Time to Hire

Ep 20: Renowned Talent Analyst Ben Eubanks Spotlights Opportunities to Elevate RPO 

• Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (RPOA) • Episode 20

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In this episode of the Time to Hire podcast, Lamees Abourahma features Ben Eubanks's keynote speech from the 2024 Annual RPOA Conference. Ben, the lead researcher at LightHouse Research & Advisory, shared key insights from the 2025 RPO Trends Study. He discussed what job candidates want. He also talked about how employers can use AI and data to improve their recruiting. You'll learn the top priorities for companies using RPO services. You'll also learn what makes them satisfied with their RPO partners. This episode has tips to help you hire better candidates and outpace the competition.

Mark your calendar for the 2025 RPO Association annual conference in Chicago on September 28-30. The RPOA Conference is the ultimate gathering for top RPO executives, service delivery leaders, advisors, and technology innovators.

Find RPOA calendar of upcoming events at https://rpoassociation.org/Events

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Welcome to time to hire. Brought to you by The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association. I'm Lamees Abourahma, and in this episode we bring you another keynote from the 2024 RPOA Conference. 
 
In this episode, you'll hear key insights and takeaways from the 2024 RPO trend study, the RPO Buyers Guide, which includes more in depth insights and data can be downloaded from the RPO website. First, I'll turn it to RPO, a advisory board member, Jason Krumwiede, to introduce the speaker and the session.

Jason Krumwiede
Ben is an analyst an international speaker and author. He's got his books, talent scarcity, which he'll I think he's doing a giveaway right here. So if anybody answers questions, he is you're based out of Alabama, right and close to me here in Nashville, Tennessee. He leads the research agenda and is the Chief Research off officer for Lighthouse research and advisory Since 2022, right. The RPO has the pleasure of collaborating with Ben and the lighthouse team on the annual RPO research study, which he's going to talk about today. 

Yesterday, you met him. He's moderating a panel on and cross reference some of the data that we went through today, and he's going to share some of the key insights and takeaways. So he's an accomplished author. He also leads a podcast We Are Only Human  as well. So without further ado, let me welcome Ben to the stage to talk further.

Ben Eubanks  
All right, I'm so excited to be here. I love this conference. It's a ton of fun. I hope that you have made a new friend, a new connection this week, because that's one thing that I always walk away with someone new. I made a new friend yesterday that is not really my friend anymore today, because this morning, he said, How far do you want to run? I said, four or five? Can we get back to the front door at seven miles? I'm like, Come on, man. Like, that's not what I asked for. So we'll debate that later on. 

So I'm excited to share with you some data. I love to tell stories. I've got a couple things to share with you from our bigger TA study we do every single spring, also share some things on the candidate side and the employer side. Then I'm gonna transition over and share some of the inputs and insights from the RPO buyer data to give you some good takeaways that really segues well and dovetails with some of the things that Kim was sharing, some things we've heard from the panel yesterday the other speakers as well. So that's my biggest hope.
 
Anybody ever do the high jump I did one time. The coach said, Hey, our high jumper, sick, who can do it? It was one of those things that you see where everybody else like steps, and I was the one standing there, left in front, and it's like, okay, Ben, here's how you do it. And I tried it, and I was not good. I never did it again. What I found out about the high jump is that for the first several decades that this event was done, they would run and they would jump forward over the bar. They could not clear that very much, and they changed it up. A Gentleman came along in the 50s and 60s, name Dick Fosberg, and he did thing where he would run, he would jump the bar. And everybody laughed at him. Look at this silly guy. This is this. You know how this all works. We won the Olympic gold medal. Everybody's like, okay, let's pay attention to this and the next Olympics. 70% of the athletes used the fosberg flop, in honor of Dick Fosberg to complete that. 

