What Is Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) & How Does It Work? Everything You Need To Know!

Hiring has always been a challenge for itself in every company. Finding enough candidates so you actually choose, interviewing them without actually knowing what to ask or asking what you think it’s important but not sure exactly, filtering them and then deciding who to hire… It can be a mess but that’s why recruitment process outsourcing exists.

Since there’s a lot of various information about recruitment process outsourcing or RPO, we decided to explain everything in details as here at Devop.One we pride ourselves in being a world leader RPO partner. So in this article, we’re going to cover what exactly recruitment process outsourcing is, how it works, what are the benefits, and is it for you?

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What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing or RPO?

Recruitment Process Outsourcing or RPO is a part of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and it represents the delegation of recruitment processes to a third party company. 

In simpler words, RPO is nothing more than hiring a different organization/company/firm that specializes in recruiting to do all management related to recruitment. 

Recruitment Process Outsourcing has been around ever since big companies decided not to invest in their own recruitment team development but simply hire experts. Nowadays, when online businesses are booming due to the pandemic, RPO is becoming even more popular as it’s a proven way to save costs of hiring and hire more efficiently.

How does an RPO model work?

In a nutshell, the Recruitment Process Outsourcing or RPO model is very simple - if you have a company and you need to hire more people but don’t have resources (time/money/knowledge) to invest in the recruitment process, you hire a third-party company to plan, manage and execute the entire recruitment process.

However, there are multiple Recruitment Process Outsourcing models.

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Project RPO

One of the most used services when it comes to recruitment process outsourcing is definitely the Project RPO model.

This model works in a way that companies hire teams of experts in the talent acquisition field to quickly fill a specific role in (usually) a short period of time.

So for example, if you need to build a sales team quickly, or just to find a hard-to-fill role like a Ruby-on-Rails developer with 10 years of experience, then you can just use the Project Recruitment Process Outsourcing model and get your plans executed by a third party company.

Hired team of experts is there just for that particular project and has nothing to do with further hiring, at least when it comes to this model. If a company decides to keep the outsourcing of recruitment process model further that becomes an end-to-end RPO model.

End-To-End RPO

End to End RPO is a model where the entire recruitment process solution is delivered by a third-party company. 

In this case, a company that’s outsourcing their recruitment process permanently works with their third part partner that handles the entire recruitment process. 

This means that a hired company plans, handles, manages, interviews, and does everything else related to the entire hiring process for their client (employer). 

This model can be used for a single market, region, country, or globally. 

On-Demand RPO

Similar to Project Recruitment Process Outsourcing, the On-Demand RPO model differs in the way that the employer actually hires one or more talent acquisition experts to assist the already existing recruitment team in that company.

So if a recruitment team in a company struggles to find a certain role to fill, then they can use this model to actually have professional assistance.

Often, employers who hire this small team of experts or a single talent acquisition expert make them a temporary team lead in their company so they can lead the entire recruitment process to successful hire or project execution.

Why is Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) important?

Recruitment Process Outsourcing or RPO is extremely important if you or your company:

1. Don’t have resources (time, money, or knowledge) to execute the recruitment process
2. Want to save hiring costs (time and money)
3. Increase efficiency of the recruitment process and get the best results out of the hiring process.

There are usually two scenarios when it comes to the existence of recruitment process outsourcing. 

Either companies have their own recruitment teams that are a part of HR or individual and they handle entire hiring processes to fill the needs of the company or companies use one of the three models stated above.

Reasons for this are also very logical. 

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Problems with not doing Recruitment Process Outsourcing

The study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found out that the average cost to hire a new employee is a whopping $4,129 and it takes approximately 42 days to fill the position.

If you think that’s fascinating, then be prepared for the cold shower - those are the best results among other studies.

For example, the study run by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found out that hiring an employee in a company that has up to 500 employees costs up to a whopping $6,110!.

Also, according to Glassdoor research, the average company in the US spends about $4000 to hire a new team member, and it takes them approximately 24 days to fill that position.

All these numbers and all these studies are pretty much clear and point to collective problems the entire business world is facing - hiring is too expensive!

First of all, if a company doesn’t do a recruitment process outsourcing, then no one actually guarantees that hired candidates will perform as expected, which further means that a company is spending around anywhere between $4000 and $7000 just to give a shot to someone to prove themselves worthy.

In case of a miss, the entire process goes all the way back to the start line which means more costs.

On the other hand, time is also money. A whole month just to hire a new employee usually means a lot of back and forth conversations, unnecessary messages or emails, or simply the recruitment process not optimized properly. It takes too long and therefore it costs too long.

If your company is specializing in anything that’s not recruitment then numbers make it obvious - you should definitely outsource your recruitment processes.

Why?

Benefits of doing Recruitment Process Outsourcing

You will reduce hiring costs. Obvious, but yet the first argument that is inevitable. From our experience, we found that our clients usually save between 40-50% of their hiring costs simply by outsourcing their recruitment processes to us. Those 40-50% are pretty big especially if we’re taking care of dozens of positions to fill.

