RPO is