How an RPO provider can make your in-house recruitment team fly

We hear a lot about RPO these days when it comes to recruitment strategies. But what is it? What are the benefits for your in-house hiring team? And when would you make the decision to switch to RPO?

Bernadette Eichner

Dec 3, 2020

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There are lots of recruitment models to choose from these days, from a one-off engagement now and then, to a full-time recruiter embedded with your in-house team. In this blog we look at Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), the practical and cost-efficient recruitment model on the rise in medium to large organisations.

What is RPO?

RPO is Recruitment Process Outsourcing and it’s a widely adopted recruitment model for companies who want to reduce costs, shorten the time to hire, and improve efficiency and scalability, all without losing out on the best candidates or professional recruitment services.

With a good RPO partnership in place, companies can reduce the time to hire by around 42% and costs by anywhere up to 70%, depending on which model you adopt and which provider you engage.

How does RPO work?

Put simply, RPO is when a third party provider partners with your own in-house recruitment team and hiring managers to help you find and hire high quality candidates in a short space of time, with all appointments aligned to your business and hiring goals.

The best RPO provider will dedicate a team of recruiters and innovative technology to forecast, source, assess, evaluate, reference check and onboard your new hires, using processes that align with your own values and business operations.

RPO gives you the opportunity to dial up the service when you need it and not use it when you don’t.

It’s like having a professional recruitment team that you only pay when you need them and only for the specific services you use.

The different RPO models

There are three great RPO models that have been proven to save time and money and deliver a permanent process transformation to set you up for success.

End-to-end RPO

By providing an embedded, ongoing solution, this model delivers the greatest short and long-term benefits. The RPO provider comes with their own tech tools and can deliver either an on-site or off-site team that is inducted into your values and your preferred way of doing things and then looks after every step of the hiring process, from helping draft job descriptions right through to onboarding new hires.

The benefit of an end-to-end RPO service is that the team is essentially an extension of you, working hand in hand with your in-house recruitment team, and often comes with some bells and whistles like employer branding, skills and aptitude testing, contingent workforce management and granular reporting so you can see what you are saving and how.

Project RPO

This is when you need some professional short-term or fixed term help to scale up for a specific reason. A start-up for example, or a product launch requiring short term resources, or an intense campaign that needs a bunch of the same sort of people doing the same sort of thing for a specific period of time.

You have the benefits of an end-to-end RPO model but without tying up your in-house resources who may need to stay focussed on day-to-day hiring.

Selective RPO

This is a great solution for those companies who wish to manage their own recruitment in-house but need help with just a few parts of the process. Outsourcing just the sourcing and screening process for example. Or managing ad response with weighted selection criteria to save you the time of creating a first round list for interview purposes. A bit like a menu in a restaurant – you choose what you want and only pay for what you receive.

What are the key benefits of RPO?

1. Reduce costs

Depending on your provider and the model you choose, you can sometimes save up to 70% per hire through a proactive rather than reactive solution. The average cost reduction is around 50%.

2. Shorten the time to hire

A best-practice RPO gets all the leg work done quickly in the background for you, freeing up your in-house recruitment team to focus on what they do best, final selection and engagement. Many companies with an RPO provider in place report around a 45% reduction in their time-to-hire.

3. Less suppliers to deal with

Dealing with multiple recruitment suppliers uses up precious time and resources and can increase frustration. A good RPO solution means you can truly partner with someone who gets on with their job, freeing you up to get on with yours.

4. Improve scalability

A good RPO solution enables you to respond quickly to meet changing hiring needs or seasonal and situational resourcing requirements by dialling up or down the service in line with your changing needs.

5. Tap into alternate sourcing channels

Having a team of professionals with their own sourcing channels and tech tools gives you a better chance of finding people with the scarce skill sets you need.

6. Future-proof your talent pool

A solid RPO partner isn’t just working for the ‘now’ but will be thinking about your future needs and work to build “talent pools” for all the different parts of your organisation. This ensures you have quick access to fully evaluated candidates into the future.

7. Know what’s really going on through good reporting

Having good KPIs and a clear service level agreement (SLA) in place will ensure you always understand what’s going on, how successful it is and what it’s costing. Full transparency!

How do RPO fees work?

RPO fee structures vary based on your particular needs. The best models are the ones where you only pay for what you use when you use it. The “Pay-As-You-Go” approach is popular with enterprise clients but some others include charging a retainer which is then “topped up” with certain fees for certain services.

The best way to find out what it will cost is to start the conversation with a provider. It costs nothing to get the information you need!

Is an RPO approach right for you?

An RPO arrangement doesn’t work for everyone. The best outcomes and process transformations occur if your organisation has ongoing hiring needs resulting in more than 15-20 hires per annum across the business, or short term spikes in recruitment to resource a particular project. If you want your in-house team to be able to maintain their normal workloads and routines while the recruitment leg work still gets done, then an RPO is a great solution.

Save time and money without loss of quality and transparency

If you have ongoing hiring needs and want to save time, save money, access the best candidates, have complete transparency over the process and future-proof your talent pool, then a good Recruitment Process Outsourcing provider supporting your in-house team may be the best investment you’ll make.