Heard all these things in the last 48 hours that we've been here about things changing in the markets. Ai, is a big part of the conversation. I'll share some more on that a little bit. It is my encouragement to you, though, that change doesn't always have to be bad. In some cases, change allows a higher level. Change allows us to serve customers and clients at a deeper level. And that's what I'm hoping you take away from some things. What we shared today, you heard all the good things about me, all the all the fun things that Jason had to share. We are in the process of adopting little Annie that's been a joy for the last few months. 
 
And so I love a chance to bring data, to bring research to leaders that are talent leaders inside the business, as well as RPO leaders as well. It's fun to see some some friends here, old and new. It's my job to make things very easy to understand, because the data are complicated. Sometimes it's complex, sometimes it's just hard to tease that out. And I take it as a personal fun challenge to dig into that and share with you. 

So let's skip ahead. I shared this. We're going to cover a little on the candidate side. We'll get closer and closer to you. Candidate piece will be on the employer hiring priorities. You can understand your buyer a little better, and then we'll get right to the RPO buyer specifically in the data set. 

So the candidate side, what do we see? Well, candidate priorities every year, the number one priority for the last three or four years been asking this question is around, I remember the pay I want to know, or the comps gonna be early on. I know there are some your operating scenarios where that's required now by compliance, for compliance reasons, but that number is, I think another year or two, I'm gonna stop asking that question, because it keeps going hire. We'll have so many people that it's basically a it's a pace looking and assumes at that point. That's the one wanted to call out. I'm talking about transparency a little bit, but that one stands out as a big priority for candidates. If you're still posting jobs and they don't have that data on there, you're missing a chance to connect with them. Those converted about twice as well, depending on some of the experiment we run and that from programmatic providers in space, it's cheaper to advertise a job that has a pay rate attached to it. 
  
Do you think someone's age as a candidate affects how long you're willing to spend on a job application? So So yes, we do see that in the data. We do see the candidate preferences change based on their age. So what's pretty interesting is Gen Z millennials, very, very close, but the other two age group, Gen X and Boomers, are a little bit more aligned. There. We see this in other studies too. It's just interesting. There's a portion of candidates that will not continue will not complete. That. I know that you don't always control that. You're trying to influence the employers and how they're setting those things up. If you can bring them some data like this, it helps them to to willing to change that. If they're if they have a very No, we're stuck to our 17 step hiring process, and we're not budging off of that. 


Here's a couple of evidence based points. Since the last candidate piece for our move on, we did an experiment where we asked candidates about we showed them a couple job ads. Which one of these would you want to apply for? And one of them said, Okay, we're in this company, this company, this industry, actually Kelly, who was over yesterday. You saw Kelly on the panel. She's the one who spurred that question. She was talking about the industry they're in. When she talked about it, she didn't talk to the industry. Said, we bring your cows, bring food. We help make sure people get safe with food. And so we did an experiment and looked at the industry or description of the impact that job would have. And when someone saw that job ad, they had no other details about the company, who it is, anything else, just seeing that growth into want to click twice as often as the one that talked about just the industry that the company was in. So big change there, and that cost exactly nothing. Okay, we heard from Kim some of those things we can do to start, that you can do to start hitting those lower numbers, and we're going to be competitive on price. How do we do we do that? And those are examples of little, tiny changes. Experts in the three click level. Comp is a transparency thing that Candace want to know. 
  
What's another kind of transparency? You think candidates care about culture. They want to know about culture. They want to know about training, development opportunities. What sort of thing am I going to be able to do once I get here to maybe better than I am yesterday. They want to know hiring process. Is it one steps to seven steps? What is the expectation via Will there be a phone screen? Should I expect to come on sites? What do those things look like? You don't want a candidate to finish that interview on sites and think they're they've got it locked and like, hey, we'll see you again next week. That's a bad surprise. Speaking of that, 84% of the candidates and data sets, three or more. Three is the max. Anything more than three is overkill. Don't ask me to come back again. Don't ask me for their interview. I've already talked to you enough. You should know enough about me. It's your fault. You didn't figure out enough the first couple times I talked if someone's making less than $50,000 a year, it's two touches. So the less they're going to make, the less time they want to invest in that and and drag that out. 

