Benchmark RPO
Solving Global RPO Challenges

When it comes to the recruitment industry, there are many roadblocks that the organizations might face while employing offshore recruiters. Over the years, there have been many horror stories that have emphasized the credibility and integrity gap existing between American business culture and much of the third world. During Don Black’s initial years in the recruitment industry, he witnessed this problem firsthand and saw an opportunity for American businesses to save by off shoring their recruiter’s most basic tasks. Working as the Director of Recruiting for an engineering job board, Black helped pioneer offshore RPO.

Later, as he ran a boutique IT recruiting agency, they utilized offshore talent to source candidates for onshore recruiters. In both cases though, the RPO delivery quality was poor, due to a combination of poor training and dishonest business practices. So Black moved his family to Bangalore, India for a year to be closer to the source, and to develop the relationships that will be able to provide the quality of delivery and ethics needed to succeed. As a result, Benchmark RPO was conceptualized.

Riding on Black’s unique experiences and relationships, Benchmark today has tools needed to transform offshore RPO into the business model that it always should have been. The company offers significant savings on recruitment costs by providing clients with experienced offshore recruitment professionals, primarily but not exclusively in IT. Following is the conversation that Manage HR Magazine had with Black, President of Benchmark RPO, to contemplate the company’s unique value proposition of being managed in the US by experienced recruitment professionals who understand American business culture and the needs and wants of American companies. He also talks about how Benchmark achieves 50-80 percent of savings and provides a splendid price point of $800-1600 for a US hours recruiter/sourcer.

Tell us about the challenges of working with offshore RPOs.

About the third or fourth offshore RPO I worked with as a recruiting agency owner provided us with a recruiter by the name of Albert Thomas. Albert was to source candidates for us during US night hours, and deliver qualified candidates to contact every morning. It took us weeks to get him to understand what kind of candidates we needed, delivery format, etc. Then, after a couple of months, it seemed he forgot everything he learned, and was back to business as usual. So we trained him again. Then, after another month, he forgot 100 percent of what he was taught, and defaulted to business as usual.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that we were getting new recruiters every month or so, who all operated under the alias of “Albert”. Of course the RPO denied it, and it became the ongoing joke in our office: which Albert would work that day?
Funny thing was, despite all of the issues, we still got good value for our Alberts, and not having a better option, we kept working with the RPO. But that’s when I realized that providing Alberts with my experience, ethics, and training, we could really do something special.

What are the pain-points that exist today in the RPO space? How can Benchmark RPO solve
these?

With inflation ravaging the economy, when is a better time than now to save money and increase productivity? When we can offer a 50-80 percent savings off of the cost of an onshore recruiter, including overhead and tax burden, it’s an obvious play to increase your recruiting workforce and cut costs at the same time. Whether our recruiters work end to end, or serve as support to our client’s onshore recruiters, the savings is tremendous.
In a nutshell, in this cut-throat economy, companies need to cut costs and increase productivity, and that’s where we shine as a company.

Please elaborate on the different kinds of services Benchmark RPO offers?

We employ both RPO recruiters (dedicated to service one client, and directed daily by that client), as well as traditional contingency recruiters. Our RPO recruiters work exclusively on their assigned client’s work. They are our untouchables.

Our contingency recruiters are directed by our managers on their daily work, which on occasion means stepping in for an absent RPO recruiter or even assisting (un-billed) an RPO recruiter in his work. Having these flexible recruiters at the ready also allows us to expand on demand with known talent as per our RPO customers’ needs.

It’s important to note that there are different RPO models as well. Our recruiters can work requirements end-to-end, or they can source qualified resumes, day or night, and feed them to the client’s onshore recruiters. A third option would be to employ a full recruiting team, consisting of sourcers, recruiters, coordinator and team lead. Our recruiters can identify themselves as Benchmark employees, or operate white label, as employees of our client.

Please shed light on the client engagement approach Benchmark RPO follows?

It’s all about partnership.

We are very flexible in how we meet our client’s needs. We jointly craft plans that will best meet their needs, and then of course change them after we realize that the plans aren’t perfect.

At the end of the day, both we and our client need to see placements for the relationship to be successful. Our partner should know their needs or their client’s needs best, so we need to listen to them. Our recruiters often know best how to find the talent sought, and they are trained to communicate their thoughts and ideas with our partner. In this way, both our partner and our recruiter own their work- only when both parties own the work will you find your maximum success.

Is there a particular success story that you want to highlight where Benchmark RPO assisted the client in attaining what they wanted?

There are many such cases but recently I had a conversation with a Midwestern staffing agency client. Employing a large number of onshore recruiters simply was not a financially viable option, so for many years he turned to offshore partners for help. When he first started to work with Benchmark, he still had multiple other relationships. He informed me that because of the quality of our delivery, he has terminated all other relationships, and relies 100 percent on us to deliver highly qualified candidates. With his delivery issues finally solved, he now has the confidence to market and expand his client list. His hopes for this next year are sky high.

What are your plans for the future? What does the future hold for Benchmark RPO?

These are exciting times for Benchmark RPO. First, we have been operating our delivery centers in tier 2 cities in India. With less attrition than tier 1 cities, we have experienced better opportunity to recruit, train and retain recruiters. Then late last year, we opened a new delivery center in Hyderabad, India giving us the opportunity to quickly recruit and assimilate experienced recruiters. Now, with delivery centers in both markets, we can expand and contract on demand as needed by our clients, but still retain long-term relationships with the majority of our talent.

The second reason for excitement is our pending healthcare recruiting partnership. I can’t comment on it at this moment, but our partnership should allow us a significant presence in healthcare.