6 Benefits of Modular RPO in a Challenging Economy

By Jo Taylor, Head of RPO, EMEA

Amidst a tumultuous economy, employers continue to face challenges in talent acquisition and are seeking nimble solutions that allow them to address hiring needs quickly. Despite layoffs in some sectors, job openings surpass pre-pandemic levels in nearly every industry—averaging 31% more vacancies than in 2019. This is compounded by three million people having dropped out of the labour force.  

Many organisations lack the in-house recruitment resources—in terms of personnel or technology—to respond to fluctuations in a volatile talent market. Plus, with skills gaps growing, internal talent acquisition teams are too stretched to effectively manage the candidate lifecycle. Consequently, employers experience dwindling talent pipelines and an increase in drop-offs and ghosting between offer acceptance and onboarding. 

No wonder 91% of hiring managers say they’re experiencing hiring challenges and 45% say they’re struggling to find qualified workers for open roles at their companies. Many organisations are seeking recruitment support in the form of modular RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) as a cost-effective way to augment their recruitment capabilities where they need it most.  

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our new suite of modular solutions, Amplifiers. Amplifiers has a solution that can help augment your team to meet your short-term talent needs—while providing lasting business value.   

What is Modular RPO? 

Modular RPO, or variable RPO, is a strategic approach to managing the recruitment process in an ultra-focused manner. It involves outsourcing specific components of the recruitment process to an RPO provider, or as a supplement to an existing outsourced recruitment engagement, providing quick access to targeted and customised recruitment support. With a modular or à la carte approach, you choose from a range of services based on your requirements. 

Our Amplifiers include: 

  • Talent Mapping 
  • Talent Sourcing 
  • Talent Campaign: Surge Support
  • Assessment Transformation 

Modular RPO vs Full End-to-End RPO 

Modular RPO differs from traditional enterprise RPO in that it allows businesses to select and customise the specific recruitment services they need, rather than outsourcing the entire process.  

The main differences include: 

  • Scope: Modular RPO focuses on specific parts of the recruitment process or short-term initiatives, while end-to-end RPO can cover the entire recruitment function. 
  • Duration: Modular RPO engagements are typically short-term, while end-to-end RPO is a long-term strategic partnership. However, many of our RPO partnerships at PeopleScout have started as short-term engagements.  
  • Technology Integration: End-to-end RPO often involves more extensive use of technology, including integration with other HR systems as well as customisation. 

The decision between modular RPO and a full RPO engagement depends on various factors, including organisation size, hiring volume, budget and strategic workforce planning. It’s essential to assess your specific needs and evaluate the benefits and trade-offs associated with each approach before making a decision. 

6 Benefits of Modular RPO

Here are six key benefits of a modular approach to RPO. 

1. Cost Optimisation 

Modular RPO gives you greater control over your recruitment costs. You select specific recruitment services based on your challenges, enabling you to allocate your budget more efficiently by avoiding unnecessary expenses for unused services. In uncertain economic times, this is a more cost-effective approach that still lets you benefit from the expertise of an RPO partner. 

2. Scalability and Agility 

The business landscape is unpredictable, which can cause your hiring needs to fluctuate rapidly. Modular RPO provides the agility to scale your recruitment capabilities up or down based on demand. You can quickly adapt your recruitment efforts in response to market conditions, ensuring you have the adequate resources during high-demand periods and avoiding unnecessary expenses during slower periods. Plus, some of our clients have added Amplifiers onto their full RPO engagement—whether they’re partnered with PeopleScout or another RPO—when an extra boost is needed.  

3. Customisation and Control  

Some organisations prefer to maintain a certain level of control over their recruitment process, particularly during uncertain economic times. With modular RPO, you can customise your recruitment process according to your specific requirements. Select the services you need, such as candidate sourcing, screening or onboarding support, while retaining oversight of other aspects of the recruitment process. This level of control allows companies to align the outsourced services with their internal hiring strategies and maintain greater mastery of their talent acquisition function. 

