When it comes to Talent Acquisition, cost advantages created by the Global Economy have become quite a taboo subject. Frankly, many U.S.-based Recruiters and Sourcers avoid this issue because it invokes deep, protectionist emotions. And despite all the anti-rhetoric, we see more and more (and more) offshoring. In fact, if there is one thing we know, it’s that demand is growing and doesn’t appear it will slow down anytime soon.
However, the purpose of my post today is not to say whether offshoring certain components of the recruiting process is effective or not. Why? Because doing so will divert the true essence of this conversation, not to mention that it would invite a further cascade of irrational and emotional responses. Any logical person will understand effectiveness is purely situational – what may work for Company A may not work for Company B, and vice versa. There are too many individual variables within each circumstance to offer a broad-sweeping conclusion, such as scarcity of talent, employment brand, competitiveness of compensation, etc.
If there is one thing I’d ask readers to consider today, it is the following: It is we who have created this very monster. The relentless, ongoing focus on process improvement has led our industry to believe that by breaking the Talent Acquisition process into smaller and smaller steps (and then improving the performance of each step), we’ll be able to improve overall performance. Ah, if only we could create the perfect recruiting assembly-line and hire Henry Ford to assist us in reaching “peak efficiency” at each ‘station’, or sub-step, right? Wrong. People don’t like feeling as if they’re widgets or being shuffled from station to station. Light bulbs don’t seem to mind, but Human Beings do.
Yet, as this belief permeated our industry further, guess what happened next? Exactly. Vendors have identified opportunities to exploit through innovation, and in some cases, by offering cost efficiencies. A perfect example is Fay Hansen’s recent reference to iPlace in her Workforce article, “Cash-Strapped Firms Find India Offers a Down-Home Recruiting Touch“.
See, somewhere along the road, we adopted a robotically Descartian, mechanistic mindset that focuses more on output than outcome. The next evolution of this type of thinking is a focus on cost-reduction, or worse, commoditization. For many of these offshored jobs to come back to the U.S., the Talent Acquisition world must undergo a fundamental shift in the way performance is judged. If cost-per-hire, time-to-fill, and other reactive metrics continue to dominate conversation, there will always be labor who can do the work cheaper and faster.
