Recruitment process outsourcing
A named recruiter working your roles as part of your team, on a predictable monthly cost instead of a fee per hire.
What RPO actually means
Recruitment process outsourcing is handing part or all of your hiring to an outside team that runs it as though they were your own recruiters. Not a vendor you send vacancies to and wait — a person embedded in your process, using your systems, whose week is spent on your roles.
The reason companies move to it is rarely a shortage of agencies. It is that per-vacancy hiring restarts from nothing every time, and that the cost of a contingency fee stops making sense once you are hiring every month rather than twice a year.
It is materially cheaper than an in-house recruiter in the US or UK, which is the usual reason a company in one of those markets runs this from Islamabad. That is a cost argument, and we'd rather make it plainly than dress it up.
How the engagement works
You get a person, not a portal
One named recruiter who learns your product, your teams and what a good hire looks like for you. The value of this model is almost entirely in that accumulated context, which is why it is one person rather than whoever is free.
Your process, not ours
They work in your applicant tracking system, use your interview stages and represent your employer brand. If we think something in the process is losing you candidates we'll say so — but changing it is your decision, not a condition.
Continuous, not per-vacancy
Pipelines are kept warm between roles instead of restarted each time. That is the practical difference from paying per hire: when the next req opens, the search did not start from zero.
Reporting you can act on
Weekly pipeline reporting — where candidates are, where they're dropping out, and what that says about the offer or the process. A recruiter who never reports a problem isn't finding any.
Is this the right model for you?
It depends on volume, not on company size — and often the answer is no
A dedicated recruiter fits when
- You're hiring continuously rather than occasionally
- You have no in-house recruiter, or one who is overloaded
- You're opening a team in a new market and have no local network
- Your engineers are spending their week screening CVs
Don't buy this if
- You hire a handful of people a year — the placement fee is cheaper and carries no risk
- You have one urgent senior role — that's a search, not an ongoing engagement
- You want someone to post adverts and forward the responses
In those cases the 18% placement fee is cheaper and you only pay on success.
Common questions
What is recruitment process outsourcing?
You hand part or all of your hiring to an outside team that runs it as though they were your own recruiters — your process, your ATS, your employer brand. In our case that is a named recruiter working your roles, not a queue you file tickets with.
When does a dedicated recruiter cost less than per-hire fees?
It depends on volume, not on company size. At a handful of hires a year the 18% placement fee is cheaper and carries no risk, because you only pay on success. Once you are hiring continuously, the per-hire fees add up past a monthly retainer. We will do that arithmetic with you honestly — including when the answer is that you don't need us monthly.
Do we have to change our hiring process?
No. The recruiter works inside your process and your applicant tracking system. If we think something in it is losing you candidates we will say so, but changing it is your call, not a condition of working together.
Filling a leadership role instead? Executive search. Building an engineering team? IT recruitment. Or read agency versus in-house recruiter for the fuller comparison.
Tell us your hiring plan and we'll do the arithmetic
How many roles, over what period, in which markets. We'll tell you which model costs you less — including when that answer is the per-hire fee.