4. Strategic Focus 

By outsourcing specific recruitment functions to an RPO partner, you can free up your internal HR teams and hiring managers to focus on core business activities, such as talent development, workforce planning and organisational restructuring. By opting for a modular approach, organisations can collaborate with their RPO partner to design a solution that addresses their specific challenges and aligns with their strategic goals. 

5. Access to Technology 

RPO providers have access to advanced recruitment technologies and tools. Even with modular RPO, you can leverage these technologies for specific recruitment functions without investing in them for internal use. This is particularly beneficial in challenging economic environments where capital expenditures are carefully managed. 

6. Risk Mitigation 

In uncertain economic climates, modular recruitment solutions are a great option for organisations who are new to RPO. By opting for a more targeted and flexible approach, you can evaluate the effectiveness and value of the outsourced recruitment partner before expanding the engagement further. 

PeopleScout’s Amplifiers offer you the ability to optimise costs, maintain agility, streamline recruitment processes and focus on strategic priorities—while still benefiting from our 30 years of expertise as an RPO partner. The benefits of modular RPO align your organisational needs with our current economic realities. 

MODULAR RPO SOLUTIONS FROM PEOPLESCOUT

AMPLIFIERS: SCALABLE. FLEXIBLE. AGILE.

The London Borough of Hounslow: A Collaborative Partnership Increased Their Offer Acceptance Rate to 87%

The London Borough of Hounslow: A Collaborative Partnership Increased Their Offer Acceptance Rate to 87%

The London Borough of Hounslow: A Collaborative Partnership Increased Their Offer Acceptance Rate to 87%

The London Borough of Hounslow were looking to source candidates that shared their values and vision as part of delivering their ambitions for a new Corporate Plan. For this, they required a RPO partner to develop a high-quality campaign to help build a new team. A key aspect was to build high performing teams from a diverse background with shared values.

87% % Acceptance Rate
65% % of New Hires Identify as a Person of Colour
39% % Boost to Social Media Engagement

Situation

In July 2022, the Cabinet of the United Kingdom approved a new Corporate Plan and the first version of a new Delivery Plan for the London Borough of Hounslow. The Delivery Plan sets out the first set of programmes to enable the Council to deliver its ambitions over the term of the new administration. This was large-scale, initially incorporating 19 programmes of work, with more to come in future iterations of the plan. To make this happen, they required a high-quality workforce to be execute on their ambitions.

Hounslow were looking for a recruitment partner to develop and deliver an innovative and high-quality recruitment campaign that would enable them to recruit across a range of roles in the corporate Project Management Office (PMO) and the Service Design and Transformation team, as well as other roles that were vital to programme delivery. It was critical that candidates aligned with the Council’s values and that the campaign reached those with diverse backgrounds and experiences from local communities and beyond.

Hounslow didn’t have the internal capacity or market knowledge to do this on their own. However, previous outsourcing interactions had been with agencies with a very transactional relationship. Hounslow felt this didn’t meet their needs, so they partnered with PeopleScout for a consultative approach, utilising RPO for the very first time.

Solution

In winning a 12-month award with the Council, our initial focus was on six key job profiles, hiring between 35 and 40 individuals. It was imperative for Hounslow to build a team with the right skills, experience and ambition to deliver the Corporate Plan.

Due to our initial success, we will continue to support Hounslow’s recruitment needs for another 12 months under the award.

A Consultative Approach

Our dedicated and skilled senior recruiters acted as brand ambassadors and became an extension of the in-house team, optimising and managing Hounslow’s recruitment process from attraction to offer. We managed each position in its entirety, from briefing through to verbal offer acceptance, including creating a sourcing and attraction plan for each role profile.

Keeping Candidates Engaged

Historically, the public sector has struggled to engage candidates. We utilised many touchpoints to improve engagement and retention rates throughout the candidate journey. Our dedicated recruitment marketer focused on creating engaging copy and provided recommendations on the best supplementary media options for the target audiences. This included a sourcing-led service, in which the focus was on brand awareness, targeting candidates within niche roles. This sourcing approach gained an engagement rate of 39% on LinkedIn.

