Author: Future Manager Research Center
For a long time, the practice of outsourcing Human Resources activities was perceived as negative, so it was hardly used. Currently the situation appears overturned in fact it is now considered a surplus value for the competitiveness of companies.
More precisely, the acronym RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) means the entrusting of employee recruitment operations to third parties. Companies can entrust to employment agencies or to other providers who, jointly with the company itself, carry out the entire recruitment process. Obviously, this happens when the firm has to fill new job positions and, if outsourcing did not exist, this process should be conducted entirely by the company itself. The main goal is to recruit talent quickly, do it safely and lighten the workload of your internal HR department as much as possible.
What outsourced recruiting tends to offer is support that, based on customer needs, includes procurement, telephone pre-qualification of profiles, face-to-face interview assessment and employee integration into the company. Among the various advantages of outsourcing in the HR sector, in this article two pros will be mentioned, both of which offer a kind of optimization (in one sense or in another one).
The first concerns the reduction of the cost per hiring, which often falls by up to 50% for each position held. Outsourcing allows the company to become more responsive in its hiring by focusing on its core business; in fact, when an outsourced recruiting solution is used, the company wins both in the time spent on the hiring process and in costs.
As just mentioned, the second advantage is found in the reduction of hiring times, an element of fundamental importance if you think about the fact that the longer the search and selection process takes place, the greater the costs that the company will have to bear, not to mention that a high-level position could remain uncovered for a long time.
These are just two positive aspects of the RPO, whose potential is truly remarkable. A small note to take in account is that, as with most of the new management practices, outsourcing also requires careful study and great planning. The line between what could be useful and what could be catastrophic is very labile.