Everything You Need to Know About RPO
Your guide to Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)
What is RPO?
Defining Recruitment Process Outsourcing
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, better known as RPO, is one of the Human Resources Outsourcing industry’s fastest growing segments.
Companies with high-volume or enterprise-wide hiring needs seeking to outsource all or a portion of their recruitment process often turn to an RPO provider to streamline their hiring costs, decrease time-to-fill, or improve candidate quality. As a trusted expert, your RPO partner provides talent acquisition consulting that encompasses analysis, strategy, and execution.
For process-driven, metrics-oriented organizations, RPO providers offer an efficient, measurable solution to high-volume talent acquisition programs. In addition to improved candidate pools and recruitment processes, you may also experience significant savings on recruitment marketing expenses and placement fees, among others.
Who Should Use an RPO?
Mid-sized to large companies experiencing high growth
Ongoing recruitment needs across functions, locations, or enterprises
High-volume recruitment needs, such as sales or customer service
Need a standardized, centralized recruitment process
Key Services and Functions of RPO Companies
Consultation and Strategy
Recruitment Process Optimization
Talent Market Research and Forecasting
Talent Pipeline Development
Employer Branding and Sourcing
Screening and Interviewing
Interview Scheduling
Post-Offer Management
Onboarding and Post-Hire
Technology Integration
Reporting, Metrics, and Insights
Compliance
RPO Flowchart
Why Should I Work with an RPO Company?
For high-growth companies, RPO offers levels of partnership and consultation well beyond staffing. To be truly effective, your RPO provider must become a virtual extension of your company’s HR department—which offers you valuable savings in resources and creates a transparent candidate experience.
You should consider working with an RPO company if any of these sound like you.
- Not enough/not the right recruiting resources
- Need best practices in functional areas to recruit the best talent – e.g., sales
- Recruiting costs are difficult to predict/out of control
- Talent pools are stagnant or lack key skill sets
- Recruiting is decentralized and unfocused
RPO Benefits
Augment recruitment teams
- Recruiting resources that scale up or down based on needs
- RPO teams that seamlessly integrate with your HR organization
- On-demand resources that are available when you need them
Streamline your recruitment costs
- Predictable cost structures for acquiring talent
- Volume-driven pricing
- Improved processes decrease cost-per-hire over time
Drive process efficiency and facilitate continuous process improvement
- Detailed process mapping before, during, and after implementation
- Measure every activity within the process
- Understanding gaps and opportunities
Build strong talent pipelines
- High-volume focus
- Multiplatform sourcing strategies
- Ongoing candidate outreach nurturing future pipelines
Improve candidate quality
- Targeted approach to candidate profiling
- Proactive candidate sourcing strategies
- In-depth interest validation and screening
Optimize the candidate experience
- Human-to-human conversations with candidates
- Eliminate unnecessary and lengthy processes
- Employer branding and outreach throughout the candidate lifecycle
Understand the business impact
- Visibility into real-time data and analytics
- Actionable insights designed to improve the hiring process
- Measurable ROI on long-term recruitment investment
Bottom Line: What RPO Can Do for You
For the life of the RPO relationship, your provider strives toward continuous improvement in process efficiency. A robust RPO program will adjust to increasing or decreasing hiring demands, using only the resources necessary—effectively decreasing or eliminating waste.
High-Volume Recruitment
RPO is particularly suited to companies with ongoing, high-volume recruitment needs.
- Hundreds to thousands of hires within specific functional areas
- Entry to mid-level roles
- Company seeking predictable hiring costs
- Process-driven approach to high-volume pipeline development
- Integrated technology to support high-volume recruitment functions
- Systematic candidate outreach to build passive talent pools
- Humanized recruitment process to foster a strong candidate experience
How is RPO Different from Using a Staffing Firm
While staffing firms source, qualify, and fill open positions, they do not provide the scope of service that an RPO might, because they typically do not fill a high volume of open positions. Executive search firms, similarly, do not focus on high-volume roles. Instead, an executive search partner is better suited to strategic positions at the management level and above.
