Best Practices to Make Your Outsourcing Partnership a Game Changer

TRANSCRIPT

Bryan Tweed: Welcome everybody to the three o'clock Eastern session. I can see that a few more folks are starting to climb into the meeting. So we'll give it one more moment and then we'll go ahead and get started. Thank everybody for coming to the session today.

Bryan Tweed: I'm going to go ahead and publish a quick poll just as kind of an icebreaker. So I'll push this out to everybody now.

Bryan Tweed: And the question is, have you ever used an outsourcing partner before? And so, you I'll monitor this periodically, but if you can please vote as you're joining into the session, that would be. Everything is anonymous here, so I don't necessarily know your answers, but at least it'll give me a sense of what we're working with here today.

Bryan Tweed: And then it turns out just housekeeping notes. Feel free to ask questions throughout the session. I'll be manning the Q/A box here. Certainly if you have questions that are more specific to the IMS group, which is who I'm with, I'm more than happy to have you come by the booth, post the meeting and answer any specific questions you have.

Bryan Tweed: So if you could please share some questions that are more about your general outsourcing best practices or questions that you might have. But again, thank you all for joining the session today. We're calling this best practice to make your outsourcing partnership a game changer. And while I know that outsourcing isn't necessarily a sexy of it as a topic as maybe, you know, automation and some of the things that are wonderful topics and very impactful to the staffing industry in your businesses.

Bryan Tweed: I'm sure, but I happen to think, and I'm slightly biased, that outsourcing can be an absolute game changer to, to your staffing business. I'm somebody that is the story you know, right. You know, that's proof of that. So, again, excited to go through what I believe were just the best practices from my own experience, but also certainly.

Bryan Tweed: What we see with IMS's customers threats. So moving on as you can see, this was the photo of me from many moons ago, but I'm Brian Tweed. I serve as the Senior Vice President of sales, the key accounts for IMS group. I have over 15 years of experience in the staffing industry and I was one of these strange, odd people that always wanted to be a recruiter and didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into.

Bryan Tweed: In 2006 when I got into the industry, but I've held roles anywhere from being an executive recruiter. A regional recruiting manager, a national account manager over large enterprise accounts. And for the last eight years, I've been significantly involved with outsourcing partners. And so, hopefully I provide a shadow of credibility in this meeting and that I've been across the aisle in your shoes.

Bryan Tweed: As I was an outsourcing buyer of six years at multiple organizations, I was the director of alternative delivery and channel partnership at Volt workforce solutions, a large global staffing firm, as well as a Chicago land smaller IT boutique IT staffing firm called Type Research. Before I joined IMS in the spring of 2020.

Bryan Tweed: So, you know, again, I've had. The trepidations and uncertainty many years ago about engaging an outsourcing partner. But you know, I've found that again, it can be a very fruitful experience. One that's really shaped my career and while not, everyone's going to actually become the sales leader for an outsourcing organization.

Bryan Tweed: The goal here is to really utilize some of these best practices and tools to get a lot more return on your investment in and outsourcing partnership. My, my background obviously lends itself to more of a delivery perspective. And so my role is to really engage our staffing clients, obviously from a sales standpoint, but continued that relationship thereafter and ensured that you all don't hit the landmines.

Bryan Tweed: And some of those you know, bombs that may come along the way. So, as we go back to the screen here, my apologies.

Bryan Tweed: Moving on. Just a little bit about IMS, kind of the initial shameless plug. And then we'll dive into the presentation. IMS is a large global outsourcing organization. It's headquartered in Ahmedabad, India. We have multiple delivery centers throughout the globe. Two in India when an Ahmedabad obviously our headquarters and then another location in Jaipur, fairly close to Noida.

Bryan Tweed: We've got over a 1,950 folks that actually reside in India that are either billable or support staff and leadership for IMS in our global recruitment and back office outsourcing operations. Then we just opened up last spring, a location in Manila in the Philippines. We provide outsourcing services across the staffing spectrum.

Bryan Tweed: That is our sole and primary buyer of our services and a client target of ours. People possible is our flagship recruitment process, outsourcing entity. But as you can see, we also have outsourced accounting support within our IMS decimal brand, as well as branded talent community and direct sourcing solutions for the MSP market and our outsource property preservation group called IMS datawise.

