Tuesday, January 16, 2007

What does it all mean?

When I talk ‘work’ with people (clients, suppliers, friends, family etc) one of the things I’m most keen to get a feel for is whether they understand what it is I do. I know it’s not the most complicated thing in the world; I'm no rocket scientist (although I know a few of them and they're not what you'd expect!) but I still feel that often I explain my role and people just don’t ‘get’ what it is I do.

Confusion really exists between what a traditional ‘recruitment agency’ does and what my company as an RPO or Recruitment Process Outsourcer, does. Although the idea of RPO is more common than it was even only 18 months ago in reality there are still some very grey areas.

The Times have recently published a useful supplement though which is like a crash course in RPO. It was sent to me by a colleague and is a really good read. The supplement basically outlines the ins and outs of the RPO market and it’s as good a summation of things as I’ve seen. If you have any interest in RPO or are just a bit hazy about exactly what it is, why businesses choose outsourcing, what other options there are etc then I’d highly recommend it.

I’ll probably go into more detail on a few of the articles in the coming days so any comments on it in preparation are most welcome.

2 comments:

Robert Leggett said...

What is so special about Recruitment Process Outsourcing? We have been outsourcing recruitment in the UK for over 20 years now, yet it is only now that people are sitting up and looking at better, more efficient ways of recruiting.

I say we have been outsourcing recruitment for 20 years as we have always had a very high dependency upon recruitment agencies in the UK. Our use of recruitment agencies is a very basic, or crude, from of outsourcing. (ie. we believe an agency can recruit more effectively than an in-house individual or team). Times have changed, we have tried Preferred Supplier Lists then moved on to sole supplier agreements. Weren't sole supplier agreements just a simple form of Recruitment Outsourcing or RPO? If they were they have not been particularly successful, and later we moved on to Master Vendor type agreements where the Master Vendor fills the lion share of the roles, but manages third-party suppliers for those difficult to fill or niche roles.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing is just the next logical step in the maturity of the recruitment industry. RPO takes us to a whole new level where organisations are truly partnering with an RPO to ensure talent is attracted to their organisation from as many sources as possible, redefining internal processes and providing powerful systems to ensure the finest talent is obtained in the quickest possible time in the most cost effective manner possible.

What comes next after RPO?

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