With the goal of reducing their workload and prioritising efficiency over cost, companies are becoming more strategic in their hiring and recruitment methods and, when outsourcing, look for an ideal solution for their specific needs.
This is according to Kay Vittee, CEO of Quest Staffing Solutions – South Africa’s leading staffing solutions company within the white-collar recruitment industry – who notes that because of the changing recruitment landscape and demand for bespoke solutions, the trend of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) has picked up momentum both in South Africa and internationally.
According to global services advisory firm, Everest Group’s “Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Annual Report 2014 – Time to be strategic”, RPO is one of the fastest growing single-process human resource outsourcing markets.
The report found that last year (2013), the uptake of RPO grew by an average of 16% worldwide. Vittee highlights that this demand is driven by a number of factors.
“These factors range from growing optimism among companies to bring on new employees and the increasing number of job applications due to online recruiting, to widespread recognition of the RPO model, its benefits and its adaptability for on-demand, project-based and pilot requirements.
“RPO providers are able to help if, when and how they are needed with models adapted to suit a company’s specific requirements, making them a popular and cost efficient alternative to developing a sizeable in-house recruitment team.
“The RPO model and its benefits of reducing recruiting costs, improving time to hire, increasing candidate quality, enhancing employment brand and improving compliance, has sold itself in many cases. Even companies who have developed and maintained their own internal recruitment teams have seen the value of outsourcing parts of the process,” she adds.
Vittee refers to an Aberdeen Group benchmark report on RPO, Outsourcing Recruitment is Not Evil: RPO Builds its Business Case on Flexibility, Scalability and Outcomes, which found that companies using RPO achieved results that were on a par with – if not better than – others.
She says: “The study looked at almost 200 companies and out of those pursuing RPO solutions, 77% said that they would recommend it to their peers.
“In responding to demand for bespoke recruitment solutions, RPO providers like Quest have made their offering more flexible to fit the needs of the client and, in turn, have made their services more attractive to an even larger market of potential clients.”