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Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)
Agile outsourced recruitment solutions scaled to suit your needs.
What is RPO?
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) enables you to transfer all or part of your permanent recruitment processes to an external service provider. The right RPO partner, who understands you and your business' requirements, will allow you to streamline your hiring efforts whilst improving candidate quality. By partnering with an RPO provider you gain access to expert recruiters, best-in-class technology, and flexible recruitment solutions that adapt as your business evolves and grows so you can stay ahead of shifting demands and discover tomorrow’s workforce needs.
Our UK RPO teams work in a truly customer-centric way, combining operational excellence with an agile approach to ensure that you get the very best support and up-to-the-minute, expert advice when and where it matters most. Partner with us today and unlock the full potential of your talent acquisition strategy.
Discover the right RPO solution for you
Whether you want to outsource your entire hiring process or simply need help on a particular project, talent group or part of your recruitment process, our agile solutions adapt to changing circumstances and evolve as quickly as your business.
Full RPO is a comprehensive solution that outsources your entire hiring process from sourcing to selection, assessment, offer management and onboarding. We manage timescales, budgets, and application volumes, whilst ensuring compliance and providing accurate and informative data.
Project RPO provides a rapid response to your one-off or short to medium-term talent demands. We can implement an effective hiring process within six weeks and find you the talent you need at the volume and speed you require, without adding headcount to your in-house talent acquisition team.
Modular RPO offers tailored support for recruitment components: sourcing, shortlisting, assessment, interviewing, or onboarding. We provide resources and expertise where needed, building bespoke teams to strengthen capability and integrate seamlessly into your infrastructure.
Our track record
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43,000
Professionals we help start their next chapter
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11,000
Organisations who we help acquire talent
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28
Years of delivering outsourcing solutions to clients worldwide
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60
Countries where we deliver outsourcing services
What makes our Recruitment Process Outsourcing solutions different?
Powered by data
We make data-driven decisions to optimise your hiring processes and deliver the talent you need effectively and efficiently. The key to operational excellence is accurate data, but many businesses struggle to produce consistent metrics and up-to-date market insight. That’s where Market Intelligence comes in. Market Intelligence is our cloud-based platform powered by 100+ data sources and a global team of data scientists, who are experts in talent analytics and the economic and demographic factors that influence talent in the UK and globally. It gives you access to an always-on, personalised talent analytics platform, allowing you to build a truly data-led sourcing strategy and plan for tomorrow.
Enabled by tech
Technology underpins our RPO solutions, enabling us to offer true scalability, deliver enhanced user experiences, and uncover exceptional untapped talent pools mapped to skills.. This includes RW Plus, our technology platform powered by ethical AI and automation, which offers dynamic modules for each phase of the talent lifecycle.
This platform provides our recruitment teams with the tools to deliver the best user experience, efficiently. You can use RW Plus as a complete platform, or it can seamlessly integrate with your tech stack. We work with you to implement the solution that works best for your organisation. We are constantly innovating and improving our tech to meet your future hiring needs, so you can stay ahead of the market without constantly upgrading your own systems.
Delivered by RPO experts
Our business is built on providing the expertise to solve your toughest resourcing and talent management challenges. We have talent solutions specialists at every stage of the hiring lifecycle. Our teams in the UK will get to know you, champion your organisation’s story, and connect you to professionals who can transform your business. We have strong in-built capability for skills-first, diversity and environmental, social and governance (ESG) hiring needs. Our powerful combination of talent marketers and sourcing partners can help you explore and develop more diverse talent pools. Our experts in selection ensure a fair and meritocratic process every time. Whatever your challenges, we provide practical solutions and operational excellence at scale and speed, flexing the size and make-up of our team to match your requirements.Trusted by leading organisations
Meet our expert RPO team
Jessica Holt
Managing Director, EMEA
Jessica joined us in 2021 to establish our Consultancy function and now leads our EMEA Outsourcing business, delivering industry-leading RPO, MSP, Consultancy and SOW solutions.
Ryan Broad
Head of Growth, EMEA
Ryan is a strategic leader unlocking growth and innovation across EMEA. With expertise in AI-driven talent solutions, he helps organisations overcome complex workforce challenges.
