RPO & Project RPO | Change & Tech Markets
Posted by Ross Crook | Posted 28/09/2022
Project RPO as a standalone service offering was born out of the pandemic and is an area of talent acquisition that has experienced significant growth in the past 2 years. The huge spike in demand, combined with depleted talent acquisition teams (and challenges hiring quality recruiters) meant that Talent Acquisition Leaders turned to RPO firms such as Sanderson to provide a short-term project-based solution. Rather than the standard 12-week implementation we were challenged with going live in days and delivered a variety of projects which have ranged from hiring 250 customer service professionals in 8 weeks, finding niche engineering resource in difficult locations, and, of course, helping organisations tackle their digital hiring challenges.
Project RPO, rather than being a threat, is now very much part of the modern talent acquisition leader’s toolkit, offering flexibility and instant scale, without compromising the quality of process, experience, and data. It is true that some of our early projects were very much a stop gap that enabled TA teams to clear the backlog of vacancies or allowed them to grow their team. There is one area in particular in which the demand continues to grow, Technology and Change.
Challenges hiring tech talent is not new. Having said that, the pandemic has further increased both the demand and importance of tech and digital skills across most industry sectors. Tech roles, including Software Engineers and DevOps Engineers, occupy 5 of LinkedIn’s top ten most in demand roles. In Gartner’s latest annual survey, the lack of tech talent was cited by IT Leaders as the biggest risk to the adoption of emerging technologies. At Sanderson, our talent consulting team is regularly asked to deliver research projects to help our clients better understand their competitors or to explore alternative locations, both in the UK or across the globe to build tech teams.
With these very real challenges facing all organisations looking to hire tech talent and with unprecedented competition for talent, treating Technology and Change vacancies the same as the rest of your specialist roles leads to one of three outcomes, increased recruitment agency or contingent worker spend or increased time to hire (no TA Leader wants a vacancy that has anniversaries!).
An effective sourcing strategy for tech talent in the current market requires a combination of talent intelligence, personal networks, amplified branding that is tailored to tech audiences and executive search style research at pace. It is a real challenge for companies to find budget for the tooling and employer branding channels or to hire sufficient numbers of tech recruiters, hence the appeal of Project RPO.
Sanderson’s Project RPO solutions can deploy quickly and offer the people, process, tooling, and capability to amplify your brand and deliver great hires. Rather than a ‘one size fits all process’, we go about things a little differently. We work with our customers to understand their process, technology, data, diversity, and onboarding requirements and adjust our solution to fit.
When partnering with us, you get a dedicated and world class team, who effectively become an extension of your company. We work closely with both your hiring community and the wider Talent Acquisition team, showcasing your brand and company values to the candidate throughout.
I believe that all Talent Acquisition Leaders who are looking to hire tech talent at scale or to balance the challenge of recruiting tech and digital skills with the needs of the rest of the business (early careers, customer services, operations, head office functions, leadership etc) should explore the benefits that a Project RPO solution with the right partner can bring.
To find out more about Sanderson’s Project RPO Solutions you can contact Ross at ross.crook@sandersonplc.com