Bryan Tweed: And, you know, ultimately what I want you to know.

Bryan Tweed: Only what are the best practices from an outsourcing engagement. But certainly if you have interest in our services, come on by the booth, after this meeting and can talk shop and discuss how we could potentially support your needs, but outside of IMS, there's many great outsourcing organizations that I strongly recommend that you, you partner with and evaluate as you're looking to continue to grow your staffing.

Bryan Tweed: So, to get to the meat of the presentation, how can your staffing business become a game changer? And I think right now we're all experiencing this, the visual here of an anchor of all this wreck, these requisitions and the supply and demand challenge of recruiting and talent that we're seeing.

Bryan Tweed: Right. In this global economic landscape, where we had this huge kind of confluence of the global pandemic and then this huge resurgence of talent needs, but the talent networks that we're working with don't have a lot of the skills or are becoming increasingly more expensive to employ. And so there's all of these factors that are impacting.

Bryan Tweed: I know your staff and businesses, you know, day in and day out. Only accelerating as we get into 2022. And so I understand that burden that you're probably all feeling. And I think again, outsourcing would be a way to mitigate some of those challenges and also help you pivot with the increasing, evolving staffing world.

Bryan Tweed: But first and foremost, I know I see here in the polls here that, you know, many of you have already engaged in outsourcing and you're using a partner, which is great. But for those that are outsourced, or maybe not have as positive an experience in the past, You know, certainly cost savings is a big reason and a value proposition.

Bryan Tweed: I think that's apparent from an outsourcing standpoint, but I think, you know, why do I hear that Staffing businesses engage with IMS or other outsourcers and obviously.

Bryan Tweed: Your bottom line. It could be that you know, you're looking to bolster up your accounting and, you know, and ultimately sell the business right. Becoming more. Profitable and financial solvent for a sale. It could be that you, again, have an overload of client requisitions that you can't support, or that you're spending too much money in supporting right now with your existing recruitment or support staff.

Bryan Tweed: And now, how can you transition that to an outsourcing group that can allow your local staff to focus on truth. Driving relationships with your clients and improving their productivity. Again, I think what's incredible about the recruiting industry in that recruiting function is that nearly 60% of what recruiters do is actually not engaged directly with candidates who are actually performing revenue producing functions.

Bryan Tweed: And so outsourcing could be a great way. To really maximize the time that you're recruiting staff and sales staff are engaging with your clients, engaging with candidates, but then in the background that work is still getting done. And so it's really refocusing those core activities to, for your business.

Bryan Tweed: So again, I'm not here to say I'll replace your local recruiters without sourced offshore recruiters. It's more about. Reallocating that spend in that, that, that function to make your business more profitable and really purposeful and focused. And I see it as a competitive advantage, you know, when I was on more of the sales and recruiting.

Bryan Tweed: Working for the staffing company. I felt that I had a thousand recruiters in my back pocket. So I didn't have to say no to opportunities that came across our way that maybe I wasn't going to get the adoption from local brokerage to support, or maybe the dollars didn't make sense for us to engage, but we utilize an outsourcing partner or partners.

Bryan Tweed: To then be able to navigate that and leverage them for business. That wasn't either core to what we do or didn't make sense for our local teams to support. And so, to me, that's a real advantage. If you're a sales person attending this meeting about what you could take to market, knowing that you. You know, a partner in an IMS or others that can help you really grow and sustain and support your business, no matter the type of opportunity that comes your way.

Bryan Tweed: And then lastly, when I asked C level staffing executives about why they outsource, so where they see the value at first, I would think it would be that cost savings or some of that profitability, but particularly right now, In this recruiting landscape, it is that agility, the ability to Bob and weave and be able to scale up or down your recruiting or back office teams as your demand increases or diminishes over time.

Bryan Tweed: If you have a huge project that you need to scale up, you don't have. The time, you know, to afford them takes eight months to bring in a group of recruiters, get them trimmed up and rented. It'd be profitable. Whereas an outsourcing partner could potentially do that in eight days. And so again, that ability to sustain growth, to have a partner in your back pocket to really help, and to continue to cultivate your recruiting teams without you having to really invest that much from training.

