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Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is a form of business process outsourcing (BPO) when an employer outsourcers or transfers all or part of the staffing process to an external service provider.

An RPO engagement can be structured in one of three ways depending on the needs of the company: Enterprise, Selective or Project RPO.

In Enterprise RPO, the partner manages the entire process across all skill categories and all locations. Selective RPO involves managing a subset of locations or a subset of recruiting processes, such as sourcing, screening, interview scheduling or offer letters.

In Project RPO, the RPO provider delivers hires for a one-time hiring project.

In all three scenarios, a dedicated RPO team works directly with the hiring manager to create a tailored program to meet the call center’s specific needs. The team can work on-site at the client’s locations, off-site in its own facility or a combination of the RPO Benefits

Organisations that partner with RPO specialists can realize a range of significant and sustained business benefits, all of which can be measured.

These benefits include:

Securing the best talent: Competition for the most talented individuals is increasing. Organizations need to secure the best people quickly and efficiently to help them build competitive capability.

Cutting recruitment costs: By transforming processes, utilizing best practice, and replacing a fixed cost base with a variable charging structure, RPO can significantly reduce the cost of recruitment.

Removing the administrative burden: RPO providers take on the burden of operational recruitment activities, making organizations free to focus on value-creating and strategic activities.

Delivering higher quality services: There are many stakeholders in a recruitment process; through improving processes and measuring experience and outcome, RPO providers can demonstrate highest quality services.

Mitigating operational risks: Risks come in many forms, and the expert knowledge of an RPO specialist can help organizations mitigate the risks associated with an inability to scale their business operationally to meet changing market demands, and the risks of non-compliance to legislative and regulatory change.

The more sophisticated and experienced RPO providers will also have a system of “forward-looking” analytics to ensure that hiring goals will be met for each “hiring class.” This predictive process analyzes how many candidates are in the pipeline.

How to hire an RPO provider: If you think an RPO partner could measurably improve the quality of your call center hires while containing costs, research several firms and choose carefully. The field is expanding quickly but there is a wide range of experience, knowledge and track record of success/failure. Specifically, you may want to ask potential providers some key questions, including:

How many RPO clients do you have?

How many hires do you support annually?

What experience do you have with call centers? And what types of call centers?

What percentage of your clients is reference able?

Are your recruiters dedicated to one client or do they work on multiple clients at the same time?

Do you have the flexibility to scale up and down as my needs change?

What is your client renewal rate?

As call center recruiting, hiring and retention remains a challenge for many companies, RPO is emerging as an important option. With turnover down. Significantly decreasing costs -- an increasing number of call center and human resources professionals have embraced RPO as an innovative strategy and a smart business decision.