Any recruitment intensive company would benefit from RPO services where the recruitment activities take up a lot of time/efforts. Also, for companies who operate in the niche segments, an RPO would be able to add value in extending the reach of the client company for finding talent and providing timely hires.

Though today 35 per cent of HR job is recruitment, but once any organisation outsources its recruitment to the RPO provider, then it can focus on other HR core services like employee relation, training and development, joining and exit formality, performance management confirmation review, appraisal system, payroll system, leave and attendance, amongst others.

Outsourcing the recruitment process helps the organisation not only to save on the salary, incentives, overheads of the recruitment staff but also helps to save on infrastructure cost including cost divulged on IT/communication infrastructure, floor space, maintenance and monitoring. Outsourcing the recruitment process can reduce half of the cost spent on the entire hiring process.

Although the RPO firms have robust recruiting delivery capabilities and have a more integrated and focused approach, still there are many challenges faced by them. The biggest challenges associated with RPO are the receptiveness to the concept and acute shortage of skilled recruiters.
It is a high investment business and most of the times, the RPO firms face internal resistance as well. But as the industry is evolving, the recruiters are expected to successfully overcome these challenges as well.

Recruitment industry is expected to grow at a rate of 300 per cent over the last year. ERA, the recruitment industry body, had conducted a study whereby the size of the industry was estimated to be around Rs 6000 crore for 2006-07; however, this figure does not include the market size which gets added through overseas business and other recruitment-related expenses. Thereby, market size for recruitment and related activities could very well be close to twice the figure estimated.

The RPO industry is still in the growing stage and is very unorganised. It is difficult to estimate the targeted share of the global market. There are various companies who provide RPO services to the global market but are unlisted. Since these companies do not disclose their financial results with respect to markets, it makes the task to calculate the market share even more complex and tough.

RPO should enable organisations to efficiently meet their escalating enterprise-wide needs for high-performance talent. Further, they should be able to simultaneously and dramatically improve recruiting efficiencies. The essential characteristics in a good RPO are process maturity, quality
metrics, flexibility, delivery TAT and sourcing expertise. Moreover, it is very important for the provider to have an understanding of the company culture and, last but not the least, it should have a trained and dedicated service team.

RPO firm should be able to streamline recruitment process and create a variable cost structure for the recruitment function for the organisation.

Since RPO is the core of HRM, it enables the HR team to focus on the core HR activities and derive results from a much more efficient recruiting system. It works behind the scene while the organisation can concentrate on core competency areas. The services of such remote processing set-ups from RPOs enable businesses to grow by offering higher degree of expertise at lower cost and less time. RPO has immense potential to further extend the opportunity for growth, by not just enabling businesses to focus on their core operations, but also by timely delivery of high-caliber candidates to fuel the expansion of their core operations.

Hi, I am working as Account Manager with US based RPO firm. I have over 2 years of experience in this streamline. I am here to know more about current updates in RPO industry and share views with Recruiting Professionals. I am always hand open to connect here or you can mail me - chandukc888@gmail.com.

- Chandra Mouli
+91 98493 44500