Bryan Tweed: And hiring perspective, you can focus on your core business and drive in relationships with your clients. While an outsourcing partner can be that recruiting and back-office engine that really helps your business continue to churn as you grow along the way.

Bryan Tweed: And so assuming that you'd want to move forward without sourcing, and many of you already do, it's not necessarily if you outsource, but it too. Right. And obviously I'm biased from an IMS standpoint, but I've leveraged several outsourcing providers along the way in my career. And they all have their positives and weaknesses and IMS is no different.

Bryan Tweed: And so it's really about who's the right partner for you. And so as you're going through the selection process, I strongly encourage you all day to interview three to five different providers and different markets or locations to really have a good comprehension, understanding that you're bringing on the right partner.

Bryan Tweed: And, you know, as I say, here in the presentation, selecting the right partners, it may seem counterintuitive. But I actually encourage you all to let multiple partners as you're starting or continuing that evolution of an outsourcing partnership for your business. One is that you don't necessarily want to have all your eggs in that one basket in the instance that there's a significance.

Bryan Tweed: You know, earth shattering type of typhoon or outbreak. You know, obviously this pandemic has taught us a lot about having contingency plans. And so, you know, having multiple vendors and partners that you can work with, certainly alleviates a lot of your risk and mitigates some of those challenges along the way.

Bryan Tweed: But secondly, Again, not every partner is the best at everything else. And so, if you support multiple lines of business, it certainly makes sense to have multiple partners that specialize so that you get really the best of all those worlds and optimize performance. I think what you want to obviously understand is what do you expect from the partnership?

Bryan Tweed: What does that return on investment? Look like if your recruiters are X percentage of ROI now, where do you need an outsource in recruiting our partnership to be for it, to make sense for your business? You know, secondly, you know, what is the outsource provider's leadership structure? Where are they based out of?

Bryan Tweed: Did they have a support mechanism? You know, they have a QA team. What is the. Infrastructure, like from a technology standpoint, what all those factors come into play. And so it's not just about the recruiting output. It's also some of the safeguards and the leadership support in the background.

Bryan Tweed: That's going to really determine if a partner is going to be successful for reporting or not. You know, again, you know, what geographies do they support again? IMS. Primarily supports the US and Canada as well as the UK and APAC, but we certainly don't have a presence in some markets. And so I think it's really understanding how many recruiters, what percentage of resources support certain markets, and how long they'd been doing so.

Bryan Tweed: So what industry markets that they specialize in. All those factors are going to be critical as you're vetting. It's not just sometimes about the cost. It's that expertise, geographical exposure and experience is going to really drive that ROI for you. You know, lastly, how do they manage performance?

Bryan Tweed: Are there certain triggers in terms of performance improvement plans or certain SLA or KPI expectations that they can expect? And if someone is absent or not meeting those expectations, how can you partner together to alleviate that? And either coach somebody up or coach somebody. And I mentioned data security.

Bryan Tweed: You know, it's becoming increasingly more of a challenge as you're likely to learn throughout this week at the World Staffing Summit is just how important having your data secure is and what measure certifications do the help those outsourcing businesses have? Certainly those like IMS they're a little bit larger and scale and have significant, you know, business across the globe.

Bryan Tweed: We have really strong data security. Certifications and protocols that we put in place and many other outsourcing firms do as well. So make sure that you're asking that as you're going through the selection process. And then lastly, you know, just like we saw over the last 6 to 12 months with the recruiting landscape.

Bryan Tweed: You know, increasing significantly in the demand, now, being at a high peak that I've ever seen over the last 16 years, what is the, you know, an outsourcing partners ability to scale, how do they train? How do they cultivate the relationship? What does their management structure look like as you increase your investment, a number of resources.

Bryan Tweed: So all those factors come into play as you evaluate. And so I don't encourage you to just simply select a provider based on the cost. You know, certainly understand. How they can support your business and where their strengths and weaknesses are. And if you have a partner that says they can do everything and that they have no weaknesses, I would maybe take a step back and make sure that you're not getting wooed.

Bryan Tweed: But by a partner that isn't you know, being honest about themselves and being transparent about what their specialties and niches are.

