Time to Hire

Ep 21: Seasoned TA and RPO Leaders Share Insights From the New RPO Trends Study

• Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (RPOA) • Episode 21

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In this episode of the Time to Hire podcast, host Lamees Abourahma features an expert panel of TA and RPO leaders from the 2024 Annual RPOA Conference. The panelists discuss key findings from the latest RPO Trends Study. Ben Eubanks, Senior Analyst at Lighthouse Research and Advisory, moderated.

The panel shares how RPO providers help companies use AI, improve their brand, and hire better. The panelists also give tips on making a strong case for RPO services and on urgent hiring needs. By listening, talent professionals can learn new strategies to improve recruiting, boost their employer brand, and innovate talent acquisition. Tune in to learn the top recruitment trends for 2025.

Want in-depth insights and data on the top RPO trends for 2025? Find the RPO Buyers Guide on the RPOA website (coming later January 2025)!

Guests:
Rob Navarrete, Global Head of Global Service Delivery Recruitment and Transformation at WTW
Kelly Burlage, VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Lineage Logistics
Trent Cotton, VP of Talent and Culture, Hatchworks
Sarah Peiker, CEO, Board Member, Global Workforce Strategist
 
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

Follow Lamees Abourahma on LinkedIn

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Find out more about the RPOA

Whether you're a seasoned talent acquisition professional or just starting in the field, "Time to Hire" provides an invaluable platform to expand your knowledge, learn from industry leaders, and stay up-to-date with the rapidly changing world of recruitment.


Lamees Abourahma  
Welcome to time to hire from the recruitment process outsourcing. I'm Lamees Abourahma and in this episode, we bring you another session  from the 2024 RPOA conference. 

In this episode, you'll hear an expert panel of TA and RPO leaders discuss some of the key findings of the latest RPO trend study. The RPO buyers Guide, which includes more in depth insights and data can be downloaded from the RPOA website. The panel is moderated by Lighthouse Senior Analyst Ben Eubanks. First, let's meet the panelists before Ben leads the group discussion.

Sarah Peiker  
I'm Sarah Peiker. I'm the CEO of Empower partnerships. I've been in the RPO space for 24 years. I have spent most of my career with Manpower Group leading the RPO business in US and Europe. I was the CEO of Orion Talent and I joined Empower just in July. Thank you,

Rob Navarette  
Hi everybody. Good afternoon. I'm Rob Navarette from Toronto, Canada. So I grew up in financial services, and banking did many different branches in the retail branch network. Then moved into recruitment diversity. Worked at AON Hewitt when they were in the RPO space. I spent several years there. I am currently at Willis Tower, not the source tower, WTW, Willis towers, Watson, heading up recruitment and transformation.

Kelly Burlage  
Impressive  group. Kelly Burlage, nice to see all your faces. I grew up in staffing contingent search. Spent a lot of time in the RPO industry and RPO world. Lots of familiar faces in this room, led the global talent acquisition and HR function for our customs brokerage outfit based in eh Canada, and currently sit as the vice president of global talent acquisition for lineage. We just recently went public, so you're going to hear about us a little bit more. And if you haven't heard of lineage, we are the company that helps you consume your calories. So if you have eaten anything refrigerated or frozen, chances are it came from one of our facilities. We supply about 35% of the calories that you consume, so I apologize in advance. Nice to meet you all.

Trent Cotton  
Hi. I'm Trent cotton. I have been in recruiting for 20 years. Before I got into recruiting, I actually got into recruiting because I hated working with recruiters. I thought I could do something a little bit better and 20 years, I'm still trying. I'm currently the people officer, or kind of split HR for people operations, so she does all the things that they don't want me to touch payroll benefits, and I get to paint a lot of fun stuff, so everything from acquisition to development to high performance to hopefully being able to help them retire. So we build AI native solutions, and we do consulting for all of our clients.

Ben Eubanks  
All right, awesome. Well, I'm glad to have all of you here.

Trent Cotton  
First rule of fight club, you don’t talk about fight club.

Ben Eubanks  
So the first one just, just to throw it back that way, one things we see in the research this year is we saw employers really interested in using AI solutions as part of their partnership with their RPO. RPO is a service business, so talk about how you see AI as a practitioner fitting into that that offering, or what sort of things would be relevant and appealing to you and you're leading Trent, but anyone's Welcome to kick in and share as we're going through.

