In recruitment, the concept of ‘quick wins’ refers to roles that are straightforward to fill: entry level positions, high turnover operational roles, or vacancies where the candidate pool is broad and highly visible. Many recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) providers concentrate their delivery here because it is predictable, it scales easily, and it generates fast, favourable metrics.
But while these roles matter, they rarely transform business performance. They do not typically influence P&L, capability maturity, innovation, or competitive advantage. And they certainly do not minimise agency spend where it counts most.
Challenges in Finding Niche Talent
Across insurance, financial services and professional services, senior and specialist appointments can sit open for months. The underwriters who shape your risk strategy. The programme managers who keep transformation on track. The niche financial services SMEs who hold decades of tacit knowledge and influence.
Filling these roles requires far more than posting a job online or running a keyword search. You need deep market insight, subject matter fluency and, critically, the ability to engage passive candidates who are not actively thinking about their next move. In most cases, the talent you need is already deeply embedded in another organisation delivering, contributing, and not spending their evenings scrolling through job boards.
That is why these roles demand a different type of partner.
Challenges in Finding Niche Talent
Finding these candidates requires more than posting a job or funnelling a requisition into an agency supply chain. It takes deep market insight, subject matter expertise and, critically, the ability to engage people who may not even be considering a move. This capability separates Avencia Talent Solutions from traditional, volume driven RPO models, where delivery is often powered by a large offshore delivery model favouring those easier to fill roles.
Addressing Skills Shortages in the UK Talent Market
In today’s UK talent market, particularly across insurance, financial services and professional services, skills shortages are acute. Relying on an in house recruitment team alone is often not enough to nurture pipelines for niche or senior roles. Meanwhile, outsourcing that challenge to multiple agencies can quickly become costly, duplicative and inconsistent in outcome and candidate experience.
Avencia Talent Solutions’s model solves both problems. By directly headhunting hard to reach talent, we reduce or remove the need for third party agencies. This not only cuts recruitment spend but also improves quality, alignment and continuity. Instead of managing multiple external partners, clients receive embedded expertise that understand the business, the culture and the long term priorities.
Building Trust Through Precision Recruitment
This kind of delivery takes patience and precision. Engaging passive markets requires mapping, nurturing and relationship building long before a vacancy becomes live. It means understanding what motivates specialist talent, where they sit within the market, and how to approach them in ways that build trust. It requires market specialism and industry knowledge that enables our recruiters to operate strategically to support your business needs.
Redefining What an RPO Can Be
At Avencia, we challenge the outdated perception that RPO is only about high-volume, low-complexity delivery. Our model is built to operate across the full talent spectrum, including the roles that truly move the needle. We don’t focus on the quick wins. We focus on the roles that matter.
By elevating search-grade capability into an embedded, outcome-focused partnership, we help clients achieve what traditional models struggle to deliver: measurable impact, reduced agency dependency and recruitment that feels strategic, not transactional.
A Partner for the Roles That Shape Your Future
In a labour market defined by complexity, competition and constant change, the difference between filling a senior role and filling it well has never been more significant. Hard-to-fill roles deserve a partner who treats them with the nuance they require — a partner who brings clarity from complexity and ensures recruitment becomes a driver of performance, not just an operational necessity.
At Avencia Talent Solutions, that’s exactly what we do. If you’re facing specialist vacancies that demand more than business as usual, we’d love to show you how our approach can deliver the quality, impact and confidence your business needs.