Robert Brighton
Sales Director, Europe
Robert has 12+ years’ experience in recruitment. He drives European growth by helping clients build tailored outsourcing solutions focused on long-term impact and service excellence.
Mairianne Reardon
Global Head of Growth and Sales Enablement
Mairianne joined us back in 2017, to head up the APAC Sales team and is now is committed to growing sustainable client partnerships across the globe.
Discover more of our recruitment process outsourcing services
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Project RPO
Delivering short-term goals on full-time roles.
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Hire Train Deploy
Build tech talent, enhance diversity and bridge skill gaps.
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Resource Augmentation
Expert consultants employed by us, deployed to you.
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Managed Service Provider (MSP)
Maximising potential across the full lifecycle of non-permanent resources.
Read more
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Contact us to discuss your recruitment outsourcing needs
FAQs
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What is the difference between RPO and contingent workforce solutions (CWS)?
Simply put, RPO relates to permanent hiring where your provider will manage the full end to end recruitment cycle or just specific parts of the cycle. Contingent Workforce Solutions (CWS) is a service offering to support the delivery and management of non-permanent or contract resources. RPO is often a solution for long-term hiring strategies whilst CWS offers your organisation flexibility for shorter term or project-based hiring. Together, they offer comprehensive and highly flexible solutions to all your talent needs. -
What is the difference between RPO recruiters and a traditional staffing agency?
A recruitment outsourcing provider acts as an embedded extension of an organisation’s talent acquisition team, which can be tailored to your hiring needs - whether it is support for the end-to-end hiring cycle or specific areas.
Outsourcing providers find talent through the best channels for the client, including direct sourcing, referrals, internal mobility or engaging staffing agencies
RPOs provide insight into both hiring and market activity through data analysis and technology platforms.
These providers support the full recruitment process, identifying and implementing ways to improve efficiency and enhance the experience for both clients and candidates.
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What are the benefits of using a specialist RPO company?
The benefits of Recruitment Process Outsourcing include:
Scalability: Recruitment Process Outsourcing allows your business to be more flexible and therefore can scale up and down based on business needs, this makes it an ideal solution for companies with fluctuating hiring demand.
Technology integration: RPO solutions are underpinned by technology. Access to recruitment technologies are integral to sourcing the right talent for your organisation. Tech can be fully implemented into your recruitment processes or can be integrated seamlessly into your tech stack. An RPO partner will work with you to find what works best for your organisation.
Cost efficiency: Through optimised hiring processes and economies of scale RPO solutions can reduce recruitment costs for your organisation.
Reduced time-to-fill: With access to talent pools RPO providers have expertise and access to wider talent networks therefore reducing time to hire and strong quality hires.
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How do you manage the RPO process and ensure candidate quality?
From workforce planning, right through to onboarding talent, our RPO solutions manage the end-to-end hiring process. Through our focus on building sustainable partnerships with our clients, we create all our solutions alongside our clients, ensuring they are tailored to meet their specific needs. Ultimately, our processes are designed to deliver the right quality of candidates with efficiency to meet our clients' expectations. -
Do you offer RPO solutions on a global scale?
Yes, as well as the UK, Robert Walters Outsourcing delivers talent into more than 60 countries for our clients. We have client account teams in 23 countries and a network of 6 global service centres that support our on-site teams, this allows us to be truly global and provide agile delivery of our services wherever your organisation may need to fill vacancies. -
What kind of companies benefit from RPO?
Companies of all sizes and from all industries can benefit from Recruitment Process Outsourcing. Large organisations can leverage recruitment outsourcing providers to handle high-volume hiring, streamlining talent acquisition. Small and medium-sized businesses can benefit from RPO by gaining access to top talent without the need to build an in-house recruitment team, allowing them to scale more efficiently.
By partnering with a recruitment outsourcing provider organisations can improve their time to hire, increase candidate quality whilst improving overall hiring experience for the candidate, therefore making this an ideal solution for any organisation looking to optimise their recruitment process.
Our offices span the UK—from London to Birmingham and Manchester—and extend globally. Contact us today to learn how we can assist with your outsourcing requirements.