Just a quick note about a cool new product that hit the scene. Check out HarQen (rhymes with “Darth Vader’s Colleague the Gran Moff Tarkin) product called VoiceScreener at VoiceScreener.com. I demoed it last week and was nicely impressed.

The tool isn’t necessarily groundbreaking in it’s scope, but the execution is quite impressive. In a sentence, they allow you to do automated, recorded, standardized telephone interviews. Essentially you email a link out to a candidate and when they click it, they are instructed to enter their phone number and the system calls them, and records their short answers (3 minutes or less) to several standardized questions.  The system then allows you to replay the recorded answers at will and rank (1-5 stars) the quality of the answer to quickly determine which candidates are worth a more detailed call from a recruiter.

I can imagine a number of uses of this system.  I think it would be great for pre-screening for positions where communication skills and phone presence are very important, and it could also be great for any position where the answer to a single question can make or break a candidate (including technical positions where you could ask something very open like “please describe your experience working in a Ruby on Rails environment).

This candidate-rich environment is perfect for testing out new products and tools to improve the recruitment efficiency of your business.  Pinstripe has been vocal about how well the system is working for them, so it’s definitely worth checking out.  The price starts at $7 per competed screen, but goes down by 2/3 or more with volume.

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Pinstripe recently posted an article on their blog arguing that the failure of an RPO program does not mean that RPO will never work within that company and providing five reasons why companies should give RPO another try.

While I agree wholeheartedly with their premise, I also know that there are situations where an RPO program fails to achieve its goals, not because of the provider, but because of the client.  A wise man once said “Remember, the common thread between all your failed relationships is YOU”.

Here are five things to help you, the RPO buyer, turn the mirror on yourself before assuming that simply replacing your RPO provider will fix the problem.

1) Have you faced adoption issues?  (i.e. are you struggling getting hiring managers to work with your provider).  If so, you need to consider if this is due to your provider’s failed change management efforts, or if your company simply has a cultural bias against outsourcing which may not be fixable - or may be fixable but require additional change management efforts driven by your own senior leadership.

2) Have you had problems with other outsourcing initiatives?  If your company has historically struggled to outsource successfully in the past, there is a pretty good chance that an RPO program will not find fertile ground within the organization.

3) Have you allocated enough budget for your provider?  If you bought from the low bidder, and then squeezed them down another 10% you may have not left enough margin for them to operate successfully.  Maybe a slightly higher investment will allow them to deliver at higher service levels.  If you are getting push-back from your provider because some special request is outside of the statement of work, or not covered in your service level agreement, it’s a good sign they are watching their pennies, and that  may cost you in the long run.  If you just can’t allocate more budget, maybe RPO isn’t for you.

4) Have you placed overly restrictive process requirements on your provider?  If you brought in an RPO provider to re-engineer your process, but then required them to operate within legacy technology, utilize outdated assessment systems, and copy all resumes onto stone tablets for extra redundancy (Ok, I made that one up), it’s possible you have hobbled their ability (and any other provider you bring in under those same requirements) to deliver.

5) Have you reviewed the specific hiring environment of your organization for intrinsic challenges?  From employment brand, to compensation design, to industry reputation, any number of factors outside of the control of your provider can make it especially challenging to attract candidates to a specific company.

In most cases, an open and honest conversation with your provider will unearth which (if any) of these challenges exist within your situation.  Keep in mind that providers don’t like to be seen as “complaining” about your company and the challenges they may be facing, so they may initially be reluctant to share their opinion on some of these issues.  I’ve always been a fan of the “No Career Limiting Moves” meeting in which everyone agrees to be open and honest, and all parties agree not to hold anything that is said against the other party.

If you hold such a meeting, you may identify things you can do to help your provider be more successful.  On the other hand, maybe you just picked a horrible provider, and another one would do a much better job.

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I’ve had a few people send me links to cloudrecruiting.net and their video about cell-phone recruiting.  I’ve reviewed both and am creating a new industry award to bestow upon them.

The Hyperbole Award for most beautifully packaged presentation which tells us nothing new but looks like a million bucks - therefore appearing to be groundbreaking but really being a waste of our valuable time goes to: Cloudrecruiting.net.  The presentation you can view on that site looks like a million bucks but I didn’t walk away with anything new or actionable.  Maybe I’m jaded, but it seemed like a repackaged view of things I’m hearing from a LOT of people.  The idea that recruiters need to be socially networked and use text messaging to recruit younger workers doesn’t break a lot of new ground in my mind.

I was particularly bemused because the site describes the presentation as: “Hard on the heels of a ground-breaking presentation delivered at SourceCon 2008, Michael Marlatt similarly wowed the audience at the ERE Fall Expo with his thought-provoking and eye-popping presentation.”

Michael, I’ll give you eye-popping, but ground-breaking and thought-provoking is a stretch.  I don’t mean to sound snarky - I appreciate anyone putting their ideas out there, but I think this was over-sold and under-delivered.

Hmmmm.  Over-sold and under-delivered, there has to be a message here somewhere that is specific to RPO…I just can’t put my finger on it right now (smiley face emoticon etc.)

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