Bryan Tweed: And then to me, the critical nature of an outsourcing partnership does that, that first 90 day experience. And I usually work with our clients on a 30, 60, 90 day plan. And I developed this slide actually, when I first joined IMS and I like alliteration. So to me, it really comes down to the three C of a successful implementation.

Bryan Tweed: And that's having clarity, commitment and consistency. Not only from the outsourcing provider, but certainly from the staffing firm. And you may be thinking, well, Brian. That sounds like a lot of work. Why am I outsourcing if it's going to take all this work? And it's like, well, because when you do it and you do it well, you know, you can have 800, 900, you know, you know, a thousand percent ROI with a lot of the resources, but it does take a lot of engagement and collaboration in those first 90 days to really set the partnership off on the right runway.

Bryan Tweed: First you need to understand and align with your partner, what your purpose of the partnership is. If it's just to save money you know, I questioned a little bit about what those intentions are, but if you're looking to have a cost savings and then reallocate that to maybe build up your technology stack or to hire more salespeople, whatever it is, I think it's important for you to acknowledge what those pain points are and really what you're looking to get out of the partnership and the more that you and your outsourcing.

Bryan Tweed: Providers understand that then you can start to really map out goals and milestones and expectations. So then truly evaluate if you aren't getting an ROI on that partnership. You know, secondly, establishing that, that key stakeholder to me, that's a minimum barrier to entry. If I feel, you know, and I've been an executive stakeholder in the past that if I don't feel that we have buy-in or a true adoption of this type of partnership, It doesn't matter what else you do.

Bryan Tweed: It's really prime for failure at that point. And so it doesn't mean that this key stakeholder executive in your staffing firm is going to need the person managing it day to day. But somebody that's championing the initiative that is going to work to get buy in internally. With their staff and constituents, they're going to be really tactically working with the outsourcing provider day in and day out.

Bryan Tweed: And someone that, that ultimately is likely signing the checks for the partnership and is an escalation point, you know, in the partnership if need be. And some of you're going to hear it. Presentation is collaboration, often outsourcing is not a scenario where you give someone the keys, do an MSP or VMS or a client and say, okay, we'll touch base in 30 days and see how it's going.

Bryan Tweed: You know, this is really that time you think of when a baby's first born, right? And, you know, having that initial touch point and that engagement and scheduling, and really over-emphasizing that communication perhaps sometimes to a fault is going to be critical to strengthening that relationship long term.

Bryan Tweed: I believe that there does need to be some type of dedicated in-house champion that is managing the relationship day to day. Typically appear like our operations process managers that we have with an IMS and, you know, similar our competitors have those folks as well. So again, not necessarily.

Bryan Tweed: Several recruiters that are managing the partnership or recruiters or resources, account managers that are managing individual people. But it's always good to have a centralized orbit that the outsourcing partnerships kind of funnels around so that you know, there's a consistent message to what the outsource provider and those recruiters or resources are hearing.

Bryan Tweed: And again, there's someone accountable for that. You know, certainly you want to be realistic. Right. And I, to me, that's where I typically put my hand up with potential prospects or our clients that if you expect results in three weeks after a partnership and a significant ROI there, then I didn't do my job of setting the right expectation.

Bryan Tweed: It simply takes three to six months for a partnership like this to really get off the ground and seeing significant profitability. And that's really no different than what you would expect from a staff member that you would hire locally in the States and in Canada or wherever you may be sitting.

Bryan Tweed: And so, I, again, You know, these types of partnerships take a little bit of time. There's a little bit of jocking and kind of understanding where everybody is going to play within that partnership. And I think it's also understanding that particularly outsource recruiters and resources in India, Manila and across the globe are likely not going to have the same skill sets and performance capabilities of your local recruiters.

Bryan Tweed: And that's also why they typically come at a significant cost basis. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect them to perform and continue to grow and prosper and develop really good skills overall, but again, level sending that and understanding that there's a reason why certain clients, certain accounts are going to be more appropriate for an outsourcing type of initiative, rather than a one of your local headhunters or recruiters.

Bryan Tweed: One thing that's really important again, is developing what that project scope looks like. Having a true implementation plan that you can methodically work through with your outsourcing partner to ensure that everyone turns their keys. In terms of setting up the partnership who has access as email set up, what are the standard operating procedures or templates created?