Our recruitment marketing strategy included a social media attraction campaign to further increase Hounslow’s brand in the market. Social content included showcasing projects and testimonials from current employees. We also built a a landing page, for which we worked with Hounslow to understand and showcase their employer value proposition to boost talent attraction. This helped to increase brand awareness, bringing in higher quality candidates.

On top of these attraction efforts, we directly sourced passive candidates to raise Hounslow’s profile in the market and increase diversity within the talent pools.

“The London Borough of Hounslow has shown through their recruitment process that they are keen to remove unconscious bias and attract a diverse pool of candidates.”

Candidate feedback

Utilising Technology

As part of the project, we utilised our tech stack to enable better data capturing, to make better data drive decisions, to track and monitor their DE&I agenda and to provide a better overall candidate journey.

Throughout the project, we gathered market feedback and tracked hiring metrics, presenting data through bespoke dashboards to guide hiring decisions and educate. Hounslow received weekly reports from us, including regular analysis of market insights, salary benchmarks and candidate feedback.

Results

Our consultative approach to hiring and tailored strategies for each role resulted in:

  • An 87% offer acceptance rate.
  • An enhanced candidate and hiring manager experience, through a consultative approach.
  • Increased diversity within roles filled, with over 65% of candidates hired identifying as non-white.
  • 2:1 to interview-to-hire, exceeding the average of 3:1.
  • Increased social media engagement to 39%.

We have become an embedded and trusted partner to Hounslow, due to our effective articulation of their brand story, ambitions, and values to their target audience.

“PeopleScout ensured that communication and planning were at the forefront. What really set them aside is the time they spent listening and understanding what the roles were and what type of people we wanted.

The end result is that we trusted PeopleScout’s shortlisted candidates. The Hounslow Service Design team is now full of talented people with the mindset and values we share as an organisation.”

Mike Burch, Head of Service Design and Transformation

“The collaborative approach was key. PeopleScout took the time to fully understand our requirements and source quality candidates. We now have fantastic teams in place delivering great value to the organisation and residents of Hounslow.”

Kieron McQuade, Head of PMO

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY
    The London Borough of Hounslow
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT LONDON BOROUGH OF HOUNSLOW
    The London Borough of Hounslow is an area of West London, England, governed by Hounslow London Borough Council.

University of Central Lancashire: Sourcing in Competitive UK Education Sector

University of Central Lancashire: Sourcing in Competitive UK Education Sector

University of Central Lancashire: Sourcing in Competitive UK Education Sector

As a leader in higher education in the UK, The University of Central Lancashire attracts students from around the world. However, filling a vacancy for Schools & Colleges Liaison Manager proved to be more challenging in a competitive market. PeopleScout delivered top candidates through a high-touch executive search engagement in just four weeks.

5 Secured five strong candidates for interview shortlist
90 Reached an audience of over 90 job seekers
4 Four weeks turnaround from briefing call to shortlist of candidates for interview

Situation 

The vacancy for the Schools & Colleges Liaison Manager position at The University of Central Lancashire had been posted to the university’s website and a leading UK job board for over 30 days with few applications received. The position was located in the West Midlands, home to many higher education institutions, creating a competitive environment for recruitment. 

Following a positive experience with PeopleScout as a job seeker, Adam Mitchell, Head of UK Recruitment at UCLan, engaged PeopleScout from the client side this time to address the challenges faced by the university for this role.  

Solution 

Knowing that today’s talent market consists mostly of passive candidates, our strategy targeted individuals working within the higher education sector and those employed by private training providers. Leveraging LinkedIn and the CV Library website, we looked for professionals with experience indicating a strong understanding of the education of young people aged 16 to 18 in UK, the student recruitment cycle and the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) process.  

We also scoured the websites of other universities and colleges across the West Midlands region to identify potential candidates as well as individuals in learning and development roles at private training companies and other companies in the private sector.  

Throughout the project we continued searching to maximise our engagement within the target talent pool. We reviewed hundreds of profiles and approached 92 people, producing a shortlist of potential matches. Finally, we encouraged all candidates to provide feedback and recommendations from their networks to help us to grow the talent pool. 

