Change a little – achieve a lot. Sir Dave Brailsford’s transformation of the fortunes of the British Cycling team through marginal gains is well documented and has been adopted into all walks of business life. How can we make apply this to the current procurement market?
In public sector procurement, now more than ever it is crucial to secure top talent into your key roles with the only certainty of Brexit being an increased contract renewal in a post-Brexit world.
With a move in the market towards in-house recruitment teams and direct sourcing models, you would be forgiven in assuming that the recruitment agency market is shrinking. Not so – most specialist agencies continue to post strong results with permanent vacancies filled by agencies in the UK topping 634,000 year on year (Source REC 24.11.16)
If you are using your own teams or generic sourcing agencies, consider how a switch to a specialist recruiter can help create short term efficiencies and aggregate long term gains.
1. Market Knowledge
The best recruiters act as partners and will continually consider professionals for your business in anticipation of you next hire. They can provide more than a CV service and will become your go to person to gauge salary survey, competitor analysis, skills availability and long range skills gap forecast. Your recruiter should be a relationship builder who is superbly connected in your market and can cut to the best talent for you with minimum lead time.
Specialist recruiter, David Simpson, Head of Procurement and Supply Chain recruitment at FPSG, believes that market changes will see an upsurge in opportunities for SME’s to engage with public sector organisations to meet the demands of government targets:
• The Public Sector Procurement UK market on goods and services is worth more than £300 billion per year. In October 2016 more than 2550 public sector tenders were published with a total value of £35 billion with IT Services accountable for £5.5 billion of that spend.
• The big Public Sector spends are the NHS, Education, Defence, Business Innovation and Skills, Local Government, Transport, Justice, Home Office, Works and Pensions to name a few.
• The Government has targeted that total procurement spend across SME business are setting an ambitious target that £1 in every £3 government spends will be with small businesses by 2020.
• This is a huge opportunity for the country’s diverse and innovative small businesses. From computers to uniforms – there are so many opportunities for small businesses to work with the Public Sector, and the Government want to see SME’s providing value for money for the taxpayer and benefiting from the total spend budget.
2. Enhanced Talent Pool
Truly specialist recruiters will provide you with candidates you wouldn’t expect to reach in a traditional advertising campaign. Through networking and detailed market analysis, they can reach candidates who are not actively looking and help you connect with backgrounds, skills and experience who would be unknown to your in house hiring teams.
Within public sector procurement, David is seeing a move towards a Sourcing and Contract Management model. A specialist recruiter understands the specialist knowledge and backgrounds to succeed in each sector and creates talent pools to reflect this. Securing the right talent first time creates stability and efficiencies in the recruitment process and can allow talent to grow as you grow, improving motivation and retention.
Sourcing and Contract Management Model
3. Enhanced Brand
Candidate attraction and retention is key for any organisation, particularly in the competitive sector of public sector recruitment where niche skills such as IT Category Management and Construction/Property/FM Category Management are in short supply. David has recruited for the majority of the big Public Sector organisations and he has managed multi –vacancy campaigns across the UK and Australia and his skill set is in high demand. Setting the tone of your recruitment campaign as an employer of choice will have the benefit of creating a positive buzz within the talent market.
Your recruitment partner will enhance your brand throughout the recruitment process from the initial candidate attraction plan through to offer, placement and managing the rejected candidate experience. They will promote your culture and rewards, discuss the candidate’s career path and fully manage candidate expectations. A top agency will also use their marketing team to create client led branding through social media channels and may offer a specialist recruitment microsite to manage candidate attraction for your project.
Building a relationship with a regular recruitment partner will create aggregate gains through a reduced time to hire, smooth project management and candidate negotiation.
4. Candidate vs Applicant
Traditional advertising campaigns are expensive, time consuming and offer no guaranteed outcome. Direct sourcing requires dedicated resource and thorough follow through. A specialist agency will only the select the best qualified, screened and prepared candidates for your role allowing you to focus on what is important, getting the best match.
5. Project outcome
Our client base reports an increased drive to create efficiencies in time and budget across all areas of business, recruitment included. The benefits of using a specialist recruiter include guaranteed project outcome and a reduced impact on in-house staff. As the relationship matures, hiring managers reap the rewards of reduced time to hire and competitive advantage as they secure the best talent ahead of the rest of the market.
A specialist recruitment supplier can bring aggregation of marginal gains throughout the hiring process:
• Competitive advantage
• Reduced time to hire
• Guaranteed outcome
• Fixed costs
• Enhanced recruitment brand
• Positive candidate experience
• Market knowledge
• Enhanced talent pool
At FPSG, we deliver an industry leading service that is built on quality, professionalism and trust. Through our consultative approach we are proud to say we are the preferred supplier of recruitment services to a growing network of many of the world’s leading brands. By delivering against key service levels across multiple divisions, we provide a total solutions driven service.
For further information about our services please contact David Simpson (Head of Procurement and Supply Chain Recruitment – FPSG) at dsimpson@fpsg.com
*Article written by Kirsty Peacock, Director of Operations at FPSG.