Bryan Tweed: You know, what, what is going to be that communicating cadence that we have. All those things are going to be important to really map out, put it on paper instead of communicating it just in a slack or a team or in a, you SMS text, put it on paper, get everybody to review it, sign off on it together and actually make it part of your contract.

Bryan Tweed: And I think the more that you can solidify what that scope is, what the expectations are for the partnership everybody's aware, and then there's a lot less potential finger-pointing or challenges.

Bryan Tweed: Creating opportunities to integrate, I think is going to be really key and IMS I'm sure like many others, we don't require technology integration necessarily in that sense.

Bryan Tweed: But I always believed when I was managing outsourcing teams that I wanted them to have the same experience as a recruiter within a Volt or a Cyber Searcher, wherever, and have them feel like they were sitting right next to me in my training, or I was managing them. You know, just like any other recruiter, they just happened to be half a world away.

Bryan Tweed: And a lot of that comes through the integration from a technology stack and process standpoint, while IMS can certainly you know, develop and customize a solution outside of your existing process, you've already trained all your staff to have a certain recruiting workflow. Why. You're reinvent the wheel when you already have two hands on it.

Bryan Tweed: And so again, the more that outsourcing firms can integrate into your existing processes, take the training and learnings that you've already developed, that branding, that candidate and client experience that you've worked so hard to create all these years. You know, by them learning that it's really going to strengthen their understanding and knowledge of your company, but you're also your clients and then your customers and your client are going to add the same type of flawed experience matter.

Bryan Tweed: Who's reaching out. And then finally stick to the plan. If things don't work for the first couple of weeks, don't change course too quickly. Sometimes outsourcing partnerships can be a little hasty. And so I would encourage you to stay, to stick to the plan, don't deviate from it and trust the process as they would say.

Bryan Tweed: And really evaluate probably after every 90 days or so of what the status of the partnership is. And if there does need to be any course correction, it's done. So based on data, Feedback and having a unified what we call alignment, you know, from both the staffing client, as well as the outsourcing provider.

Bryan Tweed: So those are just general best practices for those first 90 days and an implementation, what I call the hypercare, but even going beyond that, I think there's really five things that if there's takeaways from today's meeting, that I want to continue to reinforce about an outsourcing partnership. And one is to really embrace that constant communication cadence, right?

Bryan Tweed: Establishing daily, weekly, and monthly goals and really meet. Develop a plan towards those each and every day, every week and every month. So for example, When I've managed outsourcing teams in the past, I had a daily stand-up call both with our internal local staff, as well as the outsourcing group.

Bryan Tweed: They were integrated together and we would talk about priorities and what to focus on and where we were challenging. Get the feedback from all the recruiters. Share best practices. You know, if you're already doing that, I would encourage you just simply to integrate the outsourcing teams. Does it make sense for that?

Bryan Tweed: But just dabbing weekly goals and monthly expectations for the group, and then start to really chart each and every one of those meetings to where you stand. I think it's important to have them beating up the minutes, having somebody, either at the outsourcing group or somebody within your staffing group.

Bryan Tweed: You take stock, take down notes and actually push that out to all the main stakeholders so that everybody knows, you know, what the status of the partnership is. What's working? What's not, and all of that's built around having continuous communication throughout the partnership. And I joked a little bit about slack and Microsoft teams and zoom and others that, that again.

Bryan Tweed: One of the great things about this pandemic has been that we've become much more comfortable about engaging in these various technology work streams. And I only encourage you to integrate your outsourcing team into that. It makes the ease of communication very quick. You can streamline it, and you're not necessarily waiting on that phone tag game or email to manage a lot of those very tactical quick cutting things, part of your business.

Bryan Tweed: And you know, that's where I think the outsource needs outsourcing teams can be really impactful. You know, lastly again, really empowering those internal sourcing teams to have specific scheduled touch points. A lot of times when we're seeing challenges between a staffing client and an outsourcing provider, is that there's just not a lot of that direct communication, there's expectations along the way that weren't communicated or just not followed up on on a continuous basis.

