RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

Outsourcing Search – A cost effective option?

It can easily be argued that search, as a specialism, has always been an outsourced function; as very few internal HR departments have had the courage, contacts or the credibility to conduct searches at director-level in the UK, let alone looking at overseas options. The fabled ‘little black book’ that has made many a head hunters’ fortune is jealously guarded and it has been seen as a cost-efficient option to hire search consultants, often at an eye-watering retainer, to conduct a series of one-off searches, sometimes to open-ended timescales.

However, the technology-led access to talent across the globe has made this rather ‘traditional’ approach somewhat of an expensive anachronism, given that it does not build market knowledge, is essentially transactional in it’s approach and only really recognises talent on a ‘like for like’ basis; rather than building up a picture of actual, as well as perceived, talent.

At Ochre House, we have been developing search-related services that address the strategic needs of companies 18-24 months down the line. We are sitting down with businesses at the planning stage to understand all the key factors that can impact on their talent strategies: issues such as business drivers, both micro and macro; what is their brand reputation and just how do they define and profile high performance. Only once these key factors have been discussed, evaluated and quantified do we start thinking about the solution.

We are therefore focused on working with clients to integrate their approaches to talent management and search and come up with value-led solutions that are very outcome-orientated. For any organisation; cost, time to fulfilment and knowledge acquisition are the cornerstones for any credible long-term search solution and any partner that doesn’t offer these vital, measurable outputs; be they internal providers or external search firms, will be providing a short-term sticking plaster, rather than a long-term cure.

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