According to January’s The Future of Jobs Report, 41% of hiring managers predict that talent availability will decrease by 2030. Factors such as a tight pool of qualified candidates – as well as difficulty attracting the right talent – ranked at the top of the list of transformation barriers. Meanwhile, a recent study by Gartner reports that nearly half of HR leaders list recruiting as a top priority, but only 14% believe they have adequate resources to attract top talent.
Enter Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO).
What is RPO?
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, or RPO, is a talent acquisition strategy in which an organization partners with an external provider to manage part or all of its recruiting function.
Switching to an RPO frees up internal bandwidth, allowing business leaders to recenter their attention to crucial business-building activities. This is a particularly valuable service for PE-backed companies, as RPOs offer a cost-effective, scalable solution for organizations needing to quickly expand teams.
More and more organizations are choosing the RPO model. In fact, Research and Markets project that the RPO industry will more than triple in the next five years, growing from $10B to over $33B by 2030. But how can you tell if RPO is the right choice for your business?
What Can an RPO Do for My Business?
The key here is scale. Whether you need to hire 5 or 500 people, a successful RPO partner provides a customizable “menu” of talent acquisition services. Common options include:
Strategy Development: RPOs can conduct market research to developing bespoke recruitment strategies. For instance, if your organization is looking to begin recruiting in a new geography, an RPO can provide a detailed analysis of the candidate pool and a recruiting strategy to scale.
Integration: RPOs can work within your organization’s existing Applicant Tracking System (ATS), alongside your HR team, or even in place of an in-house recruiting team.
Service Level Agreements: Most RPOs offer a range of contract options, from customized month-to-month, quarterly, or yearly pricing models.
Candidate Sourcing and Engagement: Leveraging job boards, sourcing tools, outreach campaigns, and inbound applicants, RPOs offer creative solutions to acquire and engage top-tier talent.
Candidate Management: After identifying the right talent, RPOs can conduct qualification screenings to ensure candidates are as much a fit in person as they are on paper. From here, your RPO partner can help coordinate and schedule interviews or assessments and keep candidates engaged while a hiring team deliberates.
Continuous Diagnostics and Analytics: Any RPO worth its weight should provide clients with routine reporting on the recruiting process. This could include A/B testing outreach message, analyzing recruiting platform performance, and funnel diagnostics.
Onboarding: Reference checks, new-hire checklists, and even developing onboard best practices and guidelines to give your company’s HR the reigns and structure to succeed.
RPO is not one-size-fits-all. But for organizations struggling to meet hiring needs, it can be transformative.
