Top 4 Process Improvements to Improve the Productivity of Your RPO

Discussions that revolve around talent acquisition “transformation” often involve long-term strategies and high-level shifts that require an extended period of time to implement. If you are looking to see a faster return on your recruiter productivity when you’re using an RPO, here are four things you can implement quickly that will yield immediate results.

Eliminate red tape in the approval process. Provide your recruitment team guidelines and conditions that allow them to make decisions. This is helpful for background checks, scheduling interviews, or anything where a faster decision would speed up the hiring process. One of our clients created a document that outlined which situations were automatically approved during background checks, which freed up our recruitment coordinators to move faster since they didn’t have to wait for approvals each time. Granted, getting to this level of trust with your RPO may take some time, but it is worth it when you do. One way to determine whether or not you should entrust a decision to a recruiter is to examine the business impact of the issue at stake. If the potential outcomes do not have a huge impact on the company, most likely the recruiter can handle making the decision within your guidelines. If it’s a gray area, then the decision would escalate within the company. Accountability can be built in so that you are informed on a regular basis of the decisions your RPO has made on your behalf.
Let technology work for you. With relative simplicity, you can use technology to improve efficiency. Smart forms eliminate manual uploading. Video interviewing, for example, saves time for all involved. Enabling automatic notifications in your tracking system, as well as email notifications to candidates, frees up recruiters to spend more time on higher-level priorities. The less manual work that needs to be done, the more time recruiters can spend on connecting and screening high-quality candidates.
Motivate hiring managers to provide feedback to recruiters within a set timeframe. Providing feedback to the recruiter doesn’t always hit the top of the day’s to-do list for managers. Yet, the entire hiring process rests on the RPO team receiving feedback in order to know how to move forward to the next step in the process. Recruiters spend an inordinate amount of time tracking down feedback. If you motivate and hold your hiring managers accountable to provide that feedback within a certain timeframe, the entire process will be more effective.
Limit the number of interview rounds and interviewers. Ideally, an efficient interview process will involve interviewing no more than three to five qualified candidates, with no more than two rounds of interviews, and no more than two interviewers per round. If recruiters ask the right questions in the prescreen and submit qualified candidates, you should be able to make a hiring decision with the first slate of candidates. There will always be exceptions, of course, but it is a standard to work toward. Hiring managers should choose a candidate who possesses the majority of the skills and qualifications, fits in culturally, and can be trained on the missing pieces. Too many rounds of interviews and too many people involved in the hiring decision creates a poor hiring experience and reflects badly on your company. If candidates are working, they may have to take time off to interview with you; getting that time off discreetly can be difficult. If you appear to be indecisive, candidates will wonder why you can’t make a decision and whether or not that is the typical behavior at your company. Too many interviewers in the process muddles decision-making. An inability to make a well-informed, quick decision puts you at risk for losing candidates to competitors, too.

These four steps can help boost recruiter productivity considerably. Talk with your RPO today to learn how you can implement these changes and create a stronger partnership.