8 Risks of Outsourcing your Graduate Recruitment (& how to mitigate them)

8 Risks of Outsourcing yourGraduate Recruitment**& how to mitigate them

Cohesion Recruitment@Cohesiontalkhttp://cohesionrecruitment.com/

There is a lot of resource available that tells you about the benefits of Outsourcing your Graduate Recruitment. This gives you the wrong impression – there are risks involved.

Things can go wrong.

Risk 1: Setting unrealistic expectationsOutsourcing should be a high-impact solution, enabling HR teams to bring about change at a quicker pace and realise better outcomes – sooner, rather than later.

If you are setting unrealistic goals at the start – this often means that, no matter how fluid or efficient your processes, the results can be disappointing.

Mitigation?

You should always begin by taking a collaborative approach to Outsourcing your recruitment – this helps to minimise the risk of any misunderstanding over what needs to be achieved.

An initial meeting is a great opportunity to discuss your desired outcomes. (Recruiters tip: it’s worth investing time with internal stakeholders before this meeting, to help you understand what success looks like from each perspective)

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you” – you should expect, and welcome, challenges from your Outsourcing partner. They may have to concede that some of the goals are unrealistic and need more fine-tuning. In which case, you should be looking for them to demonstrate evidence of why your goals may be unrealistic.

Risk 2: A clash of CultureIt can be risky working with an Outsourced Provider because everything they do is a reflection of your business.

You will never know how you will work together, until you actually work together. This is risky – you don’t want to find out that you and your Provider aren’t a good match after they’ve already started working on your Graduate Recruitment Process.

Mitigation? Simple.

Because of the emphasis placed on the Provider acting on your behalf – you should always look to invest time into the relationship, and get a feel of whether or not

your partner will reflect your business in the way that you want.

We would always recommend spending time in each other’s businesses – this will give you more of an insight into the overall culture of the business that you may be

working with.

This will also allow you to get an idea about how they work – is it a similar style to that of your own? Do they do

anything differently? Is there anything they do that you don’t like, or see the value in?

Risk 3: Not delivering cost-savingsCosts, as with every business, should be taken into account.

However, unless you have a massive internal overhead running your Graduate Recruitment Process – it’s unlikely that Outsourcing will save you money.

The focus of Outsourcing must be driven by value.

Well, how do I mitigate that?Think about it this way – you’ve been through the initial meeting that we previously mentioned; so, you’ve now identified that one of your key outcomes is for your new Sales Graduates to achieve target 3 months quicker than your current Graduates.

Now, try to quantify this target. How much additional revenue, or profit, does that equate to? Do underperforming graduates leave the business earlier than higher-performing Graduates? What is the cost of replacing them?

Considering this allows you to reach a values-based decision. Outsourcing your Graduate Recruitment shouldn’t be driven by wanting to reduce cost. Instead, shift your focus to value by considering your primary goals, and quantifying what it would mean to achieve them.

Risk 4: Damage to your Employer Brand and ReputationYour Outsourced Provider should take every possible measure to get to know your business.

There’s no getting around it.

With so many channels for candidates to vent their frustrations, and share their negative experiences – there is a lot of trust inherent in Outsourcing your Graduate Recruitment – because,

quite simply, your reputation is at risk.

Now, this ones easy.One of the best ways of getting an insight into how each Provider works, is by asking some of their previous customers a few simple questions:

What went well?

What didn’t go so well?

What did you want to achieve?

How did you work together?

And, finally, did you actually achieve what you wanted to?

Risk 5: Imbalance in riskThis is something to be conscious of, but is also easy to overcome.

Shared Risk is exactly what it says on the tin – sharing the risk that your Company faces, with your Outsourced Partner. This is only a risk if you don’t outline exactly which responsibilities you want to be shared – you can expect the Outsourced Partner to ‘just know’.

How do I balance that out?On any collaborative Recruitment Outsourcing project, ensuring shared risk is key to producing good outcomes. Any imbalance might give the impression that one partner is more important than the other, or has less to lose if things were to go wrong.

By designing and sharing a set of Service Level Agreements (SLA’s), and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) – this can be minimised.

The majority of the time, if you have chosen the right Provider to work with – they’ll work with you to plan the SLA’s and KPI’s. This will help you to ensure that they are fair, and do not overly favour either party.

Risk 6: Your Company has a lack of control

When Outsourcing your Recruitment, if you don’t take steps to take an active part in the process,

you and your HR team can suffer from a lack of control.

Once you have chosen your Provider, you cannot just walk away and leave them to their own

devices – you should look to take an active part in the operation.

Time to take control…Appointing someone internally to manage the relationship between yourselves and your Provider will ensure that you have an element of control over the process.

One thing you must bear in mind – there’s a difference between feeling as though you have no control, and actually having no control. Creating a partnership with your Outsourced Provider will help you to gauge exactly how much control you do actually have, whilst reducing the feeling that you’re “out of the loop”.

Risk 7: The Provider may perform poorlyOne Provider, at any given time, could be catering to the needs of multiple organisations – which may mean that they lack complete focus on the tasks that your Company has outsourced to them. This is only really likely if you’ve chosen the wrong Provider.

Make sure you choose the right one…A good Outsourced Provider will have a lot of clients – all with different needs. To match this – they will have a good, capable team to cater for the needs of all of their clients.

You will be able to tell, very quickly, whether or not you’ve chosen the right Provider.

However, there are steps you can take to not have to go through the stress of finding out you’ve chosen the wrong Provider. Here’s a few, to give you an idea:

• Find reviews from Companies that they have previously worked with• How long have they worked with their other clients? What longevity do they maintain?

Risk 8: You don’t learn anything from the experienceJust because you’ve Outsourced your Graduate Recruitment doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take

part in the whole process, and gain as much from it as you can.

The biggest risk, once you’ve chosen the right Provider, is believing that all you can gain from the partnership is the best candidates/employees.

One of the main benefits of Outsourcing is the shared learning and continuous improvement that can be had. This adds extra value to the money that you are spending.

Who are we?We are Cohesion, recruitment experts who add value to the Recruitment Processes of our clients – through innovation, passion and recruitment expertise. This approach drives our business forward, and delivers a range of high-quality recruitment solutions.

We want to help your business grow. That is why we don’t just provide the answers to your requirements today. We recommend solutions tailored to the long-term development of your Recruitment Process. How can we help you?Our Total Recruitment Philosophy sits at the core of our business. Having all elements of the Recruitment Process in one place means we work with you to reach, engage and retain the great people you need to grow your business.

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