8 Questions You Should Ask An RPO Provider Before Hiring Them

When you’re looking for an RPO provider, it can be hard to know where to start. There are so many different recruitment process outsourcing providers out there and they all provide a range of services. That’s why it’s important to do your research upfront.

Here are 8 questions you should ask an RPO provider before hiring them to make sure they have the right experience and expertise to meet your needs.

Introduction

Organizations now have to contend with the scarcity of talent and in some cases, resources and budget limitations within their talent acquisition function. This is why your ability to attract and engage the right talent in the hiring process can make a world of difference, regardless of your industry or organizational size.

Most agencies use an external provider of RPO solutions to combat these challenges and to help them stay competitive in a highly competitive job market by providing their recruiting expertise, and recruitment marketing knowledge to give their clients a competitive advantage when seeking the best talent for their talent pipelines.

But all RPO providers, as well as RPO models are not the same. So, there’s still a need to engage the right recruitment process outsourcing provider, to ensure maximum benefits and a competitive edge.

Having a thorough understanding of your recruitment challenges is the first step. This will then make it easier to hire the right RPO solutions provider with the expertise, experience, and capacity to meet your recruitment goals.

What is an RPO

An RPO provider is a specialized recruitment process outsourcing firm to which agencies can delegate (outsource) part or all of their talent acquisition functions.

Organizations these days are turning to recruitment process RPO providers for some or all of the key aspects of their talent acquisition needs. With a highly specialized recruitment process outsourcing RPO firm, the benefits can range from;

• advanced and extensive candidate sourcing,

• more robust expertise that guarantees a higher-quality talent acquisition process

• application artificial intelligence of the latest recruiting technologies into the hiring process

• reduced costs, and

• faster time to hire, etc

What to Ask an RPO Provider

Choosing a recruitment process outsourcing RPO provider is not as easy as just going with the next available option.

To make it worthwhile, organizations have to engage providers who can perfectly meet their hiring needs. Considering the differences in RPO models, as well as the varying degrees of experience, expertise, and capacity, among different RPO providers, we’ve outlined eight (8) of the most important questions to ask your RPO provider below;

What do they know about my hiring needs?

You don’t want to engage an RPO provider with little to no knowledge of your business objectives, internal talent acquisition team, recruiting process, and hiring needs. Is their knowledge of your business landscape, hiring volumes, brand/cultural values solid enough to help them devise a personalized RPO solution to meet your key needs?

How do you plan to improve my performance?

There are many benefits to engaging a recruitment process outsourcing provider. Will the provider help you reduce costs? Are they looking to boost candidate quality or better your hiring process or employer brand? Will they focus on boosting internal mobility, employee engagement, or candidate experience? Whatever the plans or focus are, it makes sense to know and establish metrics for future assessment.