I mentioned yesterday the data on canidates  want to see other people like them on the job, and then they want to show what they're made of. There's been this pushback on assessments. I know Kim mentioned that a little bit as a way that you can help to vet candidates for the employment with what we see in the data is that candidates say, I want a way to show this length of my best, foot forward and show off you judge me on that, not based on my chat. To continue about my resume. I want to be judged on something that I'm doing that shows you what my best truly is. All right, so there's a couple data points on candidates. You get nothing else. There's some good some good source material.

On the employer side. When I was recruiting years ago, I got a call from our client who we were recruiting for positions on the contract, and they said, We need Earl. We don't have an Earl that works here. Sorry. Phone rings again. Hey, I need Earl. I don't know who Earl is. Who is this? Well, you need to find him, because we need him now, so I start down this rabbit hole, like, who is Earl? Someone heard, Oh, someone's heard of him. Let's do well, it turns out that Earl, he's an upholster that lives in Kentucky, and he talks a Southern, southern boy. And Earl is the one that they would call whenever one of the generals would have a new aircraft they needed upholster. That's what he did. He was the person that called by name and who had to go and dig up Earl. Go get him out there. And he's doing it like for cars and stuff. But he just got found somehow. And did this very specialized work for the generals, for their aircraft, whenever they had their private one going around. I tell that story because there's not an AI in the world that could have found Earl, okay, he was off the grid. He was unknown. My radar and I knew every job we had ever filled personally. I filled almost all the myself. So I knew all of our people. I know the position for this. So I had to go with all the funding. Let's hire him and go on from there. 

The world of AI is changing some of the things, ways that hiring works, but there are examples, like factors you can talk to in your own work, where it's great for certain things, high volume tasks, but for other roles, they're very specialized. You can't just hand it off, because the AI cannot handle it. Is anyone familiar with Final Round AI? This is a tool that candidates can use to game video interviews. So let's say that Jason's interviewing me, and he asked me a question time that was leading a team and had a difficult time. I can ponder for a second and then rerun off the teleprompter right below the camera. What the answer is that the AI is giving me, so I sound like an incredible qualified candidate. I haven't done any prep work at my home to actually get ready for that. We can argue if that cheating or not, because recruiters are using tools like right to do that on our end, to make us a little more capable. With an example of how can this or use these things that we're not looking at and leveraging it to some degree, we're missing out. We're not gonna be as quick to react. 

Talking to a friend recently, there's a middle, mid size count to work for in the US. They're based in Huntsville, Alabama, and they tell me they posted a job, and there were people using bots to apply for the jobs. Their company, they had 2000 job applications overnights when posted, and had to shut the job down and check out what we're gonna do about this, because it's creating other problems,lots of challenges coming on the app. 

All right, so in the data, this is broadly across all employers, companies here, because you're all probably using some of these things in many areas of your processes, but across the board, employers, it's still a new day. In spite of all the conversation around it, there's still a lot of opportunity for AI to be taken on other pieces of the hiring process, and employers to really adopt more of that overall. 

Here's my here's my logo slide. Are you ready chair? So I did, I did a study for an RPO a few months ago, and they said, okay, all this gen AI stuff, is it real? Is it not who's doing something who's not? Went through and looked at all of the different companies at the time, just a couple months old, all comes at a time, and brought back to them present their leadership team. So trying to figure out where to plug it in to add value every give us those questions, as we heard just now about what is this? How does it work? Should we be using this? And so these employers were these this RPO was saying, how do we fit this into what we're doing to enable a more innovative or a better product, a better result, at the end of the day, for these employers we're working with? 

