What is Talent Outsourcing?
Talent outsourcing means acquiring an external partner to handle specific roles, instead of hiring permanent employees for those tasks. The outsourced staff aren’t on your payroll – they are contracted through a third-party outsourcing partner who conducts recruitment and onboarding, instead of your internal teams.
Unlike the traditional recruitment process, where your talent acquisition team is responsible for finding the best talent, here we talk about one major advantage: in only a few days, you can get instant access to a large, qualified pool of pre-vetted skilled professionals, including international ones. From there, you can choose the right talent for as long as needed, without the long-term commitment or the costs of hiring permanent staff.
Let’s go through a practical example. A Bristol-based tech firm needs a team of software testers for a six-month project. Rather than hiring locally and dealing with lengthy training, they can outsource to an outsourcing recruitment provider with a pool of experienced testers, ready to start in a week. When the project wraps up, the obligations towards this team also end.
Differences Between Talent Outsourcing and Traditional Hiring
Before diving into the benefits of choosing an outsourcing provider instead of a traditional recruiting process, we should evaluate their differences. We illustrated them here for your convenience:
Your choice between these two hiring methods depends on your goals. If you want to achieve loyalty, cultural fit, or in-depth company knowledge, go for the traditional hiring process. But if you want your projects to move faster, to tap into more profound industry knowledge, or to scale faster, reach out for recruitment process outsourcing solutions.
Key Reasons to Choose Talent Outsourcing
Outsourcing your talent acquisition process gives you the time and space to be agile and act according to the latest market demands. It’s a strategic choice that can unlock new opportunities, help you adapt to change and act instantly. The word-of-mouth between companies that have already used talent outsourcing is spreading fast. Here are some of the key reasons why successful companies outsource.
Access to Global Talent Pools and Specialised Skills
The whole world is a stage when it comes to companies that go for outsourcing talent acquisition. You are no longer obligated to search for talent only from your local surroundings. Think bigger. Need someone with international experience? A Mandarin-speaking marketer? An Artificial Intelligence (AI) global expert? The possibilities are endless.
Here’s a practical example from our office:
Olive Recruit is an RPO partner of many UK companies that want access to European talent, within the same time zone. This way, they have access to rare skills quickly, without delays or misunderstandings that come with long-distance teams.
This is especially important for roles that require scarce talent. For instance, the UK tech sector is often facing shortages in areas like AI, data science, and cloud computing. Talent acquisition outsourcing lets you fill these gaps quickly, with already proficient professionals.
Cost Efficiency & Budget Optimisation
All of the recruiting professionals who are reading this blog know that hiring is pretty expensive. Starting from the advertising costs, then the agency fees, not to mention the training and the insurance. When it comes to outsourcing, you pay only for the outcome, not the whole process. Remember, no hidden extras, no long-term costs.
Important to mention are the flexible pricing models. You can have complete control over the budget whenever there’s a big project ahead of you. You can increase your spending until the project is on. Once it’s done, you are free to scale down instantly.
Another practical example is when Catalyst Care Group partnered with Olive Recruit. By outsourcing recruitment, they achieved cost reduction at scale, improving placement rates and scaling efficiently, without the overheads of a bigger HR team.
Scalability & Flexibility
Outsourcing your talent recruitment allows you to scale your workforce up or down, without the risk of going over or under your budget and needs. This is especially important for sectors with seasonal peaks, like retail during Christmas, hospitality during summer, or healthcare during holidays. Outsourcing lets you respond to demand immediately and scale back when the high season ends. Project-based tasks are also an excellent opportunity for working with an outsourcing partner. Bringing in a team of qualified job seekers at short notice can give you a competitive edge and land you a massive deal.
Focus on Core Business Activities
When creating your business strategy, you have to have one thing in mind: the recruitment process can be pretty time-consuming, from writing the job ads to going through the CV, interviewing, and onboarding. Outsourcing recruitment can take all these processes off the client company’s plate to focus on more critical business development and strategy goals.
Another bonus is the expertise and market insights that most in-house teams can’t match. Outsourcing providers’ talent specialise in particular sectors, so their know-how is invaluable to your company, because it brings strategic advice and consultation services that are way pricier than the outsourcing fee.
When to Consider Talent Outsourcing
Outsourcing is especially valuable when:
- Your team and your HR department are struggling with the hiring demands, impacting your core business activities
- You have a tight deadline for completing the team
- You are confronted with a skills gap that cannot be found locally
- You experience faster growth of your business, entering new markets, or taking on projects that require rapid scaling
- Your business faces seasonal peaks and needs a short-term change in your workforce planning
Business Growth and Expansion
Traditional hiring can’t always keep up when your business is growing. You might find yourself stuck in long recruitment process cycles, missing out on opportunities because you can’t build the right team fast enough. Outsourcing talent acquisition solves this issue. You get access to a broader talent pool and specialist recruiters who know how to find quality candidates for your special hiring needs.
Providers like Olive Recruit can ramp up or scale down your recruitment efforts, so you are never left shorthanded or overstaffed.
Specialised Skill Requirements
Finding people with rare or niche skills is one of the biggest challenges for growing businesses today. Perhaps you need a data scientist for a single analytics project, a compliance expert to break into a new international market, or a multilingual marketer to start your campaigns there. These are all specialists who are in high demand but short supply. This is particularly true if you are looking for them in the local market.
Working with a proven recruitment process outsourcing partner gives you instant access to an international pool of pre-vetted experts. These professionals are ready to bring the expertise and experience needed, get your job done, and leave you without further costs when their contract ends.
For more on how we approach talent sourcing and outsourcing, read here: The Talent Sourcing Process.
High Turnover or Seasonal Needs
For high-turnover roles, Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partners can keep a steady pipeline of pre-vetted candidates ready to step in, so companies wouldn’t need to start from scratch every season. This approach minimises downtime and helps maintain productivity.
The flexibility of outsourcing talent acquisition gives you the freedom to avoid the cost and hassle of hiring permanent staff for short-term peaks, without overworking your current employees to cover the gaps.
Talent Outsourcing with Olive Recruit
Do you want to focus on your core business functions? Do you like to have the freedom, the time and the resources to drive your business forward, without risking employing the talent internally? Try Olive Recruit’s outsourcing talent recruitmentservices.
This is not a one-size-fits-all process. We start by listening, because we believe in partnership, not just service. We invest our team in getting to know your business, culture, and goals. Then we design a solution that delivers the skills you need when needed. Our European office in Skopje means we can offer same-time-zone support and access to a diverse talent pool without the hassle of managing teams in distant time zones.
We handle everything from role definition and candidate sourcing to vetting, onboarding and ongoing support. Your company gets a single point of contact, regular updates, and the confidence that your hiring is in expert hands. Our talent acquisition outsourcing helped many companies scale efficiently, producing cost savings and securing top talent, with a placement success rate of 82.35%.
We’re here to help you grow, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world. Join us on this journey to candidates’ excellence.
