If you are a recruiter, you must have wondered once if you might not be better off outsourcing a recruiting. You have indeed thought about it because you lacked time to complete your recruitment or because of a lack of internal applications. But is outsourcing recruitment the right solution? In this article, you will discover why you may need to outsource a recruitment process, by what means you can outsource it, and also the advantages and disadvantages that this practice can have.
What is outsourcing recruitment?
Whether you are a recruiter in a small structure or a more extensive system, you have indeed already had to think or have to do with outsourcing your recruitments. But what exactly is outsourcing?
Outsourcing Definition
Outsourcing consists of transferring a business activity to a specialized external service provider. For example, in the case of human resources, it sometimes happens that certain services or activities such as recruitment or payroll are entrusted to an external service provider to be more efficient or quite simply because the resource is non-existent in the company.
Examples:
You are the manager of a small company and must make the first payslips for your employees. However, you do not have a payroll department within your company because it is a small structure, and you do not have the means to invest in a full-time employee for this function. You can then call on an external service provider at a lower cost to manage all of your payrolls.
You recruit a profile that you consider penury by your sector of activity or the skills it must have. Unfortunately, you do not have the necessary internal resources to source and unearth your future talent (job boards, CVs, employer brand, etc.).
Why outsource recruitment?
Whether you are in a small or large structure, many reasons push recruiters to outsource their needs.
- Lack of Time. The first reason that drives a recruiter to turn to outsource is often a lack of time. Indeed, when you are a recruiter, you tend to manage many tasks simultaneously or even a lot of recruitments, and sometimes, we don’t have enough time! Calling on an external service provider can allow you to delegate recruitment that you have been able to abandon because you did not have the time to take care of it but for which the need is very present and for which you absolutely must find candidates.
- Lack of Internal Applications. The second reason that drives recruiters to opt for outsourcing is the lack of internal candidates. Indeed, this must have happened to you before: you published your recruitment ad on all job boards and all social networks but not back? Spent your day messaging on social media or contacting candidates whose CVs you’ve found online but haven’t returned? When we understand having tried everything and not finding a candidate corresponding to our recruitment needs, calling on an external service provider seems to be the ideal solution! Indeed, this will allow you, as a recruiter, to open doors for you because the service provider may already have a pool of candidates or else resources to which you do not have access internally.
- Win Time. The first advantage of outsourcing is saving time! Indeed, calling on an external service provider will allow you to clear the rules of one or more recruitments and, therefore, to be able to focus on other higher priority tasks. Apart from saving you time as a recruiter, outsourcing will also keep your business time. Indeed, thanks to your service provider, you will be ready to trust your recruitment need to someone who can completely take care of it, and your recruitment times will be reduced. This can save you time in your recruitment process by meeting candidates much faster than if you had decided to do it alone.
When to outsource recruitment?
Outsourcing can be decided on different occasions. For example, it may result from a sharp increase in recruitment activity that internal teams of recruiters cannot ensure. However, outsourcing recruitment can also be used as part of a business strategy to outsource many functions to reduce costs. Finally, the outsourcing of recruitment can be considered to optimize the efficiency of recruitment. By definition, a recruitment service provider whose job is to recruit with resources and know-how generally superior to an internal recruitment service (IS, number of employees, knowledge of the tools on the market, etc.).
What Are the Benefits of Outsourcing Recruitment?
Outsourcing recruitment has many benefits for the client. First of all, it relieves the internal recruitment teams of the company. The cyclical recruitment activity and the outsourcing of recruitment make it possible to guarantee recruitment deadlines when internal employees could not commit to it due to lack of time. The outsourcing of recruitment makes it possible, on the other hand, not to increase too much the payroll of the company’s employees in a recruitment function. In this case, outsourcing recruitment allows greater flexibility (in a downturn) and reduced costs.
Regarding this last point of cost, it should be qualified. In some cases, recruitment outsourcing makes it possible to reduce costs (in managing temporary employment contracts, complex recruitments, large volumes of recruitment, etc.). However, outsourcing recruitment is more expensive (not very difficult or one-off recruitments in professions that are not poverty).
Outsourcing recruitment makes it possible to set precise qualitative and quantitative objectives and to stick to them. Indeed, when recruitment is managed internally, it is often the case that due to lack of time, due to new priorities, the project’s ambitions may be revised downwards. On the other hand, when the outsourcing of recruitment is retained, the service provider is more committed to obtaining results and keeps the most of the time.
Outsourcing Recruitment Means Opening Doors
You saw it in the article: outsourcing recruitment can be a good solution when you lack the internal time or do not have the necessary resources to process your recruitment in the best possible way. Be careful, however, to outsource your recruitment to the right firm or the right person! Ask yourself the right questions: cost, budget, deadline, etc. The more precise your answers to these questions, the more accurate the choice of your service provider will be.
Also read Meaning of Current Employer in a Company