So in our in our research, we ask a question every year about the employers, do you have a leading practice or partnering with the business, or leaning forward or proactive? Have more of a passive approach to recruiting? People are calling us to need a job bill, but other than that, we're pretty laid back. So we see some big differences in those companies. I would argue that many of you in the room, members, room represent some of these leading companies because you have a full mindset, you're proactive, you're approaching this as a business, not as one of many streams, but as a primary stream of focus for your company. So we start some differences in those organizations that are taking a leading approach, just those that are more on the passive side. from a hiring standpoint, 
 
If you want to see the reports, it's got lots more in there than I'm going to share right now, because I'm here to share the RPO data. But we have 50 pages of data in there, lots of insights, lots of inputs. And we talk about AI, more broadly, talk about relationships and connection, the power of that, and some pretty interesting data that came out this year around the power of that, especially in a world of collaboration and all that good stuff. 

Here we go. We're ready. I was in Ireland presenting on recruiting a few weeks ago, and we we found something. It looked much like a percentage started this conversation. And there's a there's an old wives tale that says, if you cut open a persimmon seed, it will tell you what the winter is going to look like. So if it's like the sport shape, it'll be kind of mild. If it's the knife shape at the other end, it's going to cut like a knife, it's going to be really cold. Does it really predict the weather? No more than a groundhog, seeing it shadow predicts what's going to happen with Did I spoil that for anybody? You do that, right? Okay, it does not predict the weather. What it predicts is what the weather was like three months ago, when the seed was growing. It predicts what already happened. It tells us we rang, did we get time? Did we get What was the weather like? What's it like? It tells us what happened already. 

A lot of the things that you have as metrics are like this. You can see what happened already, but how do we know what's happening next? How do we know what's happening, whether it's with a client or in the marketplace. So we talked this last year, we had a session on stage. We talked about what sort of indicators you look forward to indicate that things are changing. Because in I would have loved to have gotten up here and said, the art market has turned around. Hold on to your seats. And yet we all know we're holding our breath a little bit longer until see what happens after the next month or so has passed by or into the new year. 
  
What are some of the things that you look for to indicate that the RPO market is picking up? One of the things that Kim and I talked about is, are all the requests for something project or pilot, something small, or is it we're getting bigger opportunities? We're saying we're ready to go, holding on to this. We're ready to real, start investing. There's lots of different indicators that signify whether the market turning around or not. One of the ones I look at that's not, it's not a prefer fix proxy one, ones I like to look at are what's happening with recruiter postings that indicates what counts are planned. Do they have to have the recruiters before they have them recruit anymore people? And so from point to point on this light blue line, it's a 19% growth from last year. I pulled some data from lightcast just last week had their team reach out. If you don't know Elizabeth, she's wonderful. She is the person over there that tackle these weird requests from time to time. But she gave me some data on this, and I part a trend line to say, well, here's where it is going if it continues that direction. So this as a small example, indicates that there are things coming. We are planning to do more hiring that is on the on the radar overall. 
 
And now let's get in some data, the good, the bad, ugly. We'll see what happened. So only one out of four companies in the research, so they spent more on RPO last year. Probably surprised exactly no one in the room, but it's good to have a number to put on it. So we surveyed over 500 organizations. 300 plus are currently using RPO. They are North American companies primarily, and they are cross industry. So the company size I'll show in a minute, but it goes from a company minimum size is 100 for the cut off all the way up to we didn't have much of a sample size above 10,000 so I cut off there on when I start showing the data, but from 100 to 10,000 employees. So one of the questions we ask every year is, what do you want from an RPO? What is the thing that you're looking for? What we see here this year, it's got an asterisk, that the brand new option was automation AI as a new opportunity there, we saw employers take that more than anything else. In the past we adapt to that from a like a broad technology one. So we had multiple technologies sort of divided, divided up in the data. We saw employers really lean into that one, holding back a little bit on some of these others, and I'll show you another direction on this. 
 
So we asked them, What do you want? And then when getting so what's that gap? There's what you see. So dark blue is what I want. Light blue is what I'm getting. So you can see the two that I've highlighted here are the two areas where demand or staff strips supply by more than 10% so they're asking for these things. They're wanting this from their provider. They're wanting this to reach you in the room and not getting it as much as they're hoping for across the board.
  
