How an E-Commerce Business Can Benefit from RPO Services

“Every moment is a fresh beginning. ” – T.S. Elliot, Poet

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic was one of the most unfortunate misfortunes to befall planet Earth in recent times. The globally active virus forces billions of people all over the world to retreat indoors and with that turn to the virtual world to cope. Over the course of the last two years, the e-commerce industry saw a massive influx of demand. Companies like Amazon especially saw masses of customers filling up their delivery network orders. This high demand forced the company to significantly ramp up its operations. Amazon did so by hiring more workers, filling positions, and bolstering its network.

Now, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing). The answer to that is quite simple. In the wake of such extreme cases, RPO solutions offer e-commerce companies a strategic and consultative advantage. Given how things are shaping up with wave after wave of the virus making it to shore every year, one has to assume that the demand for stay-in-place orders will grow. At the same time the demand for businesses that operate in the e-commerce industry also grows. In this article, we explore a few key ways in which e-commerce businesses can benefit from RPO services. We will also look at how that can lead to potential growth.

Table of Contents

RPO Enables E-Commerce Businesses to Adapt Fast

As mentioned before, in this current scenario, there is a sense of urgency that has taken over the world of e-commerce. Having said that, one of the biggest boons of an RPO, is the ability to address said urgent hiring situations.

Even in the face of a global pandemic, RPO providers have the ability to ramp up hiring initiatives at a moment’s notice! They do this by consulting with the company’s in-house talent acquisition leadership. This gives them a sense of the direction in which the team is heading. Once basic parameters are established, the RPO provider quickly pulls together an effective hiring strategy. Regardless of the methodology that RPOs employ in their quest, the key takeaway here is that they are able to scale up the hiring function while keeping your day-to-day business operations intact.

RPOs make use of a proper line of communication to ensure that both employer and employee are a good fit for eachother.

Better Communication = Better Hiring Strategy

Communication is another vehicle that RPOs can use to fill a large volume of positions in an e-commerce business. They make sure that there is good communication at all stages of the process. This ensures that the candidate experience is a positive one. This automatically boosts your brand value as an employer.

At the end of the day, candidates will have concerns about their own safety, as they should. It is your responsibility to help them navigate these troubling times. It is also the RPOs job to help you help them. They can do this by possibly elaborating the safety measures your e-commerce business takes, like regular testing, workplace safety precautions, and other preventative steps.

Parallelly, the recruiter will ask the candidate if they have been travelling anywhere in recent months, ask them to provide test results to ensure everyone else’s safety, and so on. This will ensure that both parties are a good fit for each other. In essence, the RPO partner acts as a bridge between the two.

“The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risk.“ – Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO

Parallelly Tackling Short-Term and Long-Term Needs of the Business

When you bring in an RPO partner to help with the hiring of new talent, they become an extension of your current talent acquisition team. This allows them to tap into existing strategies and customize them in a way that will immediately meet your short-term goals. On the other hand, like an e-commerce business, or any business really, you need to think of your long-term goals as well.

Well not to worry, RPOs can help with that too. An RPO account manager will continuously be in talks with the leadership, review the information and data every other day and make adjustments to suit your e-commerce business needs accordingly. This wide margin of dexterity and flexibility that RPOs provide is invaluable as an e-commerce company trying to keep up with the demand that just seems to be growing day by day.