RPO vs. Staffing Firms
| Benefits | RPO | Executive Search | Staffing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proactive Talent Pools | |||
| Proactive Talent Pools | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| High-volume recruitment | |||
| High-volume recruitment | ✔ | ||
| Process improvements | |||
| Process improvements | ✔ | ||
| Cost Savings | |||
| Cost Savings | ✔ | ||
| Insights and analytics | |||
| Insights and analytics | ✔ | ||
| Improved candidate quality | |||
| Improved candidate quality | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Lower time-to-fill | |||
| Lower time-to-fill | ✔ | ||
| Scalable resources | |||
| Scalable resources | ✔ | ||
| Elevated candidate experience | |||
| Elevated candidate experience | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Employer branding | |||
| Employer branding | ✔ | ||
| Compliance support | |||
| Compliance support | ✔ | ||
| Strategic roles | |||
| Strategic roles | ✔ | ✔ | |
Ready to Explore the Benefits of RPO?
Speak to an RPO Expert
Types of RPO Models
Enterprise RPO
Best suited to companies seeking to outsource all needs across a job function or the enterprise over a sustained timeframe.
Project RPO
Best suited to fulfill short-term recruitment needs, such as opening a facility or ramping up a specific function. May include recruiter on-demand models for additional flexibility and workforce augmentation.
RPO Costs and Fee Structures
While staffing firms often charge a percentage of the new hire’s estimated annual salary, an RPO estimates pricing not only on volume of hires but also on increased process efficiencies.
Here are some of the most common cost components within any program.
- Monthly management fee: provides funding for a dedicated team
- Open fees: invoiced upon approving a requisition
- Close fees: invoiced upon placing a candidate
- Implementation fees: based on project scope, training, and timelines
Engagements are supported by service level agreements and statements of work which outline metrics, project deliverables, and governance models. Metrics may include a target number of hires, conversion ratios, time-to-fill, among others.
See how an RPO firm could help improve your hiring costs
Ten Simple Questions to Ask Yourself Before Outsourcing
An RPO provider will partner with you to build a process that achieves your hiring goals. By gathering just some of the information below, you can have a more productive first conversation with an RPO company.
- Why is your company hiring?
- What positions are you considering outsourcing?
- How many positions are you looking to fill?
- When do you need all your hires in place?
- What does your compensation structure look like?
- What is your current strategy for pipelining and sourcing talent?
- What are the stages within your recruitment process?
- What are your conversion rates, including scheduled interviews to actual interviews and interviews to offers?
- What does recruitment cost today?
- How does technology integrate with your process?
Ready to Explore RPO?
We build high-performing talent acquisition programs Speak to an RPO Expert
Further RPO Resources
Three Key Ways RPO Services Improve the Candidate Experience
In today’s highly competitive hiring market, the human touch is essential to executing a successful recruitment process.
Find the Right RPO Recruitment Model for Your Company
The right RPO model can strongly influence the overall reach and success of your recruitment program.
How to Measure the Performance of Your RPO Services
For companies implementing RPO services, continuous improvement within talent acquisition and recruitment is the goal. In our experience, the best way to improve is to set appropriate benchmarks and measure results.
Ten Steps to Selecting an RPO Services Partner
Partnering with RPO companies can simplify complex recruitment processes, refine candidate profiles, extend your reach, and augment talent pools, among many other benefits.
Making Sure Your RPO Services Partner Can Scale to Meet Your Demand
When matched with the right RPO services, your firm can realize significant cost-efficiencies, the most immediate improvement being reduced cost-per-hire.
When Should You Consider RPO Services?
Is it becoming increasingly difficult to fill positions at your firm? Are your job postings not getting the right quality, speed and volume of responses? Do you have a high employee turnover rate or large seasonal staff requirements? Is your […]
RPO Case Studies
RPO: RPO improves headcount for business development & account management
This residential services leader needed to grow its business development and account management team across national branches.
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RPO: Optimized sales recruitment solution drives candidate quality and increased hiring
The world’s largest electronic security company, with over 26,000 employees, was finding it difficult to keep up with the demand for direct sales talent across the country.
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RPO: Ramping up door-to-door sales recruitment and improving candidate quality
This large sales organization needed to build its outside sales force quickly. With the help of ACA Talent’s RPO solution, they dramatically increased sales headcounts in nine weeks.
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RPO: Recruiting qualified route sales specialists and reducing costly vacancies
ACA Talent’s RPO developed an efficient recruiting process for this leading snack food manufacturer to reduce cycle times and fill vacant positions faster.
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