I'm going to jump into and share actual employer sizes so you can see how this shifts a little bit, because it ebbs and flows just a bit we start looking at the company sizes. So for companies that have fewer than 500 employees, you can see their programs there. It's high tied for third, but it's not the top one those organizations. It's helped me figure out how all the things you're doing, the hiring partner, align with business, how those things fit together. Because we need to know, as companies get bigger, AI start to take over as a bigger priority, but those top two still top two three still shift and add flow on how big they are, so organizations that are smaller can typically adopt AI more easily. 

I was at an event earlier this year, a compensation focus event, but we had a poll for the audience to do they're like, live on their phones during the session. So we had a couple 100, and then respond and said, you know, what's your progress? Ai looking like? And the biggest number one answer was, we want to do it, but it security. Someone else tells them we cannot do it. So those larger organizations, that's why you become this different angle for them to potentially pursue, that they're not having to go through the trouble and get that vetted, everything else, if you're trusted, and bring them something. 
 
So we saw, we asked this year about what types of RPO implementations are you pursuing as employers? And we saw the bigger jump here in the project, the sort of pilot, the test let us, let us be able to turn this on and off or control from the employer side. That's a when I was designing, I think it was an actual report last year. Report last year, we looked at either side and Kim shares that is pricing into the other delivery pieces earlier, just talking about the workshop and employers are showing more of that power, more of that control, at least right now, that's because things are a little bit more unpredictable. 

When we ask companies why they picked their providers. Here's what you see as the top the top eight things amount. Here choices. These the choices here, the one that jumped the most, that changed the most, was analytics and strategic insights. They want more data, more insight. We saw last year in our in the study, that if a company did not get their insights at least a couple of times a year, they're much more likely they're dissatisfied with how they're being with their provider. And I saw several earlier said, Yeah, we have quarterly we share it back. Great split up, because the data says that actually matters. That may feel like you're just going through the motions, but it does matter based on the resources we have 

Lamees Abourahma  
Before we continue. I just want to take a moment to inform you on how you can access the data shared in this episode, you can find the 2024 RPO Buyers guide on the RPO a website. This research report, produced annually by lighthouse and the RPOA is designed to leverage research from over 500 talent leaders to understand how they work with RPO partners, what RPO services they prefer, and what is the top value they find in RPO relationships, and how they measure it. Download the 2024 RPO Buyers guide to help you understand how Recruitment Process Outsourcing can be part of a modern, comprehensive talent strategy. Download the report from the RPO a website at RPOAssociation.org, now let's turn back to venue, banks and the conference session.

Ben Eubanks 
Let's look at some of the correlating factors. So this is drivers. The next slide will not be usually drivers of satisfaction, but correlating factors with someone who is satisfied as an employer. So number one, they're not just using a little piece the companies that are most happy are actually linked, which is good news for you. Those that are spending more are more likely to their satisfied because you're solving a big problem. They have not spending the money for fun. They're spending money to grow the business and to meet some objectives, and if you're helping them do that, that's tremendous. Obviously, the the charter shared a moment ago, where that they have, if we want, because we're getting there's a good alignment on each of those categories. There's a big split that drives your satisfaction down. There's no surprise to that. Number Number Five here on consistency is a big one. One of the things that we hear we're talking with employers in the market, whether they're RPO user or not, is they want hiring to be more consistent. They want predictability in their hire if it is unpredictable, variety is the spice of life, sure and personal relationships, but not when it comes to hiring. We want to know what to expect, and we're getting something different we expect. We're the ones who have to go back to this explain why, the ones who have been those conversations, trying to explain and understand that when employers set out and forecast how many people they want to hire, and they hit that they're a lot happier with the relationship. They're less likely playing with that they make sense logically. So good reminder that at the end of the day, that's a good target to look more that's a good place to try to try to hit, if you're helping hit that target to look at. Now I mentioned some some preferences, some priorities. Here are the dislikes. We asked them, What are the things you love most? You appreciate most? Big one the things that they dislike most on the from 5000 below, it comes down to tactical things like time to fill is not fast for us. We want it to be faster. Quality is a priority for us. We want to make sure the candidates that are getting in are the right ones. But when you go over to the other side, analytics, the insights, giving us data, helping us understand what's going on. That was, for me, what we heard up here from the panel of employers yesterday about, I need a trusted partner, not just on AI, but on a lot of things. If you know what hire looks like, and I'll give you some examples in a minute, some things you can share just to wheels turning, because sometimes you hear these things, and there's a thing called experience blindness. We're so close to this that you're like, what other things can I share? We're sharing so much, and there are some other things that you could think about, how to communicate, how to bring some insight to them, how to bring a new perspective that lets them actually excel in what they really want to. 

