Most businesses will have a variety of objectives for considering a recruitment process outsourcing company. These can include:
- Cost reasons and the benefit of outsourcing a specialist process to experts more flexibly and removing the cost of fixed resource overheads within the business.
- Expertise reasons and the ability to buy in compliant services which are in line with the latest recruitment legislation.
- Efficiency reasons – as a recruitment process outsourcing company will use best-practice methodologies and processes which are efficient and effective.
- Strategic HR reasons and the desire to buy in services that can grow over time and include elements such as data mining, talent pooling, data capture, employer branding, candidate experience management and more.
As a first step, therefore, a business must be clear on its primary objectives for engaging with an RPO before they select the ideal provider. Ensure that the management team identify and agree with the main priorities, which can then be measured against during the tendering process.
These are the type of questions you need to ask before appointing an RPO.
- What level of expertise do we want to retain in-house?
- Are we keen to outsource our entire recruitment process, or just elements of it?
- Are we looking for a strategic HR partner to advise and guide us or simply a low-cost outsourcer who can manage certain discrete functions of our recruitment process?
- What budget are we prepared to allocate to this function?
- Just how valuable is recruitment to our future plans? Are we viewing recruitment as strategically important to our future business growth (bearing in mind that most businesses desperately need to hire the next generation of talent, particularly in technological and emerging fields)?
- How confident are we about our internal and existing recruitment processes? Do they need entirely re-engineering or do we simply want an agency to deliver against our existing processes?
- Do we need support in other aligned HR areas such as talent management, selection, online profiling and employer branding?
- How will the RPO relationship be managed and at what level? Would we want our RPO account manager to attend management meetings, for example?
- How will we measure the success of our relationship with the RPO?
- What are our longer-term plans? Are we looking for a long-term strategic relationship or a short-term arrangement to cover a certain period, such as a contract ramp-up or a peak period of business delivery?
Remember that there is no right or wrong set of answers and each business will have a unique set of considerations and objectives to consider and agree before approaching an RPO to support them. Just make sure you spend the time defining your contract brief beforehand for the best results.
If you want to find out more or have questions about RPO visit our knowledgebase at www.cloudrpo.com
