Most organizations looking for ways to strengthen their competitive advantage are rethinking their approach to recruitment. They aim at creating greater efficiencies, making better decisions around talent acquisition strategies and applying them in the long run.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing helps companies enhance the efficiency of their recruitment, improving quality of hire, reducing time-to-hire and recruitment spending. Previously considered as a last minute solution in the scope of recruitment projects, the perception towards RPO has now changed. RPO is more seen as a strategic solution: identifying key skills which are essential within an organization, RPO is now tightly connected to its business performance.

Beside this, RPO is still currently the most misunderstood field in talent acquisition. Indeed, the RPO market is lacking industry standards around pricing or practices, which is the reason why many organizations find it difficult to build a business case for it. Moreover, many mistake staffing agencies and even headhunting firms as RPO. According to an Aberdeen* report, companies benefitting from an RPO service notice improvement of their overall time to fill, a much lower cost per hire, and a high satisfaction level of hiring managers.

Caroline Mancioppi, Author of this article

Talent acquisition is comprised of various critical areas: employer branding, candidate sourcing, screening, assessment, hiring and onboarding. Although the functions which are the most outsourced are screening and assessment, sourcing is one area that most companies plan to restructure shortly. Many RPO providers use their own sourcing technology, methodology and know-how. The art of sourcing is not easy. Beyond candidate search, it is necessary to create a talent pool with key skills and maintain this relationship built with A-candidates on a long term basis. In this context, a partnership with an RPO provider becomes highly strategic.

A Trusted Partnership

A trusted partnership between an RPO provider and its client is essential. Without this trust, organizations tend to continue managing their entire recruitment activities and do not involve RPO partners in their employer branding activities. In this context, RPO only brings a very limited added-value. Moreover, when there is no integrated service without any onsite recruiters to respond to HR and management needs, the RPO providers tend to have difficulties truly understanding the company’s culture and vision they represent to candidates. A trusted partnership is the responsibility of both the provider and the customer in order to benefit from all assets that an RPO partnership can bring (* Aberdeen Group Report: „A new look at RPO“).

More detailed information on our RPO solutions, www.serendi.com