Introduction

Staffing in the current market condition, dampened by the COVID pandemic and the global lockdown and economy closure brought forth by it, has become a daunting task for most businesses. The current situation has created new pain points for staffing firms that are unprecedented. The fear of the second wave of COVID, renewed talent expectations, cash flow concerns, skill gaps, and a business practice that form the new normal – these and many more concerns that haunt the recruitment agencies.

Therefore, having an external support system that guides and supplements your recruiting efforts can provide you with comfort in this period of uncertainty. Partnering up with offshore outsourcing service providers can serve as the best solution and address all your morphed staffing problems.

A peek at Staffing Problems

The market continues to show a weak sentiment despite spikes of revival, and this may remain unchanged till a vaccine to curb COVID is developed. This is keeping businesses reluctant from making heavy financial investments and keep cash flow in check. This constrained investment has also led to staff shortage concerns leading to one of the biggest issues businesses have been facing since the COVID lockdown – a gap in service delivery hours. The global lockdown has kept the majority of people away from work.

Even when the stringent lockdown rules have been relaxed now in most countries, there is a fear of the second spike of COVID due to change in weather which is keeping people away leading to staff shortage. Add to this, Christmas and winter holidays are approaching – a period during which has long been causing staff shortage problems for recruiting agencies long before COVID.

Amidst this pandemic, the market has been volatile as well. While hiring demands for many sectors diminished, the hiring demand for some increased at an exponential rate. For example, the demand for healthcare professionals increased tenfold while demand for candidates from other industries stuttered. In Industries such as IT and Tech, candidates with renewed, hard-to-find skillsets were required. The hiring demands and expectations were changed in the blink of an eye, and recruitment agencies were needed to scale up or ramp down quickly to meet the fast-changing hiring demands.

There has been a talk of the new normal since the last six months now, which is all about new working practice and new skill sets. A lot of candidates are reskilling, cross-skilling and adding new skills to their profile to advance their career in the new normal, which has resulted in candidate database getting cluttered and outdated exponentially in the last six months. An obsolete candidate pool significantly dampens the agencies’ recruitment service delivery capability.

Morphed Staffing Problems Summarised:

• Staff shortage caused by COVID lockdown (and approaching Winter holidays)
• Gap in service delivery hours
• Weak & Volatile Market
• Cluttered & Obsolete Database
• Quick Scale-up / Ramp Down to meet market needs
• Uncertain future leading to restrained investments
• Industry-Specific hiring challenges

Offshore outsourcing advantages delivered by top RPO companies can help recruitment companies combat these morphed staffing problems. Let’s take a look at them below:

Agile Recruitment Solutions to Combat Market Volatility

In these uncertain times when the market is weak and volatile, and there is prevalent fear of the second wave of COVID which may shut down the economy again, adopting offshore RPO as an essential part of recruitment business strategy is an excellent idea to consider for businesses recovering from this pandemic. Even before COVID crisis, companies were required to scale up and down their functional capability based on market demands or target.

An RPO solution that is flexible and agile can help you efficiently respond to escalating demands and ramp down if the market is weak or finance is tight. One moment you may need to focus your attention towards managing locum bookings of healthcare candidates, but the next moment you may also need to direct your attention towards CV sourcing of doctors and nurses to meet new increased hiring demands. Similarly, you may face difficulty meeting hiring demands during winter holidays due to staff shortage, but with RPO, you can ramp up your offshore team temporarily to cope with this challenge. An agile and flexible RPO enables you to flip your priorities and take progressive actions immediately with ease.

Enhanced Recruitment Agility Solves:

• Staff shortage challenges
• Weak market challenges
• Volatile market challenges
• Gap in service delivery hours challenges

Scalable Recruitment Solutions to Grow Quickly

Along with added agility and flexibility, RPO gives your staffing business added scalability allowing you to ramp up your service delivery capability quickly and seamlessly without incurring a hefty cost. This benefit is crucial in the post-pandemic world when the global economy opens up, and the demand for candidates rises exponentially, and your will need to scale up your recruiting service delivery capability to meet these hiring demands from your customers and prospects.

QX Recruitment Services, one of the biggest RPO companies in India, helped a healthcare recruitment agency elevate its shift booking hours by 10,000 per month through Out-of-Hours service, boosting Gross Margin by £40,000. The offshore OOH team enhanced the recruitment service delivery capability of the agency by providing recruiting support during the off-hours, weekends and bank holidays, serving as an extension of the in-house team.

Enhanced Recruitment Scalability solves:

• Meet escalating market demands quickly
• Meet high-volume candidate requests with ease

Mitigate Financial Risk to endure potential crises

One of the most crucial benefits of working with a top RPO specialist is that your business is less prone to financial risks. With in-house resources and team, you’ll need to commit to a definite, high-cost investment all year round.

As pointed out earlier, RPO allows you to ramp up or ramp down your offshore team with ease, paying only for the resources you need at a specific period. This solution could very give your staffing business a new lifeline amidst the pandemic and keep you prepared and safeguarded in life post-pandemic.

Increased financial safety and stability solves:

• Uncertain future leading to restrained investments concerns
• Safety against potential crises

Reduce Time-to-Hire & Cost-to-Hire

Experienced, trained recruiters and sourcing experts of the offshore RPO service provider, armed with the finest recruitment tech, can help you recruit candidates at a faster rate and cater to large volume requests from your customers. For many agencies, especially in healthcare and IT recruitment domain, the COVID pandemic and lockdown created a demand with condensed time-to-hire for roles that were required to be filled ASAP.

The top RPO specialists have access to extensive talent pools, contacts and specialised knowledge of industries that enable them to deliver quality CVs even in tight deadlines. Healthcare and IT recruitment agencies were able to cope with the coronavirus pandemic and keep their service delivery quality intact partnering up with healthcare and IT recruitment process outsourcing service providers based in offshore locations such as India. RPO, on average, can reduce time-to-hire by 25% and cost-to-hire by 20%.

In 2020, QX Recruitment Services provided offshore resume sourcing service to a UK-based tech recruitment agency and delivered a profit margin of £153,148 while incurring the cost of £36,941 – an ROI of 415%.

This RPO benefit tackles:

• Uncertain future leading to restrained investments
• Quick scale up/ ramp down concerns

Streamline & Improve Your Recruitment Delivery Capability

You can have a database of 100,000 candidates, but if it’s not updated and organised, you miss out on leveraging its full potential and dampen your recruiting service delivery capability. Offshore outsourcing recruitment service providers not only streamline your agency’s recruitment process but also update, organise and manage your candidate pool. This activity enables your in-house recruiters to search and manage candidates more efficiently, and process applications for customer job requisitions more quickly.

QX Recruitment Services helped an SAP Recruitment agency based in the UK make more than £155,000 direct Gross Profit through recruitment database regeneration and resume sourcing services.

This solution tackles:

• Cluttered & Obsolete Database concern

Conclusion

With support from top RPO specialists, you can take the pressure off your in-house recruiting team, and your business can be in a better place with an increased focus on your bottom-line deliverables, and successfully weather the difficult, uncertain period of COVID and post-COVID crisis.

QX Recruitment, one of the best RPO providers from India, offer flexible recruitment solutions to staffing agencies of all sizes – whether a startup, SME or an established business. The offshore team serves as an extension of your in-house team, helping your fight through the morphed staffing problems and elevate your business growth.