Recruitin uses Carerix software to offer customers a fully standardised RPO process

By Mark Bassie (Flex-Beheer)

Visiting Recruitin

My latest visit to a Carerix user has kept me closer to home. I am in Doesburg, close to the oldest restaurant in the Netherlands (de Waag), where I enter a stately building in the heart of the city centre. I see a doorbell marked ‘Recruitin’, which is a company that offers Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), otherwise I would not have known the company was based here.

So the first thing I ask Dustin Posthuma, director of Recuitin, is why he does not do something with the appearance and prominence of the office.

‘It’s not necessary because our recruiters always work at the customer’s premises. We only use these premises as a gathering point for weekly meetings and, for example, training or admin activities.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

RPO is a new and relatively unknown type of service, where organisations fully or partly outsource their recruitment – from strategy to selection – to an external service provider. This relates to the recruitment & selection of personnel who will later be employed by the client. An RPO provider thus fulfils the same role as an MSP (Managed Service Provider) when it comes to insourcing. This means the RPO provider assumes responsibility for the customer/client and operates under the client’s name.

Advantages RPO

‘Why would you fully or partly transfer your recruitment to an external service provider?’ I ask Dustin.

‘In the end, an RPO service provider will be able to offer organisations lasting success in the labour market based on lower and more flexible costs. In-house recruiters are often too busy or not up to speed; are not effectively supported by HR managers or the organisation, and are left to deal with rapid developments in technology and the labour market.

How do you safeguard things like scalability and quality in the recruitment process?

‘Companies sometimes have a lot of vacancies, but will also encounter times when they have few or no vacancies. If there are a lot of vacancies, the department will be placed under great pressure and this can harm service and results. It will thus take longer to recruit the required personnel, and eventually lead to higher costs when expensive recruitment agencies are deployed. If there are few or no vacancies, a recruitment department becomes an expensive solution. Furthermore, it can be difficult for in-house recruiters to remain up to speed with rapid developments in technology and the labour market. This is a little bit easier for a service provider like us because we have a large group of recruiters who specialise in specific areas. Each of our clients is assigned a fixed recruiter or group of recruiters, with back-ups also being arranged in the event of absence or holidays. If there are not a lot of vacancies, fixed deployment is cut back and extra support is offered to clients with a higher number of vacancies; this allows us to work in a very efficient manner. Service is thus optimised and costs are only incurred if work is being carried out. Although costs are important and everything is done to reduce them, RPO is also about the quality of recruitment processes and continuity. Our challenge is to make and, more importantly, keep organisations successful in the labour market’.

Comprehensive concept

Recruitin’s motto is ‘We offer our customers lasting success in the labour market’.

‘We always attempt to establish long-term relationships with our clients. Since we were founded, we have not lost a single client. And this has been possible because we offer a comprehensive concept, which creates harmony between our approach, process, procedures and our ATS system in Carerix.

This is only possible with effective and very close cooperation, and if clients believe our way of working is the best option for them and will offer them the desired results. On the one hand, we are extremely customer-oriented. But, on the other hand, we are headstrong enough to do what customers need and to sometimes not do what they request.

This can create a demanding relationship. As a result, we sometimes opt to not collaborate with potential clients because we realise that their approach will not lead to the best results for them and us. In the end, the agreements we make with our clients, and the conditions we establish, are in the best interest of both parties. If the customer is successful in the labour market, this will lead to a mutually beneficial partnership. If not, we will not gain from the partnership. That’s how we define RPO’.

Specialised in technology

Recruitin only offers RPO to medium-sized companies active in the engineering sector. But this includes a wide range of companies, from Maritime and High Tech to Ground, Road and Water engineering.

‘But we also have clients that specialise in chip and circuit-board production, fibre glass and chemical technology. We are now at home in the engineering sector and our concept and methods are proving effective. Scarcity in the sector is high, which is a challenge from a recruitment perspective, but we have the required expertise and are able to rise to the challenge. And within the Engineering sector, some segments are expanding and can barely keep up with growth (leading to many vacancies), while turnover and vacancies in other segments are less vibrant, thus leading to very little demand. There are differing degrees of activity, but this isn’t an issue because we can flexibly deploy our recruiters’.

Carerix as fixed platform

When I ask him, Dustin confirms that Recruitin uses Carerix as ATS and platform when managing recruitment processes for its clients.

‘We needed a standardised process to maximise efficiency, and Carerix seemed like the natural choice at the time. I was already familiar with Carerix because I had spent time as a (/an interim) recruiter for various companies in the engineering sector, where I slowly developed my ideas for RPO.

Carerix offers us great reliability and effectiveness, and allows us to use the flexibility and controllability of the system to effectively serve the needs of all our clients. That is why we use one system for all clients’. In addition, Carerix also serves as a database, and thus features a history of all recruitment activities, which remain associated with specific clients even if they no longer collaborate with us.