Is an On-Demand Recruiter Better Than a Traditional Recruiter? Find Out Here

Introduction: – Role of Recruitment and changing hiring ethos 

The talent landscape is changing at both ends of the spectrum – the organizational end and the people. At the employer end, organizations are looking to hire for an increasingly VUCA environment, valuing skills such as agility, resilience, and adaptability. At the employee end, changing people demographics and employee expectations are ushering in new needs, such as increased quest for agency, purpose and meaning. To bring these two ends of spectrum together calls for a new ethos and new approach to talent attraction, talent engagement, and talent retention. 

New-age talent needs 

Today’s workplace is no longer defined by “jobs”. Skills, purpose, meaning, are taking on new importance as the way employees look at “work” undergoes a fundamental shift. 

Roughly nine in 10 Gen Zs (86%) and millennials (89%) say having a sense of purpose in their work is very or somewhat important to their overall job satisfaction and well-being.

50% of Gen Zs and 43% of millennials have rejected an assignment or project based on their personal ethics or beliefs. And nearly as many (44% of Gen Zs and 40% of millennials) have turned down an employer.

Clearly, talent needs are changing fast. Plus, the skills shortage driven by a dearth of employable talent and the advent of AI poses critical challenges. Reimagining the way organizations approach the labour market has taken on a new sense of urgency. Prioritizing a skills-first approach instead of the traditional reliance on prior job title and degree means businesses can have a larger and much more wide and diverse talent pool to choose from.

Expanding the talent search to include workers with relevant skills (“skills-first talent pool”) led on average to a 9.4x increase in eligible workers across all jobs.

To hire such diverse talent from a multitude of sources requires specialized recruitment skills. Here comes the role of the modern day recruiter. Because, recruiting is set to build the skills- based workforce of the future. Organizations must therefore look at revamping the talent acquisition or recruitment function, to make it more future ready. 

Traditional Recruitment : What it is? 

Traditional recruitment is the process of identifying, finding, attracting, engaging, interviewing, selections, hiring and onboarding the right talent. It includes several processes along the recruitment funnel, namely, talent sourcing, talent search, talent shortlisting, and talent selection, hiring decision and onboarding. Traditional recruitment typically involves companies having an inhouse talent acquisition function or team of recruiters who carry out all hiring activities. Another input in traditional recruitment also sometimes comes from talent acquisition consultants or recruitment consulting firms, who act as outsourced experts to work on a company’s hiring needs. Both these approaches work on a static model i.e. a fixed number of recruiters are engaged for a fixed hiring capacity. 

The challenge in traditional recruitment is the lack of dynamism, both in process, and mindset.

Traditional TA professionals typically work with regular talent pools, and may not have the access to specific skilled or “difficult to find” niche talent, such as senior level or CXO level talent. Even if they do have access, they may come at a very high cost in a traditional hiring format. The hiring organization may even require full time capacity of such niche talent, but there is no option to hire on a needs basis. Because of the lack of access to diverse talent, the DEI outlook may be compromised. Another challenge is the traditional approach of talent assessment and talent selection may not be contemporary, directly impacting the efficiency and effectiveness of hiring. For example, traditional recruiters may not be able to utilize AI to the fullest to optimize the talent search and talent screening process. Also, recruitment is an operationally heavy function, and organizations may find themselves spending a lot of resources on labour management aspects like hiring logistics, scheduling, legal and compliance adherences, and so on. While outsourcing hiring to TA consultants may address some of these challenges and offer a more holistic solution, they often come with high costs and fixed approaches.

Traditional recruiting may thus, sometimes hamper organizations from embracing the skills-first hiring ethos in true totality, hampering their hiring metrics, and diminishing their talent ROI.  

 On demand recruitment : What it is and how it works? 

The alternative is on demand recruitment. It is an agile recruitment model that helps businesses find the right talent at the right time in the right format, on a needs basis. This means companies can hire a contract recruiter on demand , for how long they need, in whatever capacity they need, as per their business requirements. An on demand recruiter is available in many types of flexible work formats – full time, part time, project based consultants, strategic talent advisors, freelancers, in person or virtual or hybrid, and so on. The company outlines the hiring needs and accordingly hires an on demand recruiter or puts together an on demand TA team to work on these hiring needs, which may be full time hiring, part time hiring or flexible hiring. Thus, having an on demand recruiter helps build TA capability and scale it up without long term commitments. 