Trent Cotton  
Okay, great. So whenever I ran large organizations for larger firms. It was always procurement, and I was in banking as well as regulations about regulations, and I appreciate what procurement has to do, but it doesn't make it easier, because I like to move fast. So if I were in a large organization and RPO came to me and said, Hey, look, you don't have to worry about the AI tech stuff. We're going to do that for you, sold, because I don't have to go through procurement. I don't have to go in and plead my case in front of a jury of not my peers of how I want to spend this money, even though I go through, you know, like earlier today, about positioning it and, you know, hey, I'm not spending money. I'm actually reinvesting. And here's, I've always been a business guy. I went into HR, so I was always, how do we spread that cost out to make it efficient? So to me, that's kind of why I think a lot of people are leaning on their RPO because they know that you guys can move faster. You're scratchier. I know when we shifted our name to Hatchworks AI, we got a lot of interest. But even with CTOs, even with technology delivery individuals. They know they need AI, but it's just like there's they don't even know where to start. So if I think part of the question is, why do I think that is, I think it's the new sexy beast. And I think that if I were running an RPO, the first thing I would do tomorrow is AI consultancy. You go in just like what we do? We go and we do a workshop, what problem you're trying to solve? How can AI solve it? Where's your data? How clean is your data? And we go through this entire process and then say, okay, based on that, this is kind of the roadmap that we would suggest. And I think that RPOs that go in and prevent that level of value are going to be the ones coming out ahead. 

Kelly Burlage  
.Agreed. No kidding, I think. And then the early presentations today, there were some discussion around different service offerings such as recruitment marketing and market insights and employer branding, which are all kind of on the rise. Talk a little bit about, I won't go into, sorry, but in terms of the AI piece, I think Trent hit it right on the head. We're all busy with our day jobs, trying to tackle whatever new chance we're trying to face, and having a subject matter expert come in and answer the questions of things that we think we know but we don't know, leveraging our tech and  suggestions around your level of excitement and risk, around how risky you want to be in dipping your toe in the water of AI, and then being able to optimize that with solutions is going to be key for, I think, any partner, if you come in and offer a solution that says, hey, Kelly, we realize you're on the low risk optimum. Here are some are continuum. Here are some ideas and suggestions that we have for you. We audited your tech stack, and we see that interview scheduling and other things within the hiring velocity ideas for you to help increase the efficiencies of your team. And that's how you start, and then you kick that door open and help offering and suggesting more automation and more ideas that would be key for someone in my role.

Trent Cotton  
And part of it is just educating the difference in AI, and what goes into it? I was me with a prospect, and they're like, Oh, we're all good. We're good. We have AI. Was like, Oh, cool. What do you have? Zapier. Okay, that's automation. Starts with an A it's not AI. And so I do think that there is a level of education that we have to do, because they don't really understand that there is such a need, because there's some ignorance, and rightfully so. I'll work in the tech firm. There are times that our CTO starts talking. I said, Hey dude, Hebrew, dial it back. You know, kind of break it down for me. So I do think that there is so much noise out there that if you all could have something to provide clarity and kills me  time, save me time. Save me money and save me having to research stuff that I'm probably not wholly interested in. That's gold. 

Ben Eubanks  
I was thinking, you're saying that one of the things we've seen, I've shared, from the stage a couple of years, is a demand for employers for innovation from their RPO partner, and that's an example of that. This is something new. It's different. It's an emerging space. I don't have full time to explore this. Bring some insight to me,

I'm gonna jump around all my questions, because Trent just talked about procurement a little bit. 

Ben Eubanks  
Rob, I'm gonna come to you figure with that. So as Trent mentioned, we had, we have this amazing research committee that helps us think through questions to ask her to really clarify what sort of things are important friends we're sharing today, how we had someone from here on the call, and she was saying, Hey, listen from my seat, we're getting stricter on everything. Yes, yes. Trent's, like procurement, me, Oh, gosh. 

Ben Eubanks  
Rob, one of the things I want to hear from you is, when you're trying to make a business case, right? You're trying to get something passed. Procurement, how to build a business case for things like RPO services that you're looking for, wouldn't for you to capture in that picture you're taking. 

