Using Dedicated IT RPO Recruitment Services to Find Contractors

From reducing the expenses associated with discovering talent to helping candidates find exciting new positions, RPO recruitment provides a valuable way for employers and job seekers to effectively navigate the challenges of the hiring process. 

In this post, we’ll discuss why companies should consider utilising a specific IT recruitment project outsourcing service to build their next contractor team, and how these providers can help to connect contractors with specialised expertise and knowledge with cutting-edge companies. 

The Challenges of Hiring IT Contractors

Choosing to use a contractor—or, indeed, build a team comprised only of contractors—is often dictated by an organisation’s business needs. For example, some may choose to bring contractors on board to address a specific skills gap, such as in the case of financial institutions utilising COBOL and FORTRAN programmers to work on ageing mainframes. Others choose to use contractors to ensure that short-term change projects are completed in a timely manner. 

However, there are some challenges to hiring IT contractors that organisations need to consider: 

• Companies may struggle to connect with contractors. If a company lacks the extensive network needed to identify candidates with the right skill set, it can be costly and time-consuming to locate professionals—time that could otherwise be spent on completing business-critical tasks.

• Finding contractors at the right time can be a challenge. It’s often the case that once you’ve decided you’re in need of a contractor, you’re getting dangerously close to deadlines. Working with an RPO provider can offer you the breathing room you need to connect with contractors in good time, ensuring all deliverables are completed in a timely and budget-conscious fashion.

• Managing contractors can be fraught with difficulty. As contractors are not traditional employees, it can be a challenge for organisations to communicate with them or monitor the work they produce.

• Employment law is complex but must be complied with. Given the high-profile changes that have been made to IR35 within the UK and the continued shift towards hybrid and fully remote roles across the globe, organisations need to be certain that they’re familiar with all relevant laws and regulations around contractors, particularly if they’re hiring candidates that will be living and working overseas.

• Retaining IT contractors after project completion can be tough. While you might want to hold on to the contractors you’ve invested in for future projects, they may already have other job opportunities lined up—meaning you’ll need to negotiate with them if you’d like to retain their services and minimise the risk of knowledge-loss as contractors roll off of projects.

With the demand for IT contractors having increased by three index points in the first month of 2023—it’s important that businesses understand the challenges that they could face when trying to hire a contractor—particularly given the financial and reputational cost of a placement that doesn’t work out.

Why Use an RPO Recruitment Provider to Source Contractors?

As we established in our previous guide, a business can utilise an RPO recruitment service to reduce the associated costs of hiring permanent employees. 

Alongside this, project services help to reduce the risk of a bad hire—which can cost a business as much as 30% of that employee’s first-year salary—and offer businesses the ability to continue with their day-to-day operations whilst an external consultant handles the attraction, screening, first-stage interviewing and reporting of shortlisted candidates. 

So, what are the benefits of an outsourced recruitment project service for discovering a contractor? In general, an outsourced recruitment service will enable a company to improve the outcome of its talent search efforts, helping to communicate candidates’ niche skillsets and experiences to internal hiring managers. 

However, there are a number of other key benefits of using an outsourced provider for hiring IT contractors: 

• Reduced time-to-hire. A dedicated agency focused on the IT industry will understand contractors' skills and expertise, helping save companies time and money during the job search. 

• Access to Technology. Recruitment process outsourcing companies in IT use the latest recruitment technologies to track applicants’ skills and parse through CVs, helping businesses reach greater numbers of contractors and streamline the otherwise complex hiring process. 

• Enhanced scalability. RPO providers help businesses source contractors that can manage fluctuations in workloads or provide the necessary skills to push a project over the finish line—assisting businesses as they aim to scale up their operations. 

• Improved, data-driven decision-making. An outsourcing provider will gather data throughout the hiring process, helping business leaders access real-time insights on their candidate attraction strategies and offering them the ability to evolve their methods to improve the quality of new recruits.

Dedicated RPO providers are adapting to changes in the IT market, ensuring that their clients can respond to contractors' needs—a vital concern given these professionals' in-demand skills. 

