Outsourced Recruiting Lives up to Its Claims

There’s no shortage of providers jumping into the recruitment process outsourcing arena, now that the economy and job market seems to be improving. In fact, today you can contract for outsourced recruiting services from staffing firms, payroll giants like ADP, HR tech firms or even major HR consulting groups.  But are companies really outsourcing their entire hiring process? And do providers really make better hires, as many claim?

So far, large employers have been the early adopters, but most are test piloting the concept for fear of losing control or damaging their employment brand. Everest Group, a Dallas-based consulting and research firm, projected the $1.1 billion RPO market would grow by as much as 30 percent in 2011, reaching $1.45 billion, which makes RPO a fairly small segment in the giant staffing world.

Sixty percent of the 145 companies participating in a recent survey have outsourced some elements of their hiring process like advertising and phone screening, while just 17 percent were using RPO for end-to-end hiring that encompassed everything from sourcing to onboarding.

Nearly three-quarters of the companies turned to outsourcing to solve candidate quantity or quality issues and so far, the RPO firms have been successful. Twelve percent reported improvement in employee turnover and time-to-fill in addition to a slight improvement in line manager satisfaction. So far, it seems that RPO is living up to its claims and may see greater expansion next year.