Who is Buying Talent Acquisition Services Today?

In the course of conducting primary market research for the upcoming Blueprint report on recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and contract labor managed service providers (MSP), HfS has found that companies are finding creative ways to align resources and roles to help achieve business goals of agile growth through innovative workforce approaches. 

 

There is some diversity in the types of titles responsible for selecting and governing RPO and MSP, but overall they reflect a trend towards “talent” terminology and “employee services” orientation that bodes well for their ability to serve the business better as well as offer more satisfying career engagement and progression than HR or procurement roles of the past. 

 

With this Point of View’s focus on titles, it should not be a surprise that the upcoming Blueprint report is not “Recruitment Process Outsourcing” and “Managed Service Providers” but “Talent Acquisition Services.” This was purposeful to reflect appetite for change in the traditional RPO and VMS marketplaces – more and more companies want and need to look at the workforce broadly in terms of traditional full time hires and contract labor in order to build the next generation of people and products in their businesses. 

 

In the short term, HfS expects many organizations will still segregate selection of full time hires and contract labor, as HR and procurement may vie for power or to preserve status quo. But progressive firms are seeing the opportunities to consider these things in tandem, and are creating new career opportunities for those individuals hungry for change, which is the smartest talent acquisition strategy of all.