From facilitating remote hiring via video conferencing technologies and online assessments, to developing employer branding through creating content showcasing company culture and values, outsourcing recruitment can help businesses attract and retain top talent in a highly competitive market. 

RPO in IT: How Does It Differ from Other RPO Recruitment?

A dedicated RPO provider working within IT will typically operate differently from recruiters in other industries, given the often specialised skills that companies are looking for as a result of their specific hiring needs. An RPO in IT recruitment will have the subject matter knowledge required to ensure that candidates are adequately assessed and make certain that interview questions are relevant to the role in question. 

For instance, a recruiter working for a dedicated recruitment project outsourcing provider will be familiar with the expertise required for a given position with a company, carrying out the technical screening of candidates to ensure that all job seekers that are moving forward into an interview possess the necessary competencies that the role demands, a crucial consideration for a contractor who will often be hired to address an urgent skills gap or talent shortage.

Alongside this, dedicated IT RPO providers will have established effective strategies for identifying and connecting businesses with talented IT contractors, whether from their existing industry-specific talent pool or through targeted advertising of the role through specialised job boards. In addition, their market knowledge and deep understanding of the IT field means they can provide compensation benchmarking and insights into industry trends, helping companies remain competitive.

A recruitment project provider can provide flexible staffing solutions for business leaders looking to utilise contractors, whether they’re brought on board on an interim basis or a contract-to-hire placement. The ability to scale recruitment efforts up and down based on current or anticipated needs means that RPO providers can help organisations pivot according to market or client demands.

Recruitment project outsourcing means that your business can be quickly connected with large numbers of contractors for a range of distinct business change initiatives. Whether you’re looking to improve your financial and operational performance, or you’re aiming to enhance your internal processes, people, or business model, you can utilise the services provided by a recruitment project outsourcing consultant to achieve your goals. 

The contractors provided by a recruitment project provider will often bring specialised skills and knowledge to the table, which can be particularly beneficial when it comes to navigating the complexities of business change within the IT sector. Many recruitment project services can be tailored to your exact needs, allowing your organisation to scale its workforce in a sustainable, speedy, and specific way. Of course, hiring contractors is also a cost-effective solution to the talent requirements necessitated by large business change projects: instead of hiring full-time employees, your contractors can be hired on a project-by-project basis, allowing you to grow your team and provide permanent staff with additional support when it’s needed most.

You can also leverage the support of a recruitment project provider to enable the ongoing support of legacy systems, granting you access to a scalable talent solution that allows you to respond to urgent or anticipated maintenance or refactoring needs. 

These legacy systems—such as financial mainframe software written in COBOL—often come with large codebases that require the support of experts familiar with the paradigms and syntax of that language, often not taught in the university or boot camp environment due to their age and specialised nature. 

Whether you require support with modernising and refactoring these systems, or you’re simply looking to maintain them and ensure their ongoing reliability, a recruitment project outsourcing provider can provide you with expert contractors who are familiar with these increasingly obscure languages, giving you the confidence to know you’ll be able to continue business activities well into the future. 

Using dedicated IT RPO recruitment services offers numerous benefits for organisations that are seeking contractors. These embedded solutions help overcome the challenge of searching for and managing IT contractors, ensuring compliance with all local employment laws. 

By utilising an RPO provider, companies can reduce time-to-hire, gain access to advanced technology, achieve enhanced scalability, make data-driven decisions, and minimise their exposure to legal risks. With their in-depth market knowledge and flexibility, these recruitment experts enable organisations to adapt to changing staffing needs and remain competitive in the IT industry.

Dedicated IT Recruitment Process Outsourcing and Talent Support

At Fruition, our expert consultants are committed to supporting businesses as they look to scale their IT operations, no matter how niche the requirements are. 

Our personalised recruitment project outsourcing solution, Orbit, has seen our clients—including Axa Insurance and Sky Betting & Gaming—secure talented contractors for large change projects and legacy system support, and has been designed to provide an effective and speedy way for organisations to outsource their hiring needs. Whether you’re searching for high-volume staffing or looking to make a new executive appointment, contact us to discover how we can help you.