The fledgling ₹400-crore Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) market in India is on a fast growth trajectory and estimated to grow at 40-50 per cent year-on-year.

Core focus

HR services/staffing firms are recording brisk business as organisations are feeling the need to outsource some parts or all of their recruitment functions in order to focus on their core businesses.

Randstad has seen requests for RPO in India more than quadrupling, registering a 120 per cent growth YoY. TeamLease Services has set up a formal RPO unit recently to cater to increased demand for RPO. ScaleneWorks People Solutions has grown its RPO business, 120 per cent YoY, and has ramped up its headcount from 100 to 860 employees over the last three years.

“The top three growth drivers for the RPO boom in 2015 are the need for organisations to enhance quality of hiring, reduce cost of hiring and increase speed of hiring.

Organisations are moving up the value chain, from outsourcing one or two processes and short-term projects to end-to-end RPO that includes everything from sourcing, scheduling, selection to job offer roll-outs and on-boarding hires.” Moorthy Uppaluri, MD & CEO, Randstad-India said.

Huge demand

“We have two businesses — Flexi staffing and Perm staffing. RPO forms 25 per cent of our Perm business today from a zero base in 2012 when we started offering it.”

Said Kunal Sen, Senior VP at TeamLease Services Pvt Ltd, “We are seeing huge demand from mid-sized companies, which want to partner exclusively with us for end-to-end RPO; unlike large companies who prefer to work with multiple RPO partners.”

With RPO, HR departments are freed from non-transactional activities and can focus on value added work such as, predicting skill trends required in future, identifying patterns of successful hires, etc., pointed out Sanjay Shelvankar, CEO, ScaleneWorks People Function.

While organisations can save 70 per cent of their time by resorting to RPO, a good end-to-end RPO provider can help organisations incur cost savings ranging between 30 and 70 per cent.

Global professional services firm, Towers Watson helps organisations in India decide what part of the recruitment function to outsource.

“Most companies start with outsourcing background verifications or testing of candidates. We advise clients to go in for RPO for lower-end and mid-level hires; however, we ask them to retain top-level hiring to lower the risk of being saddled with a candidate who does not have the right competency, culture or value fit,” said Shatrunjay Krishna, Director – Talent Management and Organisational Alignment, Towers Watson India.

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