Episode
Are Recruiting Models Broken...
or Just Misunderstood?
with Chloe Ryan, VP Talent Solutions, WSI Talent Sync
Everyone has an opinion on whether recruiting is broken. Fewer people have actually thought about why — or what “fixed” would even look like.
Chloe Ryan brings her experience as VP Talent Solutions at WSI Talent Sync to dig into whether the traditional recruiting model is truly broken, or if the problem is how we've been deploying it. Des and Ashley get into the structural issues, the leadership gaps, and what a smarter recruiting model actually requires.
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Episode Transcript
Full conversation — searchable and screen-reader friendly
Desiree: Today we're joined by Chloe Ryan — VP of Talent Solutions at WSI Talent Sync. We're talking about recruiting models: what's out there, what makes sense, and how you determine which one is right for your business. Because I think recruiters get this screwed up. I worked in RPO for a long time and most people didn't even know what RPO was. Chloe, welcome. Give us your bio.
Chloe Ryan: Thank you so much for having me. I'm Chloe Ryan, VP of Talent Solutions at WSI Talent Sync. I've spent almost 15 years in the talent acquisition space — always on the third-party side, never corporate. I've done all different types of recruiting models, but specifically for the past 10 years I've been in the RPO world. The biggest challenge about being in this world is that people don't understand what it is. They don't understand the acronym. It's a foreign concept. I'm here today to hopefully just educate and have a great conversation.
Desiree: Why is there so much confusion around recruiting models in the first place?
Chloe Ryan: Most people know what a staffing model looks like — that's what they picture when they think "recruiting agency." Contingency, quick turnaround, the agency is their employee. That's traditionally what people have inside their head. And really, if you look at the history of RPO, that concept didn't start to formulate until the mid-90s. The actual acronym RPO wasn't coined until 2000. So we're only just going on 26 years of this RPO model. There's not time behind it. It hasn't come to fruition in small to mid-sized companies. And in its short infancy, it went through 2008-09 and then COVID — two massive disruptions that significantly changed how RPO functions. What RPO looks like today is vastly different from even 10 years ago when I first started.