In-house vs Outsourcing Recruitment Function

You may have pondered over this question as most businesses do: Should I continue in-house recruiting or consider the recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) model? While both models have their own advantages, the decision lies in the scope and requirements of your business.

What is RPO?

Recruitment process outsourcing is a model in which a business transfers complete or part of its recruiting process management to a third-party staffing service provider. This service provider serves as an extension of the in-house staffing team, taking care of all the front-office, mid-office, and back-office operations.

To understand if recruitment outsourcing or in-house hiring is right for you, let’s take a look at the key differences between them:

Scalability

In-house:

Building an in-house team when the business is doing well and hiring demands are soaring is a sound plan. But what happens when the market demand comes down? With surplus resources and dent on your bottom-line, not to mention added administrative overheads, your business may need to scale down to limit the dent in your finances. Moreover, once the demand soars back up, scaling up the business again can be difficult with the in-house model.

RPO:

Working with an external RPO service provider can help you scale up or down your team with utmost swiftness and cost-efficiency. It also frees you from the administrative hassles of hiring new resources, enabling you to focus more on core business activities as you scale up. For small organizations seeking rapid growth or organizations looking to bring scalability and agility into their business model, working with an outsourced recruiting service provider will offer a maximum advantage.

Scope of Activities

Inhouse:

With an in-house team, you get their presence in your office, enabling them to get closely acquainted with your organization culture. You have a team of experts carrying out recruitment, employee relations, risk management, workforce planning and development, and several other activities. However, when projects increase multifold, certain HR responsibilities take away your team’s valuable time, inhibiting their focus on bottom-line activities or other commitments. This may lead you to a lag in your project or result in overworked resources, and in a worst-case scenario, both.

RPO:

Recruitment outsourcing provides more agility and flexibility when it comes to managing responsibilities. You can make changes to your team swiftly to meet a specific volume of activity. If you are an SME or a start-up staffing agency, RPO may just be the right solution for you. It enables you to manage activities without incurring a hefty cost burden. Moreover, RPOs also provide consultations on workforce management, market mapping, learning & development, and so much more.

Degree of Control

In-house:

You have complete control over your in-house team. It is easy to delegate tasks and set priorities for them. You do have more control over your in-house team than your offshore RPO team. Also, the fact that your team is right in front of you gives you that sense of the higher degree of control over the staffing process.

RPO:

Outsourcing recruitment means you are handing over the control or at least part of it to the external provider. You may work with an offshore team that also caters to other clients. However, many RPOs now provide dedicated resources to clients. QX Global Group RPO division enables clients to interview and pick a team of their choosing and provide maximum control over the team and the process to the staffing firms.

Experience & Expertise

In-house:

When you hire resources, you hire them for their expertise in a particular field of staffing. However, they may yet lack expertise in specific areas and may not be equipped to efficiently manage all the process elements of full-cycle recruiting.

RPO:

With RPO, you work with a team of trained resources with experience catering to staffing firms from varying geographies and industries. RPOs are also equipped with technologies that optimize the overall recruitment process, including mapping, forecasting, analytics, screening, analytics and reporting. The RPO team works to develop and manage the strategic recruitment process and offer bespoke services that bring in process efficiency and elevate service delivery capability.

Concluding Thoughts

In all fairness, RPO teams and in-house teams can work together for your agency. While your in-house team can focus on bottom-line activities, strategic initiatives and internal operations, your external recruitment team can concentrate on managing front-office recruitment activities. There will also be times when your in-house team won’t have the time and resources to address your soaring business needs, and that’s when an RPO staffing support can do a world of good for your agency.

About QX Global Group RPO

QX Global Group Recruitment Process Outsourcing division provides scalable recruitment and staffing solutions to perm and temp staffing agencies in the US, Canada, UK, and other European geographies. QX Global Group delivers bespoke solutions to meet business demands unique to your agency, from full-cycle recruiting to employment reference check and candidate sourcing service.

Originally published Mar 29, 2021 10:03:09, updated Feb 06 2024

Topics: Outsourced Staffing Services, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, staffing outsourcing