RPO: Big outsourcing opportunity

Aping the success of business process outsourcing industry, companies are keen on transferring all or part of their recruitment activities to external service providers, cutting down their human resource expenses significantly, say experts.

"Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) analyses client and candidates in the best possible way. Besides, it saves time and cost for corporates as well," global recruitment firm Manpower's official spokesperson told PTI.

Corporates today are faced with rising attrition and are thus turning towards recruitment process outsourcing. RPOs are designed to meet the need of speed and cost optimisation of companies, experts said.

There exists a strong need for HR processes in the developing countries, especially India, that are witnessing growth in all domains -- top-level middle level or freshers -- at a never before rate, HR services provider PeopleStrong said.

"As an RPO, we see a great opportunity arising for our services in the next 4-5 years in the country's HR space. Going forward, we see the HR departments of corporates becoming leaner as outsourcing will prove to be more helpful for them," PeopleStrong CEO Pankaj Bansal said.

The human resource domain comprises of a group of activities, including payroll management, training, staffing, benefits administration, travel and expenses management, and retirement and benefits planning.

In case of RPO, all these activities are outsourced to a third party and the client can concentrate more on its core competency as the RPO team handles all the recruitment related works.

Meanwhile, experts said middle level employees such as team leaders, first and second rank mangers may be the next targets for the emerging recruitment process outsourcing industry.

"The middle level executives with a work experience of 2-10 years hold huge potential for the recruitment process outsourcers like us," Bansal said. The segment is left untapped as the top level gets head hunted and the freshers get taken up through campus recruitments and under trainee programmes, he added.