HR Influencer: Mike Mayeux

The Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) business is changing the face of the HR landscape. The RPO Association has been growing rapidly since its inception in 2004. It's national conference drew 250 people - that's nearly the same size as the other recruiting conferences.

The RPOA offers a chart that puts the RPO model in context. Outsourcing is a full-service - from attraction to hiring - operation that works in place of the recruiting department. As the economy stabilizes and begins its slow growth back, RPOs will probably occupy an increasing share of the landscape.

Mike Mayeux is a Texas entrepreneur with more than 20 years in various aspects of recruiting. He has worked in executive search, ran an Oracle professional services organization and helped build a recruiting software company. These days, he is eight years into a very interesting experiment at Novutus, the RPO he founded. For a good review of all things RPO, see HRO Today's RPO section.

When I launched the conversation about industry trends with Mayeux, he referred me to a book. "David D'Alesandro's Career Warfare gives a great survey of the HR landscape from a job hunter's perspective. He says that about 70 percent of the people in any organization are sycophants. Of course, they don't think they are suck-ups. They want a solid career, 3 percent raises and a pension.

Another 10 percent are contrarians. They open their remarks by saying 'I'm going to play devil's advocate here." They believe that they can deliver the best value by always disagreeing with the boss. This is how they work out their problems with authority.

About 20 percent are balanced personalities. They have the courage to tell the boss when he is wrong. They are also able to put that aside when the decision has been made. A solid balanced player is able to routinely deliver trusted advice.

Mayeux understands these things. His organization makes thousands of hiring decisions each year. In order to deliver service effectively, he has to have a simple and practical approach to hiring decisions.

"As we navigate this new economy, it's clear that there will be a focus on recruiting and hiring as a key strategic component. For the foreseeable future, hiring decisions are going to be made because there is no other choice. After the last 18 months, no one wants to hire an unnecessary or weak team member. There is a pretty powerful argument for turning that process over to professionals."

For the past decade, all of the innovation in recruiting has come from HR departments. The traditional executive search and contingency staffing models are decaying while HR teams learn how to score consistently. By deploying teams of specialists to fill the pipeline for the whole company, they've changed the game. Today, if you want to be a great recruiter, you have to do it inside one of the great recruiting companies...EA, Microsoft, Nike, Intuit, Cisco, Tivo. They've changed the rules, rearranged the sequence and begun to drive out the waste.

Mayeux said you'll find waste in corporate recruiting departments where there is no definition of quality, 'I'll know it when I see it attitudes,' and no really repeatable processes. "It's primitive"

"I know I said that all innovation is happening within HR departments, but its a one-third, one-third, one-third thing. One-third are trying, one-third are failing and one-third are improving. A fraction of the success stories are really amazing."

We talked awhile about Texas, where Mayeux is based. I asked him to explain the disproportionate impact that Texas seems to have on the HR and recruiting landscape.

"Texas has a culture based on mutual respect. It's an interesting thing to bring to HR. We're home to the largest SHRM state chapter and the largest National Association of Personnel Services chapter. Being central to the country means that a number of recruiting organizations have headquartered themselves here. We're home to the technology and energy industries."

Outsourcing is going to have a larger and larger impact on traditional HR operations. People like Mayeux are building volume process models that strip traditional approaches of slop and inefficiency. The radical changes in HR over the next five years will be driven, in part, by outsourcing entrepreneurs.

As part of John Sumser’s ongoing Top 100 Influencers project, in which the key influencers working in recruiting, staffing, HR, HCM and HR technology are identified and profiled, John shares additional perspectives and compelling insights from those who are profiled here in Salary.com HR Voice each Friday.

John Sumser is a member of the Salary.com Board of Directors as well as the founder and president of Two Color Hat, Inc. Contributions to Salary.com HR Voice and this Website reflect the opinions of the authors and are not an official opinion of Salary.com, Inc., or any of its subsidiary or affiliated entities.