Rob Navarette  
Sure. Great, great question. Ben, thank you very much, because it's not easy, and I've been talking to some folks out here about the biggest barrier to entry for RPO has has been the cost, particularly here in North America. And so the way I've approached it, because we actually have three RPO partners globally serving different business problems that we're looking to solve. And the approach I took was very similar to how my dear new friend and mentor Maria so eloquently described earlier today, is how to speak the language of our senior leaders understand the business goals, which is ultimately to increase revenue. And we're going through a significant transformation in our company. We want to increase our margins, and so introducing new technology platforms is very expensive, and I think there also needs to be a level of self awareness, or team awareness as talented as or as my team, we're not a recruiting firm, we're not going to be able to bring the innovation that people would like to see. Per se, we just don't have economies of scale to really support that. But what RPO does have is that level of economies of scale to really introduce some of that. And so we've tried it before, in house recruiting for one of the business problems we're trying to solve is around seasonalized. We just hire one time a year, maybe three, four months for the fall season, and then the recruiters have nothing to do for the rest of the year. Essentially, you could try things like pine line, but in this market, it hasn't been very effective anyway. And so this was a great case to invest in RPO solution, short and long term. And then in Asia, where we also have RPO, there's a difference around there, wherein, rather than high volume contact center tech recruiting, we lined ourselves with some tech RPO has a core competency. It's very competitive, high dropout rates, a lot of no shows, as many as 30% of the folks that would make offers to which is simply not joined. And so we aligned ourselves with RPO that could help us reduce, quite significant. So that from a cost perspective, although there may have been some initial costs, when you look at the total costs overall, we think about the attrition, you think the training, all the great things that Maria talked about today, ultimately we are reducing or decreasing our costs overall, so that made it easier for them to swallow that pill. 

Trent Cotton  
Do you ever go over the cost of the consequence of not doing it and positioning it that way? 

Rob Navarette  
Yeah, absolutely. Again, it's going back to that vacancy cost as well, earlier that Maria talked about too, right? And so there's a cost of having a sales representative not succeed, so revenue leakage definitely.

Sarah Peiker  
Can I ask you a question when about procurement and selling RPO in particular, what I've always heard, what I think always we hear a lot from clients, potential clients, is that we all at the same time, the same have the same tech. We all it's hard to differentiate. So when you're sitting in the procurement, see, other than price, what do companies look for? Kelly, you might be able to answer that.

Kelly Burlage  
For me, a lot of it is relationships. So you know, if a company comes in, they're always selling you something that you seems really great and exciting. But at the end of the day, if you don't trust the person that you're having a conversation some type of connection to on the one that they're starting, actually going to be pulled through. It's difficult for me, I think, from a differentiator standpoint, if they lead with an understanding of learning about where your weaknesses are and helping to customize a solution for you to me that helps strengthen a partnership. So as an example, lineage, we hire anywhere from 10 to 30,000 people a year so that those, ebbs and flows for our organization, are big, and so we're constantly looking for new, innovative ways technology, tech stack, ideas, efficiencies, while still managing a DEI strategy and making sure ESG is working, and making sure our ERGs are producing and making sure that we've Got HR metrics that matter. So I think back to the workshop point if, if an organization came in and really learned about, Gosh, what are your pain points and what are your pinch points, and can I have five minutes of your time to tell me why my service is great. It'd be awesome if they learned a little bit about where we're having struggles.

Rob Navarette  
Yeah, and what I would add to that as well, too. And again, I'm going to steal from Maria's earlier presentation was how opting to that relationship. Because are you giving me verbal diarrhea, the tech stack and features that you have, or are you actually solving my business problems? It's a big change for us. And so how are you helping mitigate this risk? How important are we as a client to you? And so sometimes larger firms make us feel less important, whereas smaller firms make us feel very, very important to say, all the technology innovation that they may have. So it really depends. Like Maria said, I'm Maria's biggest fan. Usually can tell within the first by the way, she's the HR certification. But anyway, that was a lot for her. I can tell, usually, within the first few questions, how full and authentic that relationship is going to be.