Bryan Tweed: And so I'll just say, well, okay, well, do you have a specific time every week that you've got dedicated to call that account manager or the call that recruiter? And if the answer's no. Then that's the real, the first step in repairing some of that relationship and building trust. And again, I think the wonderful thing about having that constant communication is that you do have the ability to engage that, that global workforce you know, an IMS, not everybody's working in a traditional nine to five schedule, but if you can stagger shifts and you can engage a multiple country workforce to your benefit, I think it gives you a lot of freedom for your business.

Bryan Tweed: So again, communicate, communicate and communicate is best you can.

Bryan Tweed: Next is again, utilizing more of an insourcing mindset. You know, I've talked about how developing and growing a relationship with an outsourcing provider is hard and that's because it is. But I think the more that you feel them as not even just an extension of your business, but that they are your business.

Bryan Tweed: Again, most outsourcing providers are branding you in the. As your business, they are speaking on behalf of your business to candidates and potentially even clients. And those that are going to be telling 10 of their friends that they have a good or bad experience. And so which, you know, again, it's, that's why that implementation phase is so critical, but investing in process training and team building from jump street is so critical.

Bryan Tweed: As we talked about integrating that outsourcing team with their internal technology if possible is critical. And then, you know, the goal of outsourcing is always to have continuity in that candidate and client experience. As soon as that process breaks, then your candidates are gonna, you're gonna feel that.

Bryan Tweed: And you're going to get that feedback from your candidate and your clients. You know, really having more of an insourcing versus outsourcing mindset, are these going to lead to a lot of those potential challenges. And again, it's not going to come without its headaches and its heartaches, but the more time that's invested in really training that process and going through the sales pitch of your business for the, your new outsource recruiter is and giving them the nuts and bolts of every client that you support before you even implement, deploy the recruiters in the market.

Bryan Tweed: That time spent initially is going to really pay dividends three to six, you know, X amount of years going. And what's nice is that as the outsourcing provider learns all these things and they are integrated into the business, that's less time than you have to spend training new people. If there's turnover, then the outsourcing provider, IMS, for example, we actually then perform on the job training and process training ourselves because we know that our client's business so well, so that doesn't pull your internal training team that doesn't pull your recruiting, our account managers as new staff are added.

Bryan Tweed: That kind of business as usual continues to flow. And that's also, again, keeping your teams focused on what's going to drive your business profitability and relationships, and not more than Monday back office and training things that really become a burden and the suck of your internal resources.

Bryan Tweed: Number three, again, is like, we've talked about leveraging outsourcing to focus on kind of core business and revenue producing functions. This is just a a small list of some of the things that IMS and many outsource providers do on behalf of staffing firms, but certainly not limited.

Bryan Tweed: Marketing services again, there is such a focus on branding and engaging candidates in the market right now. Most candidates make seven to nine different trips to either a website or to social media before they even submit their resume or make a buying decision as a candidate. And so having your brand out there is very critical, but I know right now we're all going so fast and furious that marketing may not even be a big part of what you all do as a staffing firm.

Bryan Tweed: And so if it's not you know, IMS and other companies, you know, in the outsourcing space can certainly support that. And while sales may not be the biggest focus right now you know, utilizing a very regimented. Schematics lead generation and inside sales support process can be a great way for you to keep your internal sales staff really focused on engaging, just on meetings and going out and kissing babies and, you know, shaking hands and the outsourcing provider can be pushing up messaging automatically responding to initial inbound inquiries, engaging candidates that may be dormant in your database.

Bryan Tweed: All those things can really impact your business as your sales staff continues to cultivate relationships locally. Certainly if I think about the conundrum of MSP VMS recruiting right now, which is continuing to become more and more pervasive as technology improves a lot of enterprises organizations, you know, $500 million and above are leveraging technology rather than engaging directly with their contingent workforce partners. And so it becomes, again, a race between quality speed and pricing and Candidately, most of those qualities to third on the total pole there. And so I think leveraging an outsourcing group that can focus either on those low margin and or high volume businesses where you've got a lot of competition is a great way to initially start an outsource in a relationship.

Bryan Tweed: It doesn't mean it's just handing them the keys and moving on, but it's again, giving them the tools to be successful in this program. And then you really determining, okay. Is this MSP, VMS program? Something that I can make profitable in the short and the long term or potentially. Is this something that I can re-engage with my local staff on?

