If so, be sure to get the research you need to make the right purchasing decisions. ERE's new report, Recruitment Process Outsourcing 2006: An Assessment of Outsourcing Prevalence and Effectiveness has all of the information you need about the leading recruitment process outsourcing service providers.

The past year has seen a dramatic increase in recruitment outsourcing service offerings targeted toward corporate HR departments. These offerings are loosely described as "Recruitment Process Outsourcing" (RPO) and may include, in all or in part, every recruiting-related activity stopping short of making a hire.

Outsourced activities range from strategic (workforce planning) to the administrative (generating offer letters) and nearly always involve sourcing candidates. The RPO services firm may hire the displaced recruiters of the company they are now servicing. The services firm may be responsible for all hiring of a certain class of worker, such as non-exempt positions. Contract recruiters may be located at a client site, but often service the client remotely. RPO services firms may help a company re-engineer its recruiting department by standardizing processes; they may write job descriptions; they may facilitate the transition from candidate to new hire.

Whatever the arrangement, the service firms are expected to reduce recruiting department costs and increase efficiencies, or at least maintain cost and service neutrality. They are expected to enhance the quality of the candidates delivered to hiring managers, and they are expected to demonstrate the effectiveness of their sourcing methods.

In the spring and summer of 2006, ERE invited from its community HR executives, directors, and managers at corporations to participate in a web-based survey about Recruitment Process Outsourcing. ERE analyzed 334 qualified responses from organizations across a variety of industries, company sizes, and locations. Major questions addressed in the research include the following:

• Which recruitment activities and functions are most extensively outsourced?
• What type of services firms are recruitment activities and functions outsourced?
• What are the key business drivers for outsourcing recruitment activities and functions, and in what order of importance?
• What types of jobs are outsourced, across which job families?

Concurrently, ERE conducted detailed interviews with a number of RPO vendors about the depth of their service offerings, their perspective on recruiting processes, and their approach to building end-to-end processes for their customers. ERE interviewed RPO customers about their reasons for outsourcing and their expectations, the depth and scope of their engagements, their relative satisfaction with their service provider, and how they will measure success.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing 2006 was produced with the assistance of talent management consulting firm The Newman Group (TNG). The report contains two articles authored by the firm's leading experts on recruitment practice change management and RPO selection. TNG was instrumental in establishing the blueprint for evaluating the vendor's capabilities in the area of RPO, and in bringing RPO to ERE's attention as business area worthy of in-depth research. TNG also contributed knowledge about its RPO experience in the December 2005 issue of ERE's Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

Summary of Select Research Findings

• Full lifecycle RPO is not prevalent among the survey respondents. Half of all survey respondents indicated they outsourced all or part of their recruiting function; half said they did not. Of the 165 respondents that indicated they did not outsource any part of their recruiting activities or functions, only 9% said they would do so in the near future.
• Most respondents consider the use of a third-party search firm recruitment outsourcing. Of those that indicated outsourcing recruitment, 57% said they used a professional staffing firm, and 66% said they used more than one vendor, specifically to augment acute hiring needs or fill niche positions.
• Sourcing, background checking and drug testing, and screening and assessment are the most commonly outsourced processes among the survey respondents. These services are provided by all vendor types – professional staffing firms, RPO services firms, HR consulting firms, and technology vendors.
• Cost savings alone is not the most important reason for outsourcing recruitment. organizations want to increase their recruiting effectiveness by delivering better-quality candidates to hiring managers.