Trent Cotton  
And, you know, it's funny the vendors, because I get a lot of people to go, Hey, you want to do a demo. Because I write a lot about TA and I ask every vendor the same question every time, former sales guy, so you know what problem you're trying to solve. And if they go into you kind of stole my thunder. I really wish we would have gone before you It is, yeah, I'm starting to see a thing here. But if they can't, if they answer with feature and benefits, then I’m out, you know. So let me give you an example. I'll be doing AI podcast, and I don't like it when people put things on my calendar, like, that's not your to do list. For me, that's like, my time. That's how I mentioned my time, that our marketing program is like, Hey, you really need to talk to the CEO for hyper context that we just did an interview with for talking AI, it's like, Alright, whatever. So I got 30 minutes, and, you know, he goes in and he says, you know, I'm with hyper context. Okay, cool. What problem you trying to solve? Because one on one on one suck, and bus managers don't do them right, and then they come to the review, and you have bias at the end of the review, and there's no way to actually have any kind of a forecast of what a non bias looks like. Okay, so interested in an hour and a half, because, like, his technology and all that. So I think if you start with that, what problem are you trying to solve and then build that EVP that you've got, sorry, your value prop employee position, you don't my brain is, but if you put your value prop around it, you know, those were the vendors I enjoyed working with, the ones that I could go and go, I've been a rough day. Can you or and I think the other thing too, that you all offer is that, like, I'll, I'll text these two, sorry, we'll answer to the group chat, but you're still in the interview process. But anyway, but like, I'll text the two of them ago, is something I'm serious. You all are across industries, like for me to have a partner out there or working with that would be huge. To have that kind of insight, to know that, you know this is not just something jacked up happening that my company has jacked up in the economy. 

Ben Eubanks  
All right? Kelly, grab that microphone now. I was talking to Joe Marino earlier about this. The same thing about when you're showing up at the table, have a conversation. Are you following the conversation? Are you leading the conversation? Are you educating them? Are they smarter when they leave, whether you've sold them or not, they smarter when they walk away? And that's exactly I'm hearing from you, if there, if it's just features benefits. Pitch we got, I know you've got to sell, but it is. It sounds like everybody else and you're missing a chance to say, well, that I walk away from that feeling a little bit different. So Kelly, I do want to pitch this to you. We heard from Rob about cost of the priority risk mitigation. So before I ask Kelly this question, I need you all put your hand up and say, friends, look out. I No matter what she says.

So Kelly's organization previously had an RPO, they brought that back in house, and we're seeing the data set that a number of companies are looking at as an option. It's not the number one reason they're changing, but a number of them are looking at anytime the service business is always, can we do it better than that? That's always a debate, regardless of service, right? A meal prep for your house. Can't make those meal better than they're going to send them to me. And so talk about that decision a little bit. Talk about what it looked like and some of the things there. Because I think for anyone trying to save a client from one that direction, it'll give you some idea of the inner workings of the decision.

Kelly Burlage  
First of all, I mad love RPO. I worked in it. I lived and died in it. And as Terry Terhark in the back corner, can attest to. I work with the worst client in terms of mean cruelty. Okay, so I've been there. I'm not telling you who it is, but with that in mind, you know, we didn't take the decision to in source our talent acquisition team lightly. We, as an organization, we really pride ourselves on radical transparency. We live and die by continuous improvement. We audit our process, we see what's working, what's not working, and when you break it down into three swim lanes with people, the process and the technology, if that doesn't equal innovation and things improving, then you have a problem. And so that's where we found ourselves in that instance, cost was a lagging factor, because on a day to day basis, I was getting literally beat up because the current RPO provider that we were working with just wasn't able to produce and quite frankly, no one could at that time where we really needed them to. And so in my mind, I really thought if we insourced the team, we knew the intimate challenges that we were facing as an organization as it relates to getting ahead of the supply and demand challenges, the sourcing techniques that worked, that were tried and true, the tech stack needed to ultimately get us to the hires that we needed to and so we brought that in house, I will say, as an organization, in a year or two, we'll probably be Looking for a new solution. That's what happens. Things get old, and you try new things, and you want to optimize your recruiting. I think from a lineage perspective, longer term, we'll probably be looking at more of a hybrid solution, where we're solving certain challenges. Maybe it's a recruiting, marketing, technology and advisory relationship, maybe it's just fulfilling our waiver house positions by volume, because that's where we have so much turnover, so much internal position that needed experience. 