So here's a here's an example of that by company size that we're talking about a minute ago. So are you changing this year, we actually threw a new question option in there, or new answer option where we said we missed the dark, the darker gray, last one from the right there. It trends up as the companies get bigger. I said this yesterday. I'll say it again. Anyone in a service based business is always competing against the person, the company, doing it themselves. You know that? You know that's Kim, and Kim mentioned that we know that's true. 

If that is true, if that is going to be the case, what do we do about it? What do those companies have in common? Well, I'll tell you here's what they have in common. So companies that said they were going to return to RPO, return to internal here's a couple things that you should know. So if you are talking to someone that's making that decision, we heard from Kelly yesterday how they made that decision. But here's some things to think about. Those that are doing this are thinking about cost primarily. When they pick their RPO, they say cost is a big driver of this. That's one of the things that's top of mind from already they're thinking about cost. So if they're trying to make the decision, you're going to have to know that's that's a big factor in that when they do that, we asked, How long did it take you to get staff back up? But not a that's not against the thing. And it took them between three and six months for about half of those companies to get staff back up. You're talking to someone who's going through that thought process, thinking about it. That's a lever you can use to say, this isn't as easy as just bringing it back. This isn't as easy as selling your old car and buying a new one. It's not that simple. A lot of things that go back into this. So help take through that those companies that they brought back in house they cost, also said we had a change in leadership. We had a lack of results. And that's what we heard from Kelly again yesterday. She was a great a great use case there. She said that we were growing so fast that's it would have been hard for anyone to actually meet those demands. So that's that lack of results there. 

And then lastly, I was talking with a company a few months ago in the biotech space that had made this decision as well, and her almost verbatim comment, there something off. And then they would come back to us with questions. So they would give us something back. We could tell they didn't really fully understand. Really fully understand. And so she was really focused off really we were doing all the work ourselves within the day. So why someone else to partner with us? They brought that back in house to manage the entire thing. 
 
I told you I'd share some practical things with you, some some good ideas based on what we're seeing in the data, some things that you potentially do to stand out, to be that partner. Here's, here's some examples of that. You have a great perspective, once you start working with a client, what good looks like there, and you know that no class the same, right? So what works for this company may work, if only for that company. So I had a, had a leader that worked for me, worked for our organization years ago, done a turnover analysis and seen that we had, we had 600 employees turn over about 55% of the year. Was a ridiculous amount, and we were in the business where the turnover was about 12% and so I went to meet with that leader. It was Antoine and trying to understand what he's doing. And I sat down with him, and he had a new person come in to join his team that day, and she had $7.50 an hour, oh boy, and it's working third shifts, which is we all know is great for attention. And so Antoine's talking to her and is making her feel like she's the most meaningful person, most important person in the entire world. Really connecting at a human level, just showing her great respect. Probably have never been treated that way by an employer before. As I'm watching that story, okay, to get this out to other managers and celebrate that, I'm going to help them see what good looks like, because this is what good is, a great looks like. So I had to tell other managers what that looked like, and then try to celebrate that story in a way that made them want to do the same thing. Made them want to treat people with respect, which seems like a basic decency. But for some managers, we know that's not always how they operate in your world. Things like, Hey, listen. You know what we found? Managers who review resumes in the first 48 hours close their jobs much faster than others. So if you want those people that fast, I'm going to need something new. Here's what that looks like. 