An on demand recruiter can be hired by availing the services of an on demand recruiting service (ODRS) provider – a specialist in aggregating and hiring on demand recruiters for organizations. Such ODRS often utilize On Demand Workforce Platforms

Key differences and what should you opt for: On demand Recruiter vs. Traditional Recruiter

The choice of traditional recruiter versus on demand recruiter depends on the business need. Businesses who are stable and steady may opt for traditional recruitment strategy and traditional recruiters.  For businesses who are in a state of high dynamism, business uncertainty, or cost pressures, on demand hiring makes more sense, operationally and financially. Hiring an on demand recruiter presents the following advantages: 

• Setting up talent acquisition capability from scratch
• Enhancing the current recruitment capability
• Adapt to changing business scenarios and talent needs
• Fast ramp ups and ramp downs without long term commitments, such as building of rapid response teams 
• Cost benefits due to needs based hiring and commercials
• Leverage high skilled recruiters with hiring expertise in specific domains, industries and skill niches
• Build a diverse workforce
• Integrate well with any existing talent acquisition team and talent acquisition processes. 

…and many more

Given the rampant macroeconomic dynamism in today’s world, on demand recruitment can add value to many organizations, not only for today, but for the long term. 

However, it is important to note that to balance the need for agility with stability, sometimes, a blended workforce strategy may come handy for building recruitment teams. This involves a few core recruiters for regular hiring, coupled with a few on demand recruiters for niche hiring.

Solvecube Way of On Demand Recruiter Services

Solvecube’s Recruiter on Demand (RoD) Service is the go to service to hire on demand recruiters. Companies can choose from over 2250 experienced recruiting professionals to work exclusively on their hiring needs. These RoDs are equipped to hire globally across domains and industries, across levels, and for niche and “hard to find” skills. To offer maximise flexibility and agility, companies can choose RoDs from any formats – full time, part time, project based, for sporadic hiring, virtual or in person, and many more. Solvecube RoDs are skilled to do a variety of hiring – service hiring, part time hiring, rapid hiring (setting up of Ninja Teams), and needs based hiring of on demand talent such as Experts on Demand or Strategic Growth Partners. 

The way to avail Solvecube’s RoD service is to first consult with Solvecube’s talent leaders. We understand your business strategy, talent strategy and recommend the best talent acquisition strategy to meet your talent needs. A two-fold approach smoothens the RoD contracting process for you:

• Machine Intelligence: We enable access to Solvecube’s state of the art AI-powered

dynamically aggregated talent platform to help you search for the RoDs of your 

choice. AI-enabled Sourcing-Shortlisting-Selection, and targeted Rank-Ordered 

Shortlisting (based on various factors like skill-role-location-culture) helps you arrive 

at your RoD of choice quickly, easily and accurately.

• Human Intelligence: We also assist you in this RoD selection process by assigning

a Relationship Manager, who helps you identify your “best fit” RoD by handholding

you through platform usage and by providing real, human hand holding throughout

the RoD hiring process. 

Once the RoD is selected, a contract is signed through the Solvecube platform with clear SoW, performance metrics and payment schedules. The RoD commences work and delivers on the hiring needs. Any payments, contracting changes, logistical tasks are carried out on Solvecube platform itself, making talent management of the RoD a breeze for you. 

With Solvecube RoD you can basically hire any way you want with no limiting restrictions !

Final Words…

The final choice between traditional recruiters versus on demand recruiters is a business decision. CXOs need to assess the talent strategy in alignment with the business strategy, and arrive at what kind of TA team works best for business sense. 

The average cost per hire is $4,683, and this can go up to $28329.

The Talent Acquisition function thus, has the power to drive strategic advantage, or it can go the other way and become an expensive cost function. Hence the talent acquisition strategy should be the prerogative of not just the CHRO, but the CEO as well.