Ben Eubanks  
Thank you for sharing. He's like, I want that microphone. You got it in your hand. There's like, there's chat room. Here's the text threading right now. 

Okay, Sarah, bring this next one to you. So when we were sharing, you had the preview of the data weeks ago, some of the research. We're sharing tomorrow. Here we're sharing tomorrow, because we're sharing tomorrow.

You saw the preview of this and things I jumped out at you. We're looking at employer demand. One of the things that jumped up was around employer branding and reputation management. It was like there's a big push in that direction. I'd love to hear from you. What do you think sort of driving that? What do you think is tied into that that demands, 

Sarah Peiker  
yeah, what, what we saw was that employer branding and reputation management increased year over year, while market, recruitment, marketing, excuse me, decreased. And so, you know, you think about what's happening in the last few years, right? RPOs are shrinking. People aren't hiring as they are, lots of mass layoffs and all the things that are happening. It's not surprising that companies are really looking for branding options. How do we protect our reputation? How do we get ready for when the market turns? How do we show up in a relevant way? And while recruitment, marketing, of course, is more advertising, right? How do I show up for job seekers, for a real opportunity, where do I? Where do I post my jobs? You know, that kind of thing. And so I thought that that was an interesting because you would kind of think they would go hand in hand, but because I believe I'm not gonna have this conversation later. but I believe that because of truly what’s happening in this market companies are looking at brand. And, and those with the best brand, whether it's transparency, I like that radical transparency because that's, people want work for a place that they can trust the leaders. They're they're looking am I safe? What is it like to work here? You know, I just went through mass change myself potentially. So what that look like? And so I think that branding being a forefront of these, these leaders, minds, it makes sense, because they come from that perspective.

Rob Navarette  
Yeah, I would just add to that to say that I think this is one of the significant costs for everybody, right when it comes to marketing. So I recently, I'm still just concluding the transfers from the journey that we found out last year. Very, very precise. But this is not sustainable for us, and so we look to RPO to be able to support us with those types of activities, again, because you have economies of scale, you can start this with those kinds of things, because we do see value and our aspirations, as mentioned earlier, there is a significant barrier to entry with RPO is particularly in the Americas. But our thought process is that if you have innovation, if you have AI that will help reduce some of your labor costs, which would thus reduce our costs. And within that marketing spend that today, we spend quite a bit of money on now.

Sarah Peiker  
One thing that I thought was interesting, too, though, is when you're talking about employment branding, not recruitment marketing, but branding, how many RPO really are in the branding game, recruitment marketing for sure, right? Table stakes got to be in that space. Make things look pretty, know where to go, the candidates, all of the things. But in the branding space, there are some, I know, I know some RPOs really, really invest in marketing, branding marketing, but I think that's something as you're thinking about and what we're thinking about, but you're thinking about what companies need. What do they want? What does that look like from a brand perspective? That's something I think that's that's an interesting trend.

Ben Eubanks  
A lot of the employers we talk to are like, Hey, we've worked on our brand. It's like, we've got a career page. So they don't think about all the other pieces behind that, how you're communicating, what you're communicating. All of those pieces fit into that bigger picture you're painting of your organization, as you said, and they're using that sort of my interest in applying at some point in the future, there's nothing open now 

Sarah Peiker 
with the transparency that everyone are looking fo now. Yes,

Lamees Abourahma  
Before we continue, I just wanted to take a moment to tell you how you can access the data discussed in this episode. You can find the latest RPO buyers guide on the RPO a site. This research report, produced annually by lighthouse and the RPO A is designed to leverage research from over 500,000 leaders to understand how they work with RPO partners, what RPO services they prefer and what is the top value they plan in RPO relationships. The RPO buyers guide will help you understand how the Recruitment Process Outsourcing can be part of a modern, comprehensive talent strategy. Download the report from the RPO website at RPO association.org, now let's turn back to the panel from the 2024 RPOA conference. 

