead, the cost of Outsourcing should be considered in terms of the value that you receive for your investment.

Again, this can be linked to the time-constraints of your HR teams. Working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner will allow your HR teams to use their time to add more value to your Company.

Would you consider your employer brand as value? Outsourced Recruitment Partner’s certainly would. Maintaining a positive employer brand will add substantial value to your Company, because of how it is perceived by all external sources.

Consider the value that high-quality candidates can bring to your Company. The best candidates will perform to a higher-standard, and take less time to settle into their role. This is value.

We’re not saying that working with an Outsourced Recruitment Partner is for everyone. However, it’s a case of weighing up the costs and benefits, and considering the additional value.

As always, we’re happy to receive any comments or queries – we don’t bite!