Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO): Could it be the right response in today's climate?

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) has been around in the HR recruitment world since the Nineties, and yet the majority of UK companies are still using high street and specialised recruitment agencies for permanent recruitment needs, or are doing all of their recruitment in-house. With recruitment budgets shrinking, and the pool of available candidates expanding, coupled with ever developing technology, the next few years will see RPO emerging as a preferred alternative for recruiting staff up to lower levels of management.

What is RPO?

RPO comes with the traditional benefits associated with outsourcing

Recruitment support using an RPO allows you to access to job seekers without having to deal with hundreds of applications in-house and without having to pay agency success fees. RPO typically allows you to select from a menu of recruitment processes that cover the entire lifetime of a recruitment cycle.

From initial applicant screening, through competency based interviewing, assessment centres and to offer management, RPO offers you a qualitative HR based approach to supporting your recruitment needs.

Processing through dedicated systems, and with qualified screening and assessment staff, RPO comes with the traditional benefits associated with outsourcing. Working for a number of clients means that your RPO provider will offer you benefits of scale, and expertise, that you may not have access to in-house.

Where traditional recruitment agencies focus on selling candidates to multiple clients, and clients to candidates, with commission for consultants, RPO focuses on recruitment process ensuring a consistent recruitment experience for all applicants.

So why now?

Technology

Once upon a time, to get an adequate level of applicants for job roles required extensive, expensive, paper based advertising. Or a company had to pay an agency 15% to 25% of a first year’s salary.

Technology is changing all of that. The emergence of the on-line job boards (Monster, Totaljobs etc) has opened up an inexpensive window to tens of thousands of job seekers. Many more potential jobseekers have an on-line presence, on social networking sites, and personal web pages and profiles.

Earlier this year, Monster.co.uk announced that they had reached 4 million CVs on their UK site. Many recruitment agencies fill their databases from Monster and similar websites. For how much longer will there be a commercial benefit to paying agencies to send you candidates from Monster?

At the same time, your in-house recruitment team, or your hiring managers may be ill equipped to deal with such an enormous potential applicant community.

RPO business is evolving rapidly, and it is focussed on developing the most efficient processes to convert 4 million on-line CVs to appropriate, high quality, and focussed job applicants.

And it is not just about job boards. While predominantly on-line, RPO is about constant innovation on how to most effectively target job applicants, through social networking, blogging and viral marketing.

The Economy

many providers offer services that are “pick and mix”

The current recession is requiring companies to look more and more closely at costs and at the same time there are greater and greater numbers of applicants for vacancies that are still being filled.

This two-pronged assault on HR department’s budgets and time is leading many to turn to RPO as a solution.

RPO provides a cost effective model that delivers savings in comparison to direct agency use. There are rarely percentage based fees with an RPO service. And many providers offer services that are “pick and mix” and charged on a transactional basis. With a well constructed recruitment process, extra applicants can be effectively and professionally handled without affecting your employer brand. And of course a good process will ensure that no matter the number of applicants, only the most appropriate will pass. So with so much else to worry about in the current economic climate, RPO allows internal HR to focus on strategic initiatives and management to focus on core business, by removing the administrative burden and at the same time adding value and cutting costs.

Summary

Tightening profit margins are very good at focusing the corporate mind on alternative ways of delivering company functions. With several predicted quarters of hard times for most companies, now is the time to question whether you are really getting value from your traditional recruitment agency partner. A good HR department will have pushed them hard to offer you a competitive fee %, but a good RPO will deliver you even more.

And recession won’t stop the march of technology – every month more and more potential applicants are making themselves available directly to you through their on-line presence.

So talk to an RPO about how they can take advantage of this changing on-line world, and at the same time deliver tight, competency based, and qualitative recruitment solutions to your business. Is it possible that current circumstance means that they can do it more effectively than you in-house team?

RPO can assist streamline recruitment processes using new technology and qualified people to supply a more efficient, more effective, and more cost appropriate process than some of the more traditional alternatives.