Ben Eubanks  
One piece of advice. We've heard things already from the panel, but if you're gonna share one piece of advice for the audience, RPO leaders established or congregated here, what sort of things would you share? What tips, advice, strategies for either selling, delivering anything else, 

Trent Cotton  
Differentiate with AI, but make sure you use AI differently. So if you're just working on lower value chain of recruiting, that's great. Everybody's doing that. How can you get higher up? How are you using your to be to be able to forecast, to do all of these other things that your clients do not have the capacity, nor do they know that they need to be able to do that. If I were in the RPO business, like I said, AI consultancy, and I'd be looking at my tech stack knowing how level AI throughout the organization,

Kelly Burlage  
I would say, differentiate honestly. If there's something you can do, you can prove you've done it effectively. That's a great lead in if you can't, if you can't do it, or you haven't done it before, tell me and figure out some pilot. But I think just be truthful about what your capabilities are and what you're what you're intending to do. 

Ben Eubanks  
I push back on that. 

Kelly Burlage  
Yes, go for it. 

Ben Eubanks  
I feel like they've one shot and for being honest and they're saying, I can't do that. Is it better for them to get that opportunity? That opportunity because it's going to end up negatively, I guess, question, but I want to

Kelly Burlage  
No it depends who you're talking to. I think if you have a good relationship with the person, I think that goes a long way. I'm much more prone to work with someone that tells me, Hey, we haven't done this before. We just did this at my company with with this very small technology company, they said we haven't done this before, but we'd like to try it with to try it with you. We're going to do it on this small scale. We didn't really successful, so they were honest,

Ben Eubanks  
wonderful. 

Rob Navarette  
'Okay, so for me, it's about a couple if I can. okay? The first is, really just be transparent with your core competencies, right? Because people sell us on a lot of different things. Make a lot of promises, and then they under, deliver inside and be authentic. Listen to our business problems are and how you may be able to solve them specifically.

Ben Eubanks  
That was one you don't have seven. Sarah some thoughts here, 

Sarah Peiker  
I would say, as a as a RPO leader, don't let a good crisis go waste. This has been at least two years, and I truly believe the winners coming out of this are the ones that spent the last two years and now innovating, getting better, investing, and so I think the ones that are kind of holding on and waiting it out are going to get left behind. So this is the time to invest

Ben Eubanks  
We heard something like that last year from one of our panels as well on marketing and sales and how to…

Sarah Peiker
Same crisis. 

Ben Eubanks  
…Yes, I know I'm saying that story is still the same. It has not changed. So Sarah, Sarah mentioned our pin call that a lot of companies that you're talking to want something right, like, show up at your doorstep like, hey, we decided yesterday we want this tomorrow, and that's difficult to provide. So I'd love to hear when employers sorry question. So when it comes to that, any advice, I guess, for for them, for my from the esteemed panel on someone shows up, tell everyone something yesterday. Is it helping them narrow in on exactly how to start? Is it's getting clear on what those outcomes are like we heard about a minute ago, like, what sort of things do they share? Because someone shows up with that urgency, it's easy to want to start building this big thing. Already heard a little bit about it needs to be smaller scale.

Sarah Peiker  
yeah, and I'd love the advice from everybody else. I'm too, too but again, it's just in the economic times where we heard earlier today that companies have a hard time getting approval for jobs, the one approval for jobs. So challenge for that, have, you know, maybe the job that needs to get filled was this very specialist type of role. So it's, I think it's really a tough one when you're trying to do something for everybody. So going back to who you are, what you do being honest with your client, what can you do? What can you deliver? How are you investing in this time for speed, whether that's through the recruiter benches, whatever it might be, but what are you doing so that you can run with speed when it when things turn back on, and take care of those one off, I need it now requests. But patience has gone out the window. And companies just there's a lot of patience. You know, if your time to fill is four days, you need to do it in three. If you're, you know, it's, it's, relentless.

