Winning The Talent Wars, by Frank Mulligan, Talent Software

A good old fashioned headhunting, or as they preferred, search company and an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) company decided to have a boat race. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the RPO won by a mile ( or is it a kilometre?).

The headhunters decided to investigate the reason for their crushing defeat. A management team made up of Senior Consultants was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was that the RPO had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the headhunterís team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.

So the headhunters hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.They advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent another loss to the RPO, the headhunterís management team was totally reorganized to: 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. Everyone got a new, bigger title, and the rowing model, or íparadigmí as they liked to call it, stayed the same.

There was discussion of getting more and new paddles, new canoes and other new equipment. Extra vacation days for practices and bonuses were also discussed. The new paddles, canoes and other equipment never arrived because it was felt that really itís íall about peopleí. Equipment would get in the way. The lack of investment cash in their people-based service íparadigmí was never discussed. Neither was the founderís attachment to rolodexes.

The next year the RPO won by two miles. Thatís nearly three kilometres.

Humiliated, the headhunterís management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe and sold the paddles. They canceled all capital investments for new equipment (not that they ever believed in equipment in the first place). The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next yearís racing team was brought in from outside (as they had done during every other downturn or recession).

Next year they lost again.


End of Days

By now you have guessed that I am trying to say that the days of the headhunter are well and truly over. An RPO can deliver everything that a headhunter does, and can do so consistently and repeatedly. Plus the RPO adds a technical edge and a process-based model that can be measured and continuously improved.

People in search have always said that ísearch is not rocket scienceí, and the RPO model shows that it isnít. It just took a bunch of IT people to show the way to put it back in its box.

But the headhunters are not dead, at least not yet.

The RPO model works for mass recruitment and middle management. íSearchí was only ever intended for very high positions that could be filled by a small search universe. This would include people in Ivy League schools and CEO types. Easy to find if you are an Ivy Leaguer or work in those circles.

Applying it to sourcing Application Engineers or Pharmaceutical Data Entry people was, and is, a big mistake.

Comments to: frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com