Funding and support for research, development and innovation has been crucial for startups over the past decade. Grants of up to £32 million have been awarded to companies across industries like aerospace, energy and pharmaceuticals. Recruitment is often a major challenge for startups due to limited resources, but finding the right people is critical to meet growth targets and be able to scale quickly. This is where an external recruitment partner can provide value. By working with experts focused on your resourcing, your organisation can access the talent you need to grow successfully, and save on agency and resourcing costs.
If you’re looking for help with your recruitment, you’ll probably come across the term ‘RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing)’. An RPO is when an organisation hires an external recruitment firm to handle all or part of its hiring process. Rather than having internal recruiters, you outsource the work to recruitment specialists. The main benefit of an RPO is that it allows you to hand over the complexities of hiring to dedicated expert recruiters. This saves you time and money compared to maintaining a full in-house recruitment staff, or having a small team working with multiple recruitment agencies (with high placement fees for each individual hire) while still getting access to top talent. It’s a flexible solution that can scale up and down as your hiring needs change, so suits growing businesses.
How Can an RPO Help Your Startup?
RPO organisations offer a variety of services that can support your startup’s growth and evolution:
- Talent acquisition expertise: RPO organisations have specialised recruiters and sourcing capabilities to help tap into the right talent pools for your roles. This includes leveraging existing networks, talent pools and databases.
- Process efficiency: By handling the end-to-end recruitment workflow, RPOs create process efficiencies so you and your teams can focus your efforts on core business goals.
- Scalability: As startups grow, an RPO has the bandwidth to scale up recruiting efforts and adapt to changing hiring needs. You don’t have to worry about expanding/contracting an in-house recruiting function.
- Cost savings: RPOs help startup organisations save costs by only paying for the hiring resources utilised versus having full-time recruiters on staff. There is no need to invest in recruiting tech and tools upfront either, as these are provided by the RPO organisation.
- Industry insights: Startups benefit from the broad knowledge, expertise and market insights RPOs have gained from decades working with multiple clients across all industries.
Why can RPO Be More Effective Than Agencies for Startups?
Compared to staffing/recruiting agencies, RPOs provide a more strategic partnership and customised solution for each client’s unique needs.
- Deeper partnership: RPOs embed their team and work closely with you and your teams to understand your culture and vision. Agencies tend to operate more independently.
- Comprehensive services: RPOs handle everything from sourcing to onboarding your new hires. Agencies focus specifically on candidate searching and screening.
- Customisation: RPOs tailor their approach, including developing branded recruitment marketing assets for each client. Agencies use more generalist methods.
- Metrics/analytics: With direct access to recruiting data and dashboards, RPOs provide insights into hiring funnel metrics. This allows for continual optimisation and cost efficiencies.
- Scalability: It’s easier for startups to scale RPO services up or down as your needs change. With agencies, contracts/costs are less flexible.
The ROI for Startups
While RPOs may require an upfront investment, the ROI will provide long-term savings and benefits through:
- Improved quality of hire: The talent specialists found in RPO organisations can assess candidates thoroughly to ensure hires are a strong fit in terms of your culture and skill-set.
- Faster hiring: By outsourcing recruitment, you can accelerate your growth, using the expertise and speed of RPO hiring and ensuring open roles are filled promptly.
- Lower turnover: Better hires matched to your startup needs lead to better retention rates and less churn – vital for continuity and achieving your growth targets.
- Cost savings: By eliminating the need for you to hire and train internal recruiters, RPOs create significant cost efficiencies.
Working with a strategic and experienced RPO partner will give you a competitive advantage and the opportunity to quickly and efficiently build your team. The expertise and infrastructure of an external partner empowers you and your teams to stay focused on your business growth.
Omni is a trusted and award-winning provider of RPO solutions – these are designed to work and fit within your organisation, supporting your hiring objectives, and delivering accelerated growth. Click here to find out more about our RPO solutions, or contact us for an informal discussion about our services.
T: 0161 929 4343
E: insights@omnirms.com
