Most businesses have two ways of bringing people in and two sets of people running them. Permanent hiring belongs to HR or talent acquisition, with or without a Recruitment Process Outsourcing provider. Contractors and temporary workers belong to whoever needed them first, usually procurement or the hiring managers themselves, through a handful of agencies nobody chose deliberately. The two rarely talk. A total talent solution is the arrangement that puts them together.
What "total talent" means
A total talent solution covers all the ways a business gets work done by people: permanent employees, fixed-term hires, contractors, temporary and agency workers, and sometimes statement-of-work suppliers. In practice it usually means Recruitment Process Outsourcing for the permanent side and a Managed Service Provider for the contingent side, run by one provider, on one set of data, under one contract. Where the business has project-shaped hiring, Project RPO sits inside the same arrangement; where it needs recruiters in the building, embedded talent does.
The label matters less than the planning layer underneath it. Two services from one provider is still two services. What makes it total talent is that the decision about how to fill a role, permanent or contract, is made from a workforce plan and on the numbers, before the requisition is raised, rather than role by role by whoever is in a hurry.
Why put them together
One view of the workforce. The business sees permanent headcount and contingent spend side by side, with the same measures for both: cost per hire, time to fill, quality of hire, retention or contract completion. That is what lets a finance director see that the "temporary" contractor population is a permanent cost, or that a role being filled by contractors for the third time should be a hire.
One decision per role. For each need, the question becomes: is this lasting, project-shaped or uncertain? Lasting needs get a permanent hire. Project-shaped needs get a contractor with a defined end. Uncertain needs get a contractor with a route to permanent if the work sticks. The same people make the call each time, so the reasoning is consistent and recorded.
One cost model. Businesses that manage the two sides separately tend to pay agency fees on the permanent side and agency margins on the contingent side, both agreed one hire at a time. A total talent arrangement replaces one-off fees with pricing agreed in advance across the whole volume. What uncontrolled agency spend looks like, and what it costs, is in recruitment agency costs are out of control.
One compliance process. Contractors carry obligations that permanent hires do not: status determinations under the off-payroll rules, umbrella company checks, right-to-work evidence, agency worker rights. An MSP applies one process to every contractor however they were found, which is very different from each agency doing it its own way. How the off-payroll rules affect contractor hiring is in how IR35 impacts the way you hire contractors; the rules themselves are for your own advisers.
One candidate experience. The person who applied for a permanent role and was offered a contract, or the contractor who wants to convert, deals with one team and one process rather than falling between two.
When it makes sense
When there is real volume on both sides. The typical case is an insurer running a change programme alongside ordinary hiring, with a contractor population that has grown up piecemeal through several agencies: enough permanent hiring to justify an RPO, enough contingent spend to justify an MSP, and nobody with a view of the whole. Regulated businesses have an extra reason, because a single compliance process across all contractors is easier to evidence than several.
When it does not
A business with twenty permanent hires a year and a handful of contractors does not need it; an embedded recruiter and a good contractor agency will do the job at lower cost. Nor does a business whose contingent workforce is mostly statement-of-work suppliers, which a recruitment provider is not set up to manage. The honest test is whether you would be buying both halves anyway. If not, the model is bigger than the problem. Eleven ways to resource your hiring, compared sets out the alternatives.
What to ask a provider
Can you show me permanent and contingent reporting on one page, with the same definitions? Who decides the route for each role, and on what? What does the transition look like for the agencies and contractors already in place? How is pricing structured across both sides, and what happens when volume drops? What is the compliance process for a contractor found by a hiring manager outside the system? And how will we review the arrangement: what is measured, how often, and what happens if it is missed? The last question has a post of its own: how to review your RPO partner.
Where Vermelo comes in
We run total talent solutions for insurance and financial services businesses: RPO for the permanent side, an MSP for the contingent side, and where it is wanted, embedded recruiters and Project RPO inside the same arrangement, all reporting on the same measures. Around it, our talent advisory team takes on the pieces that come up on the way, such as workforce planning, an agency review before the transition, pre-employment checks, IR35 audits and recruitment process reviews.
Talk to us if you have both kinds of hiring and no single view of either.
Total talent solutions, answered
One arrangement that covers all the ways a business brings people in: permanent employees, contractors, temporary and agency workers, and sometimes statement-of-work suppliers. In practice it usually means Recruitment Process Outsourcing for permanent hiring and a Managed Service Provider for the contingent workforce, run by the same provider, on the same data, under one contract. The point is not the label. It is that the business sees its whole workforce plan in one place, decides for each role whether to hire or contract on the numbers rather than on habit, and stops paying one-off agency fees for hires that a planned arrangement would have covered.
It should be, and the difference is the planning layer. Two separate services, even from one provider, still leave the business making the permanent-or-contract decision role by role with no shared view. A total talent arrangement starts from the workforce plan, the roles the business will need over the next year or two, and decides the route for each before the requisition is raised: permanent where the need is lasting, contract where it is project-shaped, and a mix where it is uncertain. That decision needs the same people looking at both sides, the same reporting on cost and time to fill for each route, and the same compliance regime for whoever ends up doing the work. If your provider cannot show you the two side by side, you have two services, not one solution.
When the business has real volume on both sides. An insurer running a change programme alongside ordinary hiring, with a contractor population that has grown up piecemeal through several agencies, is the typical case: enough permanent hiring to justify an RPO, enough contingent spend to justify an MSP, and nobody with a view of the whole. It makes less sense for a business with twenty permanent hires a year and a handful of contractors, where an embedded recruiter and a good contractor agency will do the job at lower cost, or for a business whose contingent workforce is mostly statement-of-work suppliers that a recruitment provider is not set up to manage. The honest test is whether you would be buying both halves anyway.