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6 Benefits of RPO: Unleashing Talent Acquisition Potential

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Key Insights

  • How to articulate the benefits of an RPO solution to your key stakeholders

  • The true cost of hiring and how to reap the recruitment cost benefits of RPO

  • How to get the most out of recruitment technology to drive improvement across the entire recruitment strategy

  • Download the Guide

As the recruitment rollercoaster ride doesn’t appear to be slowing down just yet, it will come as no surprise that reducing recruitment costs and improving risk mitigation are top priorities for finance, HR, and talent acquisition (TA) leaders. These priorities, however, can conflict with aspirations of hiring the best talent. With investments in recruitment being scrutinized, leaders are left with the challenge of cutting costs without negatively impacting hiring performance.

Not only can Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) optimize recruitment cost control, but the right RPO supplier will be your talent partner focused on adding strategic long-term value.

In this guide, we discuss six key benefits of adopting a full or partial RPO solution.

1. Seamless Scaling Up and Down

Mitigate the Risk of Headcount Recruitment Costs

Fast-changing demand for new hires forced some firms into a constant cycle of raising and reducing headcount within their TA teams. Organizations without sufficient internal resources saw their spend increase on agency recruitment fees, or found themselves unable to acquire sufficient skilled talent to meet business needs.

From a cost and delivery perspective, this way of operating isn’t sustainable for talent acquisition, or justifiable to the finance function.

An RPO solution enables you to remove significant internal fixed costs from the balance sheet. In close partnership, you design a model exactly tailored to your needs, tightly monitored via a modern reporting suite and measured against your unique Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The outcome? You get to lower your headcount, yet the RPO team will still be an integrated extension of your internal function. Effectively, you transfer hiring responsibilities while still retaining control. In fact, your organization assumes more control from a cost and risk mitigation perspective, and gains operational agility without the need to alter corporate headcount. 

RPOs have the process, methodology, and tools to get to the bottom of your numbers and make the full TA cost transparent.

2. Better-Informed Hiring Decisions

Understand the True Cost of Hiring an Employee

A common concern for employers is that hiring costs need to be tightly controlled—but there is little clarity on what the true costs are. In a Korn Ferry poll, 86% of HR professionals said they did not know the total annual cost of acquiring talent for their organization. Without access to relevant and accurate data, it is a thankless task to understand and reduce spend. 

A mature RPO partner will work with your talent and finance leaders to establish an accurate picture of current costs—and set realistic aspirations for recruitment cost savings and optimization. RPOs have the process, methodology, and tools to get to the bottom of your numbers and make the full TA cost transparent.

Moreover, when you engage an RPO partner, in most cases there will be a signed agreement on cost-per-hire for the duration of the contract. Hiring costs will not rise suddenly or be impacted by market forces (which is an ever-present risk for in-house teams).

The transparency of costs in an RPO model gives you clear visibility of your spending, while the performance data enables you to quantify the financial impact and ROI.

3. Simple Solutions for Complex Challenges

Reap the Recruitment Cost Benefits of RPO Standardization

Standardizing the talent acquisition model is one of most impactful ways to drive cost efficiencies for complex, multi-site operations, especially if hiring practices vary by location or function.

The centralization, economies of scale, and process consistency of an RPO solution have potential to deliver significant cost benefits—without removing local presence, insight, and expertise. Not only do we have regional industry expertise and advisory consultants who have deep local knowledge, but our recruiters are based in-country, working side-by-side with you on the ground. Our global reach saves you money by removing the need to hire separate regional agency support. 

RPO can provide significant benefits through consolidation, economies of scale, and consistent processes. Consistency is embedded through technology platforms and standardized, cost-efficient, best practice procedures. There is a solid framework to underpin the fundamentals of talent acquisition, yet there is still room to flex to different job families and local markets.

Among the average KPIs achieved across our client base globally, Korn Ferry achieved 92% for hiring manager and candidate satisfaction.

4. Elevate Every Stakeholder's Experience

While most recruiters recognize the critical importance of the candidate experience, jobseekers are not the only stakeholders who stand to gain from an optimized process. The experience of candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters can all be enhanced through a leading RPO solution, delivering benefits across the board.

For candidates, a top-tier RPO solution enhances their journey by prioritizing personalized and timely communication, streamlining the application process, and improving the interview experience. The goal is to ensure every candidate feels valued and respected throughout their recruitment journey.

What about the hiring manager experience? An RPO solution that integrates AI, automation, and analytics with existing recruitment technology equips hiring managers with crucial data and insights, allowing for end-to-end visibility and better-informed decisions.

Recruiters also benefit from better experience when using a leading-edge RPO solution. By automating marketing and other manual tasks, they can shift their focus to strategic and people-facing activities. This reduces sourcing and screening time and helps them match candidates faster.

Korn Ferry has achieved an impressive 92% satisfaction rate among hiring managers and candidates across our global client base. Powered by Nimble Recruit, our solution creates a fully connected recruitment experience designed to ensure across-the-board positivity and satisfaction..

5. Maximize the Benefits of TA Tech

Turn Your TA Technology Into a Game Changer

Should you invest in a brand-new platform, or optimize your existing tech stack?  A strong RPO partner will be able to do both, helping you unlock the full potential of your current tech stack while integrating cutting-edge solutions that drive efficiency and effectiveness.

By optimizing your TA tech, you can streamline operations, improve candidate engagement, and enhance the overall recruitment experience. This includes automating time-consuming tasks, which frees up your team to focus on strategic initiatives. Additionally, integrating new, data-driven tools will significantly accelerate sourcing, screening, and assessment processes, making your recruitment efforts four times faster than traditional methods.

Moreover, combining employee data with market insights enables you to find and secure talent more effectively. This holistic approach enhances your ability to meet hiring goals and ensures that every candidate has a connected and positive journey.

Nimble Recruit brings together the best third-party tools with Korn Ferry’s own technology and intellectual property. The result is a solution that delivers measurable impact—boosting candidate volume by 50% and cutting time-to-interview by 66%—to help organizations hire faster and smarter.

Ultimately, partnering with Korn Ferry means you can optimize your recruitment technology stack for maximum results today and into the future, ensuring that your talent acquisition process remains agile and effective.

Nimble Recruit impacts the metrics that matter, such as increasing candidate volume by 50% and decreasing time-to-interview by 66%.

6. Transform and Elevate Your TA Function

Drive Improvement Across the Entire Recruitment Strategy

The ambitions of a recruitment strategy should stretch beyond reducing direct costs while delivering quality hires, like reducing time to hire, cost per hire, retention rates, and candidate and hiring manager satisfaction scores.

You may currently be planning improvements for your in-house teams. But it is rarely straightforward to drive change across non-centralized, internal talent acquisition teams and forge connections with key business stakeholders, including talent management and HR. There will be competing viewpoints to reconcile, as well as structural hurdles to overcome.

That’s why our clients lean on us for consultancy and execution through planning, activation and implementation, change management, onboarding, and beyond, ensuring that success continues steadily across the entire talent journey.

More Than Cost per Hire

The true goal of RPO is to make real business impact by streamlining your recruitment processes and enhancing your overall talent acquisition strategy. In addition, you’ll mitigate recruitment risk, gain clarity on hiring costs, standardize complex processes, and leverage leading-edge tech for impressive outcomes.

We Can Help

Transform, scale, and elevate your end-to-end talent process with RPO. Download the full 6 Benefits of RPO: Unleashing Talent Acquisition Potential eBook to learn more about choosing the right talent partner.

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