Bryan Tweed: If it appears to be something that's more viable now that there's getting support. So again, if you're only submitting against 70% of your requisitions, but you can get that extra coverage of 30% with only 10% additional cost that can be really impactful to your business, and also create more adoption with your local staff to perpetuate that type of strategy and really grow your.

Bryan Tweed: IMS and other providers also provide VMS coordination, administrative onboarding support. So again, as a lot of these processes become more automated or technology centric that becomes much more of a manual kind of task for your recruiters and account managers to, to facilitate that again, may not be the best use of their time.

Bryan Tweed: And so outsourcing providers can oftentimes manage to communicate back and forth effectively with the MSP and the prescreening credentialing providers that you're partnering with to put your people to work. And just another function that can keep your office humming while you're engaging with your client.

Bryan Tweed: We've seen a huge uptake obviously with the pandemic the last 18, 24 months or so with healthcare worker credentialing you know, right now that the war for nursing and physician talent is so incredible. You know, that. Not only identifying re resources and cans that want to do the work, but then getting them credentialed to that.

Bryan Tweed: They can actually go onsite and become billable is a huge task. And we've seen with a lot of our clients our ability to really, you know, find and obtain all that credentialing information, audit it and get it to market for our clients. One freezer. Our clients, you know, healthcare recruiters and keep them focusing on engaging with candidates and building relationships, but two is able to really shorten and siphon that time to fill so that you can not only gain the opportunity, but get revenue producing quicker from a billing standpoint.

Bryan Tweed: And then lastly You know, the opportunity to continue to gauge in more of a total workforce solution environment is going to be critical as you go forward.

Bryan Tweed: Number two is I say the gamification of anything and everything. Particularly with the cultures in India and the Philippines, which I've primarily leveraged in my career. Everything is about gamification and competition. And not even from a monetary standpoint. A lot of it is just centered around awards recognition.

Bryan Tweed: And so I kind craft this as, you know, make recruiting fun again. It's not an easy job and it's one that becomes tireless, you know, effort. And so I think the more that you can keep recruiters on their toes, your salespeople on their toes and making it fun the better. And I know a lot of outsourcing providers who already have their own internal.

Bryan Tweed: Kind of gamification mechanisms that are wonderful. And I encourage you to ask about them as you're going through your vetting process or as you continue relationships without sorting between two providers. We try to customize it for our customers, too. I used to do recruiting bingo every month, and we would change the parameters of the bingo sheet.

Bryan Tweed: And so that was something that was fun. We would do a recruiter of the month and we would actually send them or give them a picture of a big check, you know, like can happy Gilmore with their name on it. So, again, there's just things that the team can focus on and have fun with each and every day because recruiting isn't easy, but it can still be fun.

Bryan Tweed: A lot of this is about having daily engagement, focusing on specific goals and completion. And again, not so much on very long-term forward looking initiatives. So I don't typically recommend that daily SLA in terms of submissions, but it may be around number of calls or engaging with the candidates, you know, whatever you feel is appropriate for your business, but having weaknesses and middle goals is pretty common within our client base.

Bryan Tweed: And also having margin goals every month or every quarter is certainly something that we see. It could be the number of resumes, you know, sourced, if it's more of a non-voice sourcing activity. So again, Having certain daily goals, even if it's not your down-funnel output that the team can focus on and gain suffocate, that is critical.

Bryan Tweed: I would make it visual as you have daily goals, weekly, monthly. I always kinda think of it like a charity drive, right? Where the, you know, every time money. Yeah. Yeah, itchy or submittal activities achieved that kind of goes up the thermometer. You know, that's something I see really work and the more you can make it visual within your internal and your outsourcing provider teams then you, that can really galvanize them.

Bryan Tweed: And everyone's talking about everybody's messaging on it. You can do an award ceremony every month, quick, 5, 10 minutes, you know, and that can really mean a lot to everybody. But I also think there's an opportunity to have a career path within your outsourcing partnership to be very candid.

Bryan Tweed: Some of the challenges that I've had with outsourcing partners, IMS included over the years, is that I would have a great recruiter or resource that eventually did so, that they got promoted within the outsourcing organization, but they left the team. And so I think establishing a career path that they can grow within your organization as they hit certain milestones, certain number of hires, a certain number of margins, whatever.