And again, knowing each of your clients, you'll start to see the different different ways. But those are some examples that I put up there to give you an idea of how to do that. Every single year, you see in the top three of those priorities for employers is I want innovative recruiting strategies. I want creative ideas. I mentioned this yesterday, done to me, search their database, hosting the job. That's an example, one of those things that's very low hanging fruit. Hanging fruit. You're probably doing that already. Make sure they know that's part of how you're doing it. Make sure they understand points. Bring things you took for granted, because everybody in this room does them, not that it's also one that's that chart a shared minute ago. Those don't make the same decisions, not about it, the same kind of way. 
 
There's a great book written years ago called The Big League, and Dan Hendricks talks about individually. We have these different zones we work in, and I'm going to encourage you think about not yourself as individual, because that's kind of that's a fun exercise, but to think about your business and how to serve certain people, if you're great in one verticals, then you'll be great on them. So you have zones and confidence, things that others can do better. Don't spend all your time trying to do that, because it's not a good use of your time. Competence, okay, we're pretty good at this stuff. There we those are part of our jobs as a part of what we have to do as a business, but it's not where we spend majority of our effort and time. Your zone of excellence is something you're pretty darn good at, and people as an individual, they want to keep you there and what people will pay for those things from you. But if you can identify that zone of genius, that thing that you do better than 99% of the other companies out there, that's where you can make the most revenue. That's where you can have the biggest impacts. That's where you can make the most difference to work teacher. But we're really focusing on how you can identify that it's been working on Venus, every extra minute you get there, every extra minute somebody at your company gets in that space, and there's a net benefit to the organization. 

Okay, I sped up a little bit so I would have time to share something with you, For those employers that are not using RPO yet. We asked them, what sort of things are preventing that? What's holding you back? Probably no surprise over and over again, even the research is that employers that say call them budgets almost always want to have not done it. Or, as we saw a little bit ago, some of the flavor of the flavor of that is for those that are thinking about bringing back in-house, but across the board has never been the number one factor for just deciding across the board for employers picking RPO, some cases, it may be more expensive than doing it internally, but it's getting off of their place they can do what commits do to be able to help them think through those things is important. The other the other pieces, fear of losing control. I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. I want to have one provider, responsible or irresponsible. That wrecks this for us. So business hinges on it. That's probably fears and concerns you've heard in conversations. You want to write that pity you were really scared, literally, right? Right? Those things we personally respond. Especially brand new. Have never done this. First generation consists of the first time. These are some of the thought processes they go through as an organization. If any of these you've seen, you're like, don't want to see that by size. Like, just describe me afterwards. I haven't get that for you.

And then, if you were looking at a provider, which one would you care about the most? What matters the most? And number one is quality. To know we're getting good people at the end of the day, that matters. And what's interesting is I have to debate on this. I feel like I talked about it last year. But the problem is that you don't control the quality of the quality of the ultimate hire, but you can control the quality of candidate. You bring to them decide that they're not going to hire that amazing person. They want to hire Joe Bob, the CEO's second cousin, then there's not a lot you feel but bringing a good quality candidate helping them create an experience that's different for their candidates, that sets peaks and so on. Thank you to everyone of your work you're doing, for the impact you're having the joy of this that we heard the difficulty yesterday, that the session was like, what's terrible about RPO? We can make that list. What's great. You get to impact people. You get to help companies solving problems. And I'm grateful for the good work you're doing. Thank you so much.

Lamees Abourahma  
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Time to Hire podcast from the recruitment process outsourcing Association. Give us a review while you listen to the podcast, and remember to check out the 2024 RPO buyers guide from the RPOA website at RPOassociation.org, as always, stay connected, stay engaged and informed of what's happening in the talent and recruiting world by tuning into the RPOA. The place to go for RPO.