You will decrease the time you’d usually spend doing everything by yourself. And that’s all, not just that you’ll have more time to focus on other things, but we’ll deliver candidates 5 times faster than you’d usually get. So if the average time to get a candidate is around 35 days (even though it’s more), it will take us a week to deliver the perfect candidate for the position. Speaking of perfect candidates…

Talent quality is drastically improved. Just like your company is an expert in its field, we’re experts in recruitment processes. Therefore, our processes of delivering the best candidate are specialized to be super-efficient, fast, and top quality.

Your company's scalability is increased. This means that in case of rapid growth we can deliver the same top-quality candidates regardless of the count. So if all of a sudden you need a few dozen experts, we already have them ready in our pool and will deliver shortly. This plays a big role, especially when companies cross that borderline where their demand for products rapidly grows but they don’t have resources to deliver. With an RPO partner, you can have a high-quality workforce in a very short time, and at the same time, you can focus on your business problems of other kinds.

Why Devop.One is the best third-party solution for RPO?

Since we’re the only ones in the world working with only the top 1% of talent in the world, it’s an essential part of our business that we’re also the 1%.

We constantly strive to improve our skill set, our team, our pool of candidates and our vision is always crystal clear - to connect the best experts in the world with the best opportunities in the world.

What makes our service so unique is that we’re solely focused on your requirements, which means that your ideal candidate will have exactly what you need him to have.

Also, we don't believe in a single perfect fit. We always deliver multiple candidates that we believe are a perfect fit and let you decide who to hire (in case that we’re doing an on-demand or project recruitment process outsourcing model). 

Our team of talent acquisition experts is super diverse and we’re super proud to have a multicultural team - we’re from all over the world and so is our pool of candidates. 

Speaking of the pool of candidates, it’s important to notice that we’ve spent years building a strong pool of talent, people who are truly passionate about what they do but who are also experts in their industries. 

From AI developers to super experienced executive roles, we cover absolutely everything.

So if your business got to the point where you need the experts in your team or you simply want to expand the team of already existing experts, then we’re 100% confident that we can help and deliver exactly what you need.

Feel free to reach out to us and book a call!

What is the difference between RPO providers vs. traditional staffing agencies?

The difference between Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and traditional staffing agencies is that RPO works on a complete end-to-end recruitment cycle, which means that instead of just hiring for a client they take care of the employer’s brand, entire HR planning, and they are following the trends to deliver better results.

Staffing agencies pretty much work on the same model - they get a new position to fill and they post the job on the job boards and just filter candidates.

On the other hand, this staffing model is somewhat similar to the end-to-end RPO model, but it’s important to spot a difference in representing the employer and handling processes except for recruitment.

Here at Devop.One we offer a whole variety of models to adapt to client needs but in a difference, to other recruitment process outsourcing and staffing agencies we own an already interviewed and well-met pool of candidates, which makes our processes much faster.

What is the difference between Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) and RPO?

The difference between Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and Human Resources Outsourcing is (HRO) is that HRO can be a part of RPO, but not necessarily. Also, RPO is all about recruitment processes, while HRO is more about administrative things.

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To make it more clear RPO works with sourcing and recruitment based on three different models, but those recruitment processes do not necessarily handle onboarding, performance management, payroll services, and other HR related activities.

Personally, we offer Recruitment Process Outsourcing and Human Resources Outsourcing services, combined or separated. Some of our clients only use RPO services, but the majority of them let us handle everything altogether because it’s a lot easier for them to focus on developing their products and improving their services.

One of the greatest advantages of having RPO and HRO services is that we are completely responsible for the quality of the candidates and we can use our strategies to improve their performance, but also to make them as happy as possible.

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Summary and Conclusions

Recruitment Process Outsourcing or shortened RPO represents the future of recruitment simply because it offers various models that can be adapted to any industry and fill any type of need for talent.

The benefits of RPO are obvious: drastically improved candidate quality, cutting hiring costs by almost 50%, better focus on companies products on services, and scalability of the company increased immensely. 

If you’re hiring traditionally within your company or hiring a staffing agency to do the work for you, you might face problems such as poor candidate quality and hiring costs are skyrocketing. This is all solved by outsourcing recruitment processes and working closely with your RPO partner.

Devop.One is the industry leader in the world of RPO partners - we work with the biggest companies in the world and have a team from all over the globe. But we’re not the ones who brag about themselves - we let our clients speak for us! You can check out awesome success stories here!

Our services are far more than just staffing and sourcing. We offer RPO and HRO services, or to be more precise, talent based outsourcing, strategic workforce consulting, borderless talent solution, contingent workforce (temporary & contract), talent resourcing, payroll services, and many others.

We’re making sure that all aspects of working with candidates and talents are 100% covered so you can focus on your company and its products and services.

Sounds like something you need to get to that new level?

Reach out to us and schedule a call!