Rob Navarette  
Yeah, so I would just add that for me, as I mentioned earlier, we have three RPO partnerships, and the reason for that is because it's not a one size fit all. We have different business problems in different locations, but we need to be clear about what those business problems were in some locations. Here in North America, we have 1000s of applications. So it's less about trying to find candidates and more about how can be more efficient without being overly laborous For our hiring managers. So technology innovation, how those candidates and actually make quicker hiring decisions while also retaining talent? Because again, we do often have a high dropout rate for this particular segment as well, whereas in other locations, you know, our business problem might have been technology, because it's so competitive. Some tech professionals are still getting seven offers. So we have to be competitive and sure that we align ourselves with the RPO that can help us overcome that challenge. The experience is a little bit different for myself as a TA leader, when I work each of the RPO leads from each of the organizations, but it's been a journey, and over the last three years it's gotten a lot better. The first year is never flawless, but I'm quite happy with the relationships that we've established and the partnerships that we built. 

Ben Eubanks  
Can I ask you a question about those three are they geographic pieces? Okay, that's the different. I couldn't I think you had told me that before. I couldn't remember if it was like they're remember if it was like, they're doing different types of roles or what, because in some cases they may be like, well, we could do that too. No, not. If you're spread around the world. It's a little bit different, 

Rob Navarette  
yeah. But even still, we explore one RPO who said they had a global footprint, but even still, it would be different than it's a different team, it's a different service, different experience, different different reporting. It just, it just wasn't great. So

Ben Eubanks  
one more question,

Trent Cotton  
 just a different perspective. I understand revenue is revenue, and in this point, you know, you have somebody beating your door down. Let me play devil's advocate if they're beating your door down because everything is an emergency, and they're planning a little that might be good revenue, but that cost of consequence, where are they going to drain somewhere else, right? Whenever I did do sales and stuff, I got those clients that would just go, Hey, I got to get this done. And I got to get it done right now, and I would always give it to somebody I was competing with, because it slowed them down. So I could focus on my, my ideal client profile, right? I'm a jerk. I don't care, but I made money, but I do think that you do. I mean, you're running a business, rht? You've got to stop and look and say, okay, they want this yesterday, and I calm them down and walk them through a process and still be able to not sacrifice speed for quality, or quality for speed? If the answer is no, there was a great philosopher that said you got to know when to hold them, when to walk away and know when to run. 

Trent Cotton
That was Ghandi

Ben Eubanks  
That was Trent Cotton 

Trent Cotton
That was Kenny Rogers

Ben Eubanks 
So you went that way. I went with the business leader. I've heard that says between three and 5% of your clients should probably be fired right now because of the hassle factor, because that 20% of them, that creates 80% of the headaches and the problems, right? 

Trent Cotton  
But it gets down to the quartile thing. I look at a business profile and the sales pipeline exactly like I look at our employees, that bottom 20% one, even if you get it, it is going to drain more of your resource you're probably going to be paying to do this. Look at everything done. All you're doing is adding revenue to cover expenses. That's not a business, that's not profitable, 

Ben Eubanks  
that's owning your job

Trent Cotton  
something else,

Ben Eubanks  
something less nice you were doing. You've cleaned up your act, sir, I'm proud of you. Okay, one last one, last one for you. And then if we have any other questions, we can address those in the few minutes they have left. 

So one of the things we see I mentioned a minute ago in RPO, preferred services every year for employers, is around strategic and innovation ideas. They want to they want someone to bring them up to bring them to be a true partner. We kind of talked about that a little bit in the context so far, and one of the things that I highlighted last year was something as simple as, most employers don't search their CRM before they post a job to know who's out there. Make the trend about fall state people don't do that. And that qualifies as an innovative idea when it's something that probably all of you would do the second you're getting ready to post the job. You would do that anyway. So I wanted to hear, I wanted to throw this out a little bit, if you don't mind.

What are some of those things that you do as a standard like this is just what we do, because y'all are a little bit y'all aren't the average, I'll say, in the best possible way, some things that you do that might qualify as that strategic if they brought it to somebody else, it's not as mature as a TA organization. It's kind of a big question. 

