ManpowerGroup has launched in Romania its ManpowerGroup Solutions brand, its line specializing in Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). During an informal meeting with this occasion, we had the chance to interact with Sarah Peiker, Head of RPO Practice, EMEA about the evolution of RPO over the course of the last almost twenty years, based on their experience. Also, we learned more about the difference between RPO and other types of recruiting and why would companies want to go for RPO.
“One thing that we’ve noticed about RPO over the course of the last 17 years or so, is that it’s continuing to gain great steam and we’re seeing that the solution is evolving and what clients are looking for has changed a lot over the course of the last 17 years”.
According to her, when RPO started it was really too ways. One was a contractor recruiting solution in many cases, where companies were looking to augment their internal recruiting teams with additional recruiters that were managed by somebody else.
The other way was through positions where maybe they needed hundreds or thousands of people at a lower level / entry level, but they needed a lot of people and they got a lot of candidates. And so they had to sift through candidates, placing the right ones at a company.
Sarah says that, since then, they’ve seen it evolve as the business and the world has evolved, and this talent shortage has really made a major impact. The other thing that’s been an impact, according to her, is the economic crisis in 2008, 2009 or 2010, depending on the place in the world. She explains that, what happened is that during the crisis many of the companies started to lay off their Human Resources teams, their recruiting teams and as they were out of it.
She claims that there is a lot of uncertainty on the market, because of the talent shortage, globalization of work and because different businesses are growing faster than others. So, because there is a lot of uncertainty, what companies are starting to do is look out at outsourcing solutions. For example, an automobile manufacturing know that its specialization is building cars, not recruitment, so he will want to work with a company that’s best at that specialization.
In terms of figures, Sarah Peiker says: “We work with some external analysts and they say that RPO market is growing in EMEA at a rate of 16 to 20% in a year for the last four years and expecting that to continue until 2020. Within ManpowerGroup Solutions we are growing even faster than that. It’s very interesting to see what’s happening in the business. It is a dynamic time and Europe is especially dynamic because of the 24 countries.”
Ar putea să te intereseze și varianta similară în română: Prestatorul de servicii RPO lucrează sub brandul clientului, nu intră în competiție cu acesta
What’s the similarity and the difference between RPO and other types of recruiting?
It’s similar because it’s a way for companies to focus on what they do best and work with a company that is best at recruiting. Sarah says that what they do in RPO is they become the internal recruiting department for an organization, they elevate the employer brand and fill all of their jobs exclusively.
End to end RPO: becoming the recruitment department
In some cases, the companies will say that they want to maintain the recruitment for their senior executives and their graduates, because they feel that that’s the core of they. Or they want to maintain their culture and their brand, but everything else can go to a provider, like ManpowerGroup Solutions. Another example might be a company that says that they’re good at recruiting everything, except our salespeople.
Peiker explains: “We see companies doing more and more of that, really looking internally and say «what are we good at, what do we think is important to maintain, if anything, and then the rest can go to a provider»”.
Project RPO
They also see project RPO’s, as they call them, where is a lot of ramp-ups. A company may be moving, maybe building a new plan or new store opens and they need to ramp up quickly or hire thousands of people to staff the store.
Augment the internal recruiting
In cases like this, a company may have internal recruiters, internal HR teams and they are pleased with what they are doing, but they need to have a scaling factor, so they want those recruiters maybe to focus more on the relationships with the hiring managers or on the relationships with the candidates. Here is where an RPO comes in to do source & screen.
“So we source and screen candidates and then follow them through the process. It’s kind of a front – end RPO. Sometimes we see companies who want just to augment what they currently have and not outsource everything.”
