Why Start a Career in RPO?

One of the things I love about working in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) business is that it’s constantly changing. Today, RPO is vastly different from the industry I started in as a fresh-faced college graduate six years ago.

Back then, we were all about filling jobs – and the value proposition was simple: engaging an RPO will get that done quicker and cheaper than your internal talent acquisition team.

But the world of work is changing. Not everyone is an ‘employee’. Demographics are shifting and young job seekers are motivated by purpose and challenge – not just money and security. And, for now at least, our robust job market favors the candidate over the employer.

RPO in 2018 is more akin to consulting. At Sevenstep, we still fill jobs – tens of thousands of them, in fact. But we also advise clients on the performance of their talent acquisition strategy. We help them understand the optimal mix of permanent, contingent and contract workers. We help them develop an employer brand identity that attracts the best candidates. Hiring managers trust us to help them figure out what kind of employees they need in order to be successful.

This is an incredibly exciting time to launch a career in our profession. If you’ve ever considered a career in RPO, here are seven reasons to go for it:

1. Working with a variety of big-brand, oftentimes global clients, you’ll get a crash course in the real-life world of business. People are what makes a company tick – and if you’re at the epicenter of finding and engaging those people, you’ll quickly learn everything about your clients and the industries in which they compete.
2. Variety is the spice of work, not just life. Working in an RPO, you’ll most likely work with companies across different industries. Even if you leave the RPO world one day, you’ll have a wealth of experience that will set you apart from most other talent acquisition professionals.
3. You’ll build relationships that will benefit your career long-term. While each company and each industry has unique challenges, talent acquisition as a profession is a community. Your professional network will grow exponentially and that will pay dividends later in your career, whatever you decide to do.
4. If you’re good at what you do, your career can move at hypersonic speed. The pace in RPO is breakneck compared to an internal recruiting position. I was promoted just seven months into my career at Sevenstep and felt very comfortable going toe-to-toe with Talent Acquisition Partners that had 10+ years more experience than me. For anyone who learns fast and is willing to take calculated chances, the potential for professional growth is virtually unlimited.
5. You’re connecting people with purpose. While RPO – like every industry – is increasingly technology-enabled, it’s a people business at the end of the day. Your role is to understand what kind of skills and attributes your client needs for a role, go out and find people who fit the bill, and then sell them on that job.
6. As I stated earlier, today’s RPO world is actually closer to consulting than traditional outsourcing. You’re not just filling jobs, you’re an expert in talent acquisition. You’re consulting to clients to help them improve recruitment processes, develop candidate sourcing and attraction strategies, and you’re working with technologies like artificial intelligence and robotic process automation.
7. If you’re a creative person who thrives on complexity and challenge, you’ll get plenty of opportunity to flex those muscles. Very rarely will two days look exactly the same, and creative problem solving is both highly valued and part of the job description. The more layered a challenge is, the more call for creativity there will be.

There are careers in RPO and then there are careers in RPO at Sevenstep. We look for people who have the right mentality – not necessarily a very particular set of skills (sorry, Liam Neeson). We don’t target people with certain types of degrees or past experiences. We look at the person in front of us and ask them questions that get to the root of who they are. We look for people who are resilient and who love to think. We want people who have an engaged mind and are brave.

What we do isn’t always different, but how we do it is very different. As people consider us an employer and we consider them to join our team, we frequently discover that they could do the job at another RPO, but that they couldn’t do the job at Sevenstep. Our unbounded approach isn’t just a tagline, it’s our way of life. Recruitment Process Outsourcing

If you’re interested in joining us as we change the industry, I encourage you to search our current openings by visiting sevensteprpo.com/contact/careers.