What’s the difference between Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)?

Every company’s challenges and needs are different. Whether it’s the difficulty of meeting the non-essential operation demands your business is facing or acquiring the right talent so your business can grow the best way possible.

Whatever that is, there are specific solutions that vendors offer to cater to that. Those solutions are Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

In short, Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is a form of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external service provider, whereas BPO is the contracting of non-essential business tasks to a third-party provider.

What are the key differences? We go into further detail below.

The difference between RPO and BPO

Recruitment Process Outsourcing

In a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) model, recruitment is provided by a third-party recruitment agency, which is an extension of the HR department, off-site or on-site. It’s often used for high-volume recruitment (for example, call centre staff), short and medium roles on a project-to-project basis, as well as fully replacing all internal recruitment in an organisation.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing is more than just filling positions when the demand is high; it’s also about enhancing the overall recruitment process in your organisation. Because the whole recruitment process is taken care of, this significantly reduces internal HR time and allowing teams to focus on other important duties.

An RPO provider also takes the time to understand the structure and culture of your business to outline the key characteristics of the perfect employee for the job.

Business Process Outsourcing

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the contracting of non-essential business tasks to a third-party provider. BPO refers to the outsourcing of a process – either front office or back office work.

The BPO industry can be broken down into three categories, each based on location:

  • Offshore outsourcing: hiring a third-party provider to perform business functions in a country outside where the products or services are developed or manufactured. For example, expanding your customer services to other countries and provide a native experience for the customer.
  • Nearshore outsourcing:the third-party provider is in a neighbouring country to where the business is located. For example, if your business is in Ireland, in this case, the BPO provider would be in the United Kingdom or another nearby country.
  • Onshore outsourcing:the BPO provider operates in the same country as the contracting business.

Outsourcing solutions to make your business better

While Recruitment Process Outsourcing and Business Process outsourcing are different, both have one thing in common: their goals to enhance your overall business.

RPO gives you the talent you need to grow your global presence, while BPO gives you the peace of mind to focus on your core business functions. Both are key components to a successful business.

Want to know more about outsourcing?

Cpl is a global provider of people to start-up companies, massive multinationals and SMEs in every sector. We can help you define a set of procedures for workforce planning to avoid or diminish people problems, take advantage of talent opportunities and improve your “talent pipeline”.

Are you considering outsourcing your recruitment process or other operations? Why not request a free consultation with a member of our team and we’d be happy to help.