Trent Cotton  
So here's my curse word. There is nothing that pisses me off to Hell and Back then watching a recruiter close a role and then re-open the role and start the search again on LinkedIn recruiter. I'm like, what the actual are you doing? You just closed this out, like, over here, like, pipeline. So whenever I joined the organization, there was a lot of that. There was this one to one, and then, you know, you're looking for a full stack. There's some, you know, tech differences there, but you know, we should be able to kind of understand who the candidates are that we're talking to. So I'm stopped all the one to one, if it is a full stack, I don't care if we're looking for C sharp.net, whatever they are, everyone through this pipeline. So now it took a year, but now whenever clients come and they say, Hey, do you have anybody that's got X tech stack, I can go in and we've got what we call client ready, meaning they have been fully vetted through our process, including a four step, four different phases, and we can say, Yeah, I've got 17 who meet the mark. I just need to see if they're still in the market. So that's how we're able to get on to the speed. But it it, I still have to tell recruiters sometimes, like, did you go to the pipeline? the right answer is yes, you know, but I think that it's just some recruiters have been working so feverishly that all they know is crazy. You got to UN crazy them and get them into that mindset. But yeah, I mean, we're, whenever I work for the bank, we had 75,000 people in our ATS 75,000, I had recruiters go, we can't find anybody, so I just fired them. 

Ben Eubanks  
I'm gonna go to Sarah next to there that Sarah, like, people are that with these kinds of questions, right? And you're like, you do do this? Do you do that? Yeah. Anything to add? Yeah.

Sarah Peiker  
I think this is where, usually, when a client says, What innovative ideas can you bring to me, it usually means tech. That usually equals technology in their mind, usually, however, I think this is where what we've been talking about, getting to know your get that human, that person sitting across from you. What is making them tick? What do they do? Well, what don't they do? Well, what are they trying to solve? That's where you can bring in some innovation. I mean, innovation could be anything. It could be taking a step out of the hiring process in that company, right? You know what? We shouldn't have five interviews and, yeah. So it could be that it could be as simple as getting a report that's not on an Excel spreadsheet. You know? It could be. So it just depends on who you're talking to and what innovation looks like for them. But I think when those broad questions are asked, people think tech.

Ben Eubanks  
I’m glad you said that, because that's I've talked to no shortage of employers over the years. They're like, Hey, where's that source of candidates that's free, that has all great candidates in it? Like, that's where I want to go. If it was there, would be gone in a heartbeat. So it doesn't actually exist. But they're always looking for that shortcut, and they think technology is a flip the lights on and and you're done. And it's not that easy. There's a lot to that. If you know, even if you had a technology solution, it's not as simple as turn it on and go. There's often a process piece. There's a changing the link about it and the behavior change part is the hardest part of really operationalizing excellence.

Trent Cotton  
Another thing that you know, RPO, if you're really good at this process or this part of the interview, or whatever it is, the more you can train your clients recruiters on that it makes you invaluable, you know. And I get it, you know, you kind of want to save the juice and not replace yourself, but I think that there is a healthy amount that you can share to put you so, you know, at a previous organization, we had to reduce our spend by 62% on agency. So I was not popular with a lot of agents, and they were, I call them infested, but there's another word with the business unit, you know, like they would find out about jobs opening before I did. And I worked for the damn organization, the partners that I kept were the ones that were consultants, the ones that said, Hey, I know that you're trying to tackle we've done it whenever. Here's some ideas. And it wasn't even about them filling a job. They just knew that I was trying to deal with the problem. I didn't care what they charged that was invaluable to me as a TA leader and a practitioner. 

Ben Eubanks  
I'm thinking back, I had a competition. I think Mike foster still in the room. I had a conversation with him and some of their team at Advanced at one point, and they were telling me, hey, look, we look at this data in the retail space, there's a tax if we have a company that doesn't have any development or training, there's a tax we could pay to get someone in the door, because the personal nominate little bits of advice and insight like that. Again, you show up, you teach that company something. Okay. If you don't do that's fine. Expect to spend 10% more on your jobs to hire somebody. That's okay, but educating them on those things, I think that's what I'm coming out of this with, with a lot it's educating, speaking about that, consulting, taking that approach, where I don't show up with all the answers but some good questions, and we'll get to that like a good coach would. I don't tell you you know that you've done it wrong, but I'll help you find out why you've done it wrong and help you find out how to solve it. All right, please join me in giving this amazing/

Lamees Abourahma  
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Time to Hire podcast from the recruitment sources, outsourcing Association, give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast, and remember to check out the latest buyers guide from the RPO a at RPO association.org, as always, take a method. Staying case, and stay informed company in the town when recording world by tuning into the rboa that.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai