Recruitment Process Outsourcing offers many benefits – when it is set up correctly. In a true RPO partnership between client and provider, RPO includes the total management and ownership of the recruitment function.
In fact, more and more organizations are using RPO as a long-term strategic initiative especially to help identify critical talent for positions which are tied to organizational performance and productivity. RPO is not seen just as a “quick fix” for organizing or improving the recruitment process any more. The strategic benefit of using a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partner is to extend talent acquisition beyond the existing channels like job boards or social media marketing through a strong sourcing approach. This results in better quality of candidates, and helps organizations to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Whether companies need support for parts of their hiring process, or choose to outsource the whole recruitment process to allow their HR professionals to focus on the core business, recruitment process outsourcing results in the following:
- improvement of the quality of hires and presented candidates
- reduction of the cost of hire
- increase in speed of hire
- creation of a larger talent pool for future recruitment
- improvement of tracking, reporting and auditing the recruitment function
- provides a scalable recruitment process
Through strong Service Levels Agreements (SLAs) the performance of an RPO provider can be measured against an organization’s internal targets and expectations. SLAs can be aligned to the improvements of what a company wants to achieve in the talent acquisition function and normally include a measure of time to hire, cost per hire (i.e. compared to external agencies), and hiring manager satisfaction.
The better an RPO provider is integrated in the HR organization and the less the provider is seen as an outside vendor, the better the results are. The RPO partner takes the time to learn and adapt their client company’s culture and values – as their own employees would.
The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association defines RPO as follows: “When a provider acts as a company’s internal recruitment function for a portion or all of its jobs. RPO providers manage the entire recruiting/hiring process from job profiling through to the onboarding of the new hire, including staff, technology, and method and reporting. A properly managed RPO solution will improve a company’s time to hire, increase the quality of the candidate pool, provide verifiable metrics, reduce cost and improve governmental compliance”
Outsourced activities range from strategic (workforce planning) to the administrative (generating offer letters) and nearly always involve sourcing candidates. The services firm may be responsible for all hiring of a certain class of worker, such as non-exempt positions. Contract recruiters may be located at a client site, but often service the client remotely. Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) services firms may help a company re-engineer its recruiting department by standardizing processes; they may write job descriptions; they may facilitate the transition from candidate to new hire. Whatever the flavor, they are expected to enhance the quality of the candidates delivered to hiring managers, and they are expected to demonstrate the effectiveness of their sourcing methods.
A Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) provider can reduce recruiting costs by streamlining the recruiting process for the client. In addition, they can also help them discover how best to source strong candidates for their available roles for less money and in a shorter period of time. RPO providers achieve this so well because it is one of their primary capabilities and of course it is their core business.
The RPO process provides a number of other key benefits to businesses; it provides room for scalability and flexibility to the needs of the client along with a streamlined talent pipeline. Not only does it offer an efficient staff sourcing and time to hire function, but it also greatly simplifies the exiting of staff. The onboarding facility of the service ensures that a steady flow of knowledgeable and high-quality, skilled candidates are constantly being developed as needed by the business. Additionally, the improved efficiency can be managed through verifiable metrics and tightly integrated quality control.
With Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), businesses have peace of mind that their recruitment partner has an intimate knowledge of their needs and understand exactly how best to save client time and money.
Recruitment process outsourcing is still new for a lot of companies. Some may not realize that there are options in how to outsource or to improve their recruiting process, while others may stick with other solutions because that’s the way it’s always done and that’s the way the boss likes to do things. However, if you’re serious about RPO and really want to know what it could do for your organization, then here are the awesome benefits of RPO.
