Seven Step RPO recently held its first analyst event, which featured a select group of analysts and recruitment SMEs, two clients, and six members of the Seven Step leadership team. This made for an engaging dialogue around Seven Step RPO’s services, strategy, and best practices, with both clients (CVS Health and engineered product firm TriMas), contributing to the discussions throughout the day. Here I take a look at some of the main RPO themes that emerged.

The importance of company culture

Both CVS Health and TriMas identified the importance of company culture when working with an RPO provider. This includes:

• Leading on values – e.g. CVS Health recognized that Seven Step RPO shared its own belief in recruiting on values first
• Willingness to learn – the RPO vendor may not know everything on day one, but a willingness to learn and adapt is essential, particularly if the environment the vendor is recruiting for is constantly changing
• Quality and strength of the vendor team – e.g. TriMas identified the seven-step career path of Seven Step RPO’s recruiters as one of the reasons they chose to work with them
• A ‘can do’ attitude – something that both CVS Health and TriMas attribute to Seven Step’s rigorous training. There are ~160 specialized training courses and eight certifications, with recruiters receiving an average of 60 hours training annually
• Openness – e.g. in allowing direct access to the vendor’s senior leadership, as well as knowing the Seven Step delivery team on a first name basis.

Scalability

TriMas stressed the importance of wide country coverage, with Seven Step now delivering RPO in ~45 countries across North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. However, as TriMas is an acquisitive organization, scalability is just as important. According to NelsonHall’s recent RPO market analysis study, scalability and agility to meet business needs is the top driver for RPO.

CVS Health also highlighted scalability as a key capability. Seven Step currently hires ~3,500 personnel annually for CVS, and is capable of scaling up or down quickly. This is evident in the floor plan Seven Step uses for its recruiters, with client-dedicated pods designed with flexibility in mind so that recruiters can move quickly between clients as needed.

Predictive capability

Seven Step RPO’s Talent AI (Actionable Insights) predictive analytics platform allows it to make proactive and insightful suggestions to improve the quality, quantity, and timeliness of talent acquisition decision-making. The reports library is extensive and fully customized to the SLA/KPI strategy for each client, giving clients a high level of recruitment visibility.

Predictive decision-making is one of the key tenants of CVS Health’s talent acquisition strategy, and it is the first client to use Seven Step’s Talent AI directly themselves (at manager level). It also plans to extend this to their own recruiters.

Outlook

The company has been selective in choosing the right clients they can grow with and transform, while at the same time not growing so fast that they have difficulty meeting client needs. Its delivery centers are currently in the U.S. (Boston and Denver) and in the U.K. (Reading and Devon). To date this has worked well in terms of meeting client needs, as they are prime locations to attract recruiter talent. However, as they are higher rent locations, Seven Step is also now looking at offshoring opportunities, possibly in India and Manila, for some of its back office administration as well as in-region support.