Bryan Tweed: Having that very transparent, you know, giving them the lay of the lane and that runway as you start can really help retain them within your organization, but also you know, have that continuity that I found to be really important for a long-term successful outsourcing partnership. As I mentioned, you know, the awards and recognition, they mean the world to these resources across the globe.

Bryan Tweed: I'll never forget my first award ceremony with IMS where a thousand people were on a video call. And you know, a lot of them dispersed around the country in the world because of the COVID pandemic, but to see the faces of pride when they got an award. And we may not even think of you that important or significant, but that achievement and that, that acknowledgement from their local peers and their leadership really does mean the world.

Bryan Tweed: So anytime you can show that acknowledgement and thank them for what they're doing on behalf of your business is really gonna help build, you build that trust in the relationship.

Bryan Tweed: And then lastly, you know, if I, if there's a takeaway here, if there's anything we've learned, the last 20, 24 months is humanize all that you do. And while it is an outsourcing partnership may not feel exactly like hiring somebody internally within your organization. I find the clients that we have, the experience that I've had as a customer, the more that I treated them, like anybody else, like the remind, like they are, you know, they are a human they are a person and they're not just, you know, a statistic or KPI benchmark, but the more that you can integrate them into your life and into your, you know, your company and treating them like, like the people that they are. I think you're really going to get a lot back from them. You're going to build that trust and it's only going to help improve the partnership.

Bryan Tweed: You know, these last couple of years have been really tough, but if there's any, if there's any takeaway and just, maybe this was, might've been all worth it. If we all think about this a little bit more as we go forward. So, hopefully this has helped it'd be an informative, you know, last 40 minutes or so of a topic.

Bryan Tweed: I encourage you all to come by the IMS group booth and learn about our recruitment, our kind of middle office and back office accounting services that we provide. I'm more than happy to conduct sessions directly reschedule something throughout. But before we jump off, I do know there's some questions that have come up on the chat.

Bryan Tweed: So I'm going to kind of run through those here really quick. One of them is to partner with IMS. Is there a minimum number of requisitions to take on? Does the requisition need to be equal or more than a certain value? Now again, I could speak on behalf of IMS just briefly, but I would say overall that's a great question to ask the provider.

Bryan Tweed: We see typically three to five requisitions per week per recruiter. But that's not a hard and fast rule. I think that's where understanding the types of skill sets, what your expectations are of your internal recruiters and how that could compare to the outsourcing staff. But I think the best outsourcing providers are going to ask them more questions of you and that question to be able to best answer that.

Bryan Tweed: But overall you know what you'll want. To align on is okay. If I had X number of recruiters, how many requisitions is appropriate for me to send out during the week? And, you know, is there a certain minimum value or minimum pay rate, you know, that is attributed to that. And when I am asked, I really know, but at the same time, every outsourcing provider may have a slightly different threshold or rules of engagement.

Bryan Tweed: So it's just important to understand that as you go through the partnership, but more than happy to answer those questions more specifically to your business. Post the session. 

Bryan Tweed: And then Mahima asked they're not IT and healthcare, a specialized firms supporting clients with IT staffing services So again I think more of a marketing promotion there versus a specific question, but, you know, overall again, find out, you know, what type of business the outsourcing provider really specializes in.

Bryan Tweed: You try to get them to share some raw data and some tangible evidence of that success. Gaining references from other companies that have exported, whether it's IT or healthcare you know, that's going to be critical as you evaluate that potential partner. So those are the main questions that came up.

Bryan Tweed: You've got a couple more minutes here. If you want it to ask any other questions, feel free to put them in the chat, but otherwise I appreciate you taking the time to, to listen to me for the last 45 or odd minutes or so an outsourcing, obviously you can tell that I've drank the Kool-Aid and gained a lot from it over the.

Bryan Tweed: And would love to talk shop with you throughout the week and show more, share more about my IMS successes and what we're doing for our client. So, with that, I will give you 15 minutes back for your day. So you can check some email as you get into the break and look forward to networking with you all throughout the week.

Bryan Tweed: Thanks so much.


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Speakers

Bryan Tweed

Duration

42

min

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