Why Traditional Hiring Models Break During Hypergrowth

Usually, businesses attempt to carry on with their old, customary recruitment methods to meet the demand. They put up advertisements, wait for candidates to apply, and then a small HR crew conducts all the interviews. However, very soon, they get to know that these old recruitment practices are not working anymore. The system is getting burdened, the quality of recruits is declining, and the growth of the company is being hampered as it is not able to get the right people at the right speed.

Here's a breakdown of how traditional recruitment strategies can fail during hypergrowth and how to address this challenge.

Overload of Job Openings Leaves Your In-house Recruiter Helpless

Under routine conditions, an HR executive may be successfully working on three or four job openings concurrently. There is enough time to craft work descriptions, interact with potential employees, and conduct the final round of checks. However, when the company experiences hypergrowth, the very same HR executive may have to manage 40 or 50 vacancies. It is an entirely different story, and literally, there are not enough hours in a day to handle everything.

When the team is overloaded, they tend to cut corners. They no longer expect to find the "perfect" candidate, but they aim simply to find "someone who can start tomorrow." This results in substandard hiring decisions. Besides, a bad hire might cost a company a lot of money and also affect the team's spirit in a negative way. The traditional model of depending solely on a small internal team is not the one that can be ramped up ten times overnight.

Simple tools and outdated technology fail

Even many well-established companies rely on the simplest tools like spreadsheets and email folders to keep records of their job applicants. The approach may be alright when you have a dozen or two candidates. However, at times of hypergrowth, you may receive thousands of applications. No basic tool is designed for large data processing. Consequently, emails disappear, candidates do not receive responses, and, ultimately, the whole system becomes disorderly.

This is also the moment when you should consider RPO recruiting companies. These expert firms don't only use sophisticated technology but also automation to help hire. 

Hiring a big team What if you want to fix the hiring issue?

Some companies do exactly that and end up hiring a very large team of internal recruiters at breakneck speed to obtain results. However, it is a very unsafe step to take. Finding and training competent recruiters is what takes most of the time. By the time they are trained and ready to work, your business may have already lost its growth momentum. And once your hypergrowth period ends, what is the fate of the overgrown HR department that you no longer need? It results in pain-inducing layoffs.

Traditional models simply cannot provide the agility that a fast-moving company needs. You want a system that can expand when you grow and shrink when you no longer need it. On top of that, traditional recruitment agencies are incredibly expensive; paying a 20% fee on 200 new hires will completely drain your budget. 

The Quality vs. Speed Problem

Long ago, hiring was about finding the best person regardless of the time it took. In hypergrowth, the reality is that you need to find talent immediately. If your hiring is slow, the workload on your current employees increases, leading to severe burnout and fatigue. However, speeding up your process may lead to wrong hires.

It is hard for traditional methods to find the balance. Usually, they are slow because of traditional processes like organizing five rounds of interviews with a different manager each time. At the speed of today's market, the best candidates won't wait for the answer for two weeks. They will take a job with a competitor who is faster in making decisions.

Missing Out on Passive Talent

Most traditional hiring mostly depends on the "active" candidates, those who look through job boards and apply. While in hypergrowth, people with the right skills are so rare that they need to be actively searched for. The best candidates are usually already working somewhere and are not even paying attention to job ads. Most HR departments in the traditional way are not equipped in terms of time, skills, and knowledge to conduct "headhunting" for these people. They simply wait for résumés to be sent to them, which won't be sufficient when you are trying to change the world.

The Solution: A Modern Approach

Nowadays, if you want to keep up with the needs of your business in hypergrowth, you need to abandon the idea of human resources as a "task" and start considering it as "a supply chain." Just like goods in a supply chain, you need a steady flow of great people. More and more companies that succeed are now breaking away from the old model and choosing to work with recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) companies. Such a partnership provides a business with the best technology and a dedicated team of experts without the long-term costs of building the whole thing from scratch.

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Most Commonly Asked Questions

What does RPO mean?

RPO is short for Recruitment Process Outsourcing. This means that a firm engages an external recruitment expert to take care of part or all of their hiring process, acting as an extension of their own internal team.

How soon can the RPO model be implemented?

Professional RPO providers normally can allocate a dedicated team and help you find candidates in a matter of weeks, thus offering an advantage over an internal team in terms of go-to-market speed.

Is this service limited to tech sectors only?

Definitely not. Every business that is rapidly expanding, such as chain stores, logistics companies, and healthcare providers, can implement these scaling capabilities to enhance their operations rapidly.

What will happen if our workforce requirement decreases?

Modern hiring practices allow great flexibility. You can opt for a less intensive recruitment service, thereby ensuring you avoid spending money on recruiters that you do not require.

Does outsourcing tempt the recruitment of candidates that don't align with the company culture?

In fact, it quite often works in favor. Because partners are more specialized, they are focused more on ensuring that the candidates actually embody the value system of your company rather than solely identifying whether they possess the most suitable skillset on paper.