Results 

Out of the 92 candidates we reached out to, a total of 49 people engaged with us, creating an engagement rate of 53%. In just four weeks, we were able to present a shortlist a of five strong candidates for consideration, who were sourced via headhunting and networking within our targeted talent pool. 

  • Reached out to 92 candidates 
  • 49 candidates engaged with us creating an engagement rate of 53% 
  • We presented a shortlist of five candidates who were invited to interview 
  • Two candidates passed to a second interview 
  • One offer was made 

“PeopleScout immediately understood the challenge we had in recruiting for a specialist position out of region and in an area awash with vacancies in similar organisations. The approach of understanding the role and the type of experience required, and then refining this through presenting a selection of candidate profiles, was excellent. I was reassured that the PeopleScout recruiter knew precisely what we were looking for. I was kept fully updated throughout, with regular conversations and emails. The shortlist provided was excellent, with all candidates suitable for interview. I was delighted to appoint a fantastic candidate who we would not have reached without PeopleScout’s efforts.” 

Adam Mitchell, Head of UK Recruitment at The University of Central Lancashire

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY
    The University of Central Lancashire
  • ABOUT UCLAN
    The University of Central Lancashire is an international university with campuses in Preston, Burnley, Westlakes in the UK as well as Cyprus. As one of the UK’s largest universities, UCLan offers 350 undergraduate and over 200 postgraduate programs, and the university is ranked in the top 7% of universities worldwide. Their community is made up of approximately 38,000 students from more than 100 countries around the world.

Seasonal Hiring: How RPO Can Help You Better Source and Hire Seasonal Workers 

Hiring seasonal workers is essential for employers in need of extra talent during the festive season. If your organisation depends on seasonal hiring to augment your workforce, it is vital to efficiently source, recruit, and onboard your seasonal hires to ensure you are staffed during the busy shopping period.

Without a well-designed seasonal hiring program in place, employers risk going understaffed for the festive period, or for other times of the year when a business reaches a peak. In this article, we will walk through how an RPO provider can help you hire talent for the busy season and equip you with tips on building a seasonal hiring pipeline.

What is a Seasonal Worker?

hiring seasonal workers

A seasonal worker or employee is one who works for a short period to meet seasonal peaks in demand. This might coincide with annual seasons, like summer travel peaks, or with festive seasons.

Employers that use seasonal hires typically need assistance at the same time each year, for example as lifeguards or lawn care workers in the summer or retail workers or delivery drivers in the winter. When hiring seasonal workers, you can hire them on a part-time or full-time basis depending on your needs.

What are the Benefits of Hiring Seasonal Workers?

Here are some of the benefits of hiring seasonal workers:

Extra Hands When You Need Them: When a business reaches its peak season, seasonal workers provide you that extra help fast when you need it, without the investment required for full-time staff.

Assist Full-Time Staff: Your seasonal employees can help alleviate the load carried by your full-time employees. This can improve morale for your permanent workforce, because they have the support they need during peak times.

Low Risk: When you hire a permanent employee, you don’t always know if they’ll be a good fit for the job. Seasonal employees are only hired for a short period, if they aren’t a good fit, the impact to your business will be minimised.

Potential Talent Pool: On the other hand, if you hire a seasonal employee who works out well, you might be able to offer them a permanent position when one becomes available. It’s a trial run that works as a recruiting method for permanent positions.

9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges

Better Seasonal Hiring Begins with Crafting Better Job Descriptions

seasonal hiring

Writing job descriptions for seasonal positions is different from temporary, full- and part-time roles. It is important that your job descriptions accurately reflect the nature of your open positions, so candidates know ahead of time if they should apply.

For example, many seasonal roles are in warehouse and logistics setting and may require candidates to work in a more physically demanding environment. Major retailers and logistics companies are in serious need of seasonal workers with John Lewis looking to fill 14,000 roles, including shop assistants, warehouse workers and delivery drivers, and the Royal Mail hoping to add over 20,000 seasonal sorters and carriers.

To better understand the nature of the seasonal jobs for which you are writing job descriptions consider spending time shadowing workers in the relevant seasonal positions. What’s more, COVID-19 has made many employers become more familiar with video interviewing, however, the idea of leveraging videos to enhance your employment marketing and employer branding is sometimes overlooked.  

Job descriptions can be bolstered with video. A seasonal job posting could include a short video of a hiring manager describing the job and what they are looking for in a seasonal hire. Your video can even include examples of workers performing the most common tasks required to give candidates an accurate idea of the work involved.

How RPO Can Help

RPO providers can help employers conceive of and create a talent attraction strategy that considers both the needs of employers and the needs of seasonal hires. Through a data-driven approach to talent advisory and recruitment marketing, they help you showcase what makes you a seasonal employer of choice.

Sourcing Seasonal Hires

Recruiting seasonal employees begins with mining a verdant source of seasonal workers. Employers should look for candidates such as students and other demographics looking for short-term employment opportunities. For example, consider recruiting recent graduates who are taking time to figure out what they want to do long-term is one way of sourcing seasonal talent. Often, these candidates prefer the temporary nature of seasonal work compared to a longer-term commitment.

Moreover, hiring candidates with a seasonal work mindset can help you keep them around for the full season or even retain them for next year.

When sourcing seasonal workers, look to hire people who want seasonal work including:

  • Retired workers
  • Workers looking for extra work during the holidays
  • Stay-at-home parents who want to work while their kids are in school
  • Students who are on holiday break

How RPO Can Help

Many RPO providers have talent pools and networks they can tap into to source the right candidates for seasonal positions. RPOs also have experience building talent pipelines from the ground up and can assist employers in creating a sustainable seasonal hiring program that delivers year-in-year-out.

RPO partners also offer technology expertise to help you track, measure and optimise your seasonal hiring campaign by showing which channels and recruitment marketing messages are yielding the best candidates. They can help you with recruitment analytics so you can see your recruitment funnel at all your sites in a centralised dashboard.

Managing High-Volume While Hiring Seasonal Workers

seasonal hires

Many employers in need of seasonal hires require a large volume of talent to keep up with peak demand. High-volume hiring at its heart is a problem of scale which requires optimising your time and recruiting spend. Recruitment automation can help you reduce the manual workload on your recruiting team and hiring managers while keeping your visibility on all of the candidates progressing through different stages of the interview process. Automating certain steps, such as screening and triggering assessments, allows recruiters to focus their time on higher-value, strategic work.

How RPO Can Help

An HR outsourcing solution such as RPO provides employers the ability to scale up seamlessly as seasonal hiring demands shift. With an internal talent acquisition team, it may be difficult to scale up hiring quickly enough to handle a higher number of hires and then scale back down when hiring volumes shrink. What’s more, recruitment technology platforms such as PeopleScout’s Affinix can help you automate your recruitment program and create great high-volume hiring efficiency.

Never Neglect Your End of-Season Plans

How you end a relationship with seasonal hires can help with next season’s hiring. Here are a few things to keep in mind at the end of the season:

  • Availability: Ask outgoing seasonal employees if they would be interested in returning next season. Some workers design their needs and lifestyle around managing seasonal and temporary jobs, and they may be looking for another opportunity next year.
  • Exit Interviews: To learn from successes and drawbacks, hold exit interviews with seasonal employees, regardless of how long they worked with you. Having informative feedback can help streamline next year’s efforts.
  • Permanent Talent: Tempting as it may be, you likely won’t have the means or the resources to bring every seasonal employee on full-time. However, keep an eye on exceptional workers whose mix of soft skills and talent would be excellent fit as vacancies come open during other parts of the year.

How RPO Can Help

An RPO provider can help organise your offboarding efforts at the end of the season by assisting in exit interviews, managing your seasonal worker database as well as hiring top performers to permanent positions. An RPO provider’s ability to scale down engagements quickly means the process can be seamlessly executed so that you can resume business as usual.

Are You in Need of a Seasonal Hiring Partner?

seasonal worker

When it comes to maintaining your seasonal operations and providing excellent customer service during your peak months, hiring seasonal employees can help keep your business moving.

Whether you are in need of seasonal recruiting or a permanent talent solution, employers in our new world of work face rising recruitment challenges. An outsourced recruitment solution like PeopleScout’s high-volume RPO and Total Workforce Solutions can help you stay connected with talent and provide hiring resources that will add immediate value to your talent programs.

