When an in-house recruiting team cannot keep up, the usual options are to hire more recruiters, use agencies, or bring in a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) provider. There is a fourth option that sits between them: outsourcing only the outbound sourcing, and keeping everything else in house.
What RPO is designed to do
RPO hands some or all of your recruitment process to an external provider. Depending on the contract, the provider may run sourcing, screening, interview scheduling, offer management and reporting, often with its own recruiters working under your brand. It suits organisations that want to transfer the whole function, or a large part of it, to a partner.
The trade-off is control. Your hiring process, candidate relationships and much of the employer brand experience sit with someone else. RPO arrangements also tend to be longer commitments with a significant setup effort on both sides.
What outbound sourcing does instead
Peopleflow Talent Engine covers the top of the funnel: finding, contacting and engaging candidates. We source passive candidates against your brief, reach them by email, LinkedIn, text and voice notes, load engaged candidates into your applicant tracking system, and the interested ones book a call directly with your recruiters.
From that point on, your team runs the calls, interviews and offers. You add outbound capacity without handing over your hiring process.
Side by side
- Scope. RPO can cover the full process. Talent Engine covers sourcing and engagement up to the first call.
- Who talks to candidates. With RPO, often the provider’s recruiters. With Talent Engine, your own team from the first conversation.
- Control. RPO moves process ownership to the provider. Talent Engine keeps it with you, with full visibility through our client portal.
- Pricing. RPO pricing varies widely by contract. Talent Engine starts from £1,999 (USD 2,499) per job, for as little as 150 candidates monthly per job.
- Best fit. RPO for organisations that want to outsource recruitment as a function. Talent Engine for teams that already recruit well but lack outbound reach.
Questions to ask before you choose
- Is our problem candidate supply, or the process that follows? If the interviews and offers run well and the issue is simply not enough of the right people, you need sourcing capacity, not a new process.
- Do we want our own recruiters to own candidate relationships? If yes, keep the conversation in house.
- Are our hiring needs recurring? Roles you fill again and again are where a pipeline pays back fastest.
The hybrid most teams end up with
Many teams combine models: outbound sourcing for recurring roles and a hands-on search for senior hires. Talent Engine clients get 20% off our fees for senior level searches, so both sit with one partner.
If you are weighing up RPO, it is worth seeing what outbound capacity alone would do first. Book a discovery call.