Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

Published 14th October 2022

Outsourcing has become one of the fastest-growing sectors as companies gear toward reducing operational costs. Many companies have realised the benefits of outsourcing specialist functions, in particular, allowing them to focus on their core services and products. One of these functions where it makes sense to do so is Recruitment. Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) provides organisations with the flexibility to navigate complex hiring requirements whilst ensuring adherence to compliance and mitigating risk while still finding the right talent in the quickest possible timeframe.

With an RPO in place, you can support in part or all your company’s permanent workforce hiring whilst still spreading the net wide enough and utilising specialist external resourcing partners and resources. An RPO partner offers you process excellence, a scalable model, cost savings, a technology stack, compliance, market intelligence, and predictive talent analytics; ensuring that your organisation is set up for success in an ever-challenging talent market.

RPO models are customisable, adaptable, and measurable on a set of selected services that are directly linked to your company’s goals and addresses specific recruiting challenges.

A successful RPO model encompasses access to higher calibre talent pools and ensures you are achieving cost savings whilst still partnering with a company that understands recruitment, a company who brings with them the best in recruitment expertise.

The recruitment process is very time-consuming if it is done correctly, consuming two very precious commodities for any business;  time and money,  and therefore is a cost to the business. Reviewing large amounts of applications, identifying the needles in the proverbial haystack quick enough to not lose them in the process, scheduling and conducting screening calls to rule out unsuitable applicants, placing much-needed focus on the qualified candidates who should move forward,  coordinating interviews, and negotiating offers; all while ensuring an exceptional candidate experience. The list goes on.

An RPO ensures all these time-consuming and tedious tasks are removed, freeing up your managers and HR departments to think more strategically and to focus on what matters; your core business.

Furthermore, something that many companies don’t measure is the cost of bad hires. In general hiring, the wrong person for the role or your company culture is at least the cost of 30% of the employee’s salary. With an RPO in place, you can manage the end-to-end recruitment process minimising the financial, operational, and reputational risks of making a bad hire whilst still maintaining compliance with your policies as well as any regulatory requirements.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solutions give you instant access to expert recruitment capability which is scalable and cost-effective.

With the right RPO partner in place, you can transfer all or part of your permanent recruitment and staffing supplier management to the RPO provider.

What should you expect from your RPO partner:

  • A wide range of candidate channels that are managed correctly through a single and standard process. Channels can include internal employees, referrals, talent pools, staffing agencies, etc.
  • Depending on the services selected within the RPO offering; all the steps in the recruitment lifecycle or only some: research and planning, attraction, recruitment and selection, onboarding, engagement, and exits, etc.
  • A successful partner utilises technology to enable the process, typically an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). If a company doesn’t have one in-house, an RPO provider can make recommendations of what tech stack is possible as well as provide valuable experience on how to implement and configure the platform to optimise its use. 
  • Additional services that can be added are employer branding, employee engagement, user experience, etc.

A question that is often asked is what the difference between utilising staffing and recruitment partners is and paying a recruitment fee for a candidate versus an RPO partner. Recruitment and staffing providers focus on sourcing candidates, while RPO service providers design and deliver across the full recruitment lifecycle, from talent attraction right through to onboarding and retention. With a solid and experienced partner in place your RPO partner work as a direct extension of your company. A  RPO partner typically places a team onsite with your company and is very often provided with company email addresses to ensure they are truly embedded into your culture and company way of working.

Resourgenix offers specialist recruitment processes providing our clients with access to the best-in-breed processes as well as talent attraction campaigns and strategies. Our RPO solution ensures our clients save time and money and allows them to focus on what they do best. Our service is a custom fit to what our clients’ business’ requires right now and continuously adapts to their changing needs over time.

Considering RPO or have questions on whether you should? Get in touch.

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