How Project-Based RPO Can Solve Your Toughest Talent Challenges 

More than two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers are still dealing with ripple effects influencing their ability to hire qualified workers. Organisations are still rebuilding their workforces and turnover is high. Talent acquisition teams are spread thin—spending even more time than usual sourcing passive candidates and working with candidates who have multiple job opportunities.  

On top of that, it’s difficult to hire recruiters in the current market. According to LinkedIn, the number of open job postings for recruiters has increased nearly seven times year-over-year. Additionally, uncertainty continues. According to a survey by PwC, CEO optimism is down 20% compared to last year—and this survey was taken before geopolitical conflict and high inflation began to affect consumers and employers.  

These factors have left many employers looking for short-term talent acquisition support that can be set up quickly to respond to changes in the market. Rather than a full recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution, many employers are turning to project-based RPO, sometimes called Recruiter On-Demand. In this article, we’ll walk through the different ways a project-RPO partnership can be deployed to address specific challenges within talent acquisition programs.  

What is Project RPO? 

labor on demand

Project-based RPO represents a talent solution designed to meet the demands that internal resources may be unable to accommodate. Specifically, project-based solutions provide focused support for organisations in all industries during challenging periods of the recruitment cycle, such as peak hiring, hard-to-fill positions, compressed timeframes and more.  

Project RPO is a great option for organisations that don’t need or want a full RPO engagement, but still feel that they could benefit from some extra talent acquisition expertise and a small number of extra recruiters (or even just one). 

While these types of programs typically begin with a defined timeline and scope, they also have the ability to expand, extend and evolve as needs arise. There are three major use cases for project-based RPO engagements; below, we’ll cover what they are, how they work and how they fit together. 

Use Case: Top-of-Funnel Sourcing 

The first Project RPO model is a top-of-funnel sourcing solution. This model is exactly what it sounds like: Your partner works to fill the top of your recruitment funnel with more candidates. From there, your own internal team takes over reviewing their applications, interviewing candidates and making all of the hiring decisions. 

When Should You Use it? 

This type of solution usually appeals to employers for a few reasons, but the overarching theme is that internal talent acquisition teams don’t have enough time or bandwidth to source enough qualified candidates for open roles. This could be due to a hiring surge, ramp up or expansion. We also see this challenge for employers that have great consumer brands: They often get a lot of applicants, but can struggle to source candidates for specialised roles that aren’t what their brand is known for. This is common when hiring for IT or technology roles at companies that are not in the tech space.  

Likewise, as many organisations work to meet their diversity and inclusion goals, talent leaders can also struggle to find enough candidates from underrepresented backgrounds. The challenge can be further amplified when employers have locations spread across dozens, if not hundreds, of communities. That’s because recruiters and sourcers have to understand all the demographics and nuances of disparate locales.  

How Does it Work? 

At PeopleScout, a top-of-funnel sourcing engagement proved successful for one of our clients, a national retail sporting goods company. The team at this company was experiencing two challenges: They needed to fill a few specialised IT roles and they were struggling to source candidates from underrepresented backgrounds at their different locations. They also needed many candidates for their manager and assistant manager roles.  

In this situation, the retailer needed five sourcers: one person supporting their hard-to-fill IT roles, and the other four working to source for their high-volume area of retail and distribution roles. They had also identified several Midwestern states where they wanted to focus their diversity efforts and bring in more candidates from underrepresented backgrounds. To help them reach their goals, we created a detailed sourcing strategy. We also worked with local chambers of commerce and community-based organisations, in addition to leveraging social media platforms. By the end, the sporting goods retailer was able to meet its hiring and diversity goals, and the benefits even continued for weeks after the engagement ended.    

Use Case: Source/Screen/Present

Meanwhile, for employers that need slightly more support, there’s the next level of project-based RPO support: source/screen/present. This type of engagement starts out the same as a top-of-funnel sourcing partnership; recruiters and sourcers support an internal talent acquisition team for a period of time, sourcing candidates to apply to open roles. However, rather than handing those lists of candidates off to internal teams, the recruiters take the next step of prescreening the candidates to ensure that they are both qualified and interested in the role before presenting prequalified candidates to hiring managers.  

When Should You Use It? 

We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of employers looking for this type of support. By taking on the front end of the recruitment process, these recruiters and sourcers give more time back to internal teams. This means that they have more time to interview candidates, put together competitive job offers and onboard new hires. 

This solution can be helpful for employers for a number of reasons, but the most common is that they need to hire for a large number of roles at the same time. This could be because they’re in expansion mode or rebuilding their team after the challenges of the last few years. Or, maybe they have a seasonal hiring surge as they gear up for a busy season, and it doesn’t make sense to have a large internal team when they only need the extra help for a few weeks or months at a time. We see this type of need frequently with retail clients gearing up for the holidays; educational organisations adding staff for the school year; and healthcare companies preparing for open enrolment.   

We also see a need for this solution when employers have a lot of branches or locations spread across a large geographic area—especially if hiring decisions are made at the local level and not at the corporate office. Similarly, we often see that local, branch-level teams don’t have the manpower to source and screen large numbers of applicants.  

How Does it Work? 

In practice, this type of solution can have a major influence. For instance, we have a client that provides early childhood education for children six months to 12 years of age; at one point, they had more than 900 openings across the country. Simultaneously, they were dealing with the Great Rehire, classrooms were reopening and they were working on an acquisition. Their final hiring decisions were also made by the school at a local level. Clearly, this was more than the small internal team could manage.  

When we partnered with this organisation, our engagement started with two recruiters on a 16-week project. Those recruiters conducted the sourcing and prescreening of a minimum of 25 candidates per recruiter per week. Then, they sent prequalified candidates to the assigned school, where the hiring managers conducted in-person interviews, job offers and onboarding.   

Now, 10 months later, the project is still going strong. Because of the success of the initial team, the PeopleScout team has grown to six recruiters and, so far, they’ve phone screened nearly 3,000 candidates and submitted nearly 2,000.    

Use Case: Full-Cycle On-Demand Recruitment

Full-cycle project RPO partnerships are the most involved and most closely resemble traditional RPO partnerships. Think of them as “RPO light.” 

In a full-cycle partnership, recruiters support an employer’s internal team for the entire process—from intake to offer. There’s also even more space for a consultative partnership as the support extends throughout the entire process—not just bits and pieces. This means that there’s a greater opportunity to learn from the experiences and best practices that your partner has gleaned from years of working with employers across industries in all types of talent markets. Yet, despite the increased support, these types of full-cycle partnerships still retain all of the benefits—including the billing structure, shorter defined timeline to secure on-demand labour and more. 

When Should You Use It? 

This type of partnership typically works well for employers that are struggling to keep up with their hiring load. This could be due to attrition or a hiring surge and can cover every part of the process—from applicant management to interview scheduling to offer. 

We also see it work well for employers that want the best practices and experience of an RPO provider, but don’t have the need for a traditional, large, long-term engagement. In this case, these often start out as short-term projects, but end up being long-term partnerships.   

How Does it Work? 

At PeopleScout, we currently support a client that hires licensed clinical social workers. Because they provide virtual therapy and counselling sessions, their internal team was struggling to keep up with the increased demand caused by the pandemic. 

Once again, this Recruiter On-Demand project started small, with a 13-week planned engagement with two recruiters who handled everything form sourcing candidates to initial screenings and setting up interviews. The project also involved sourcing candidates from across the entire U.S. Finally, our team also handled offer letter execution and management.   

Now, 19 months later, the recruiting team has grown to 14, and we’ve hired more than 1,000 licensed social workers. We’ve also extended our services to support the client’s hiring needs in their call centre and IT department.  

A Growing Partnership to Provide Labour with On-Demand Recruitment

Project-based RPO engagements have built-in flexibility, which makes it easy for them to shift in scope. In this way, a partnership can start out focusing solely on top-of-funnel sourcing and then later expand when needs change to cover more of the hiring process. A project RPO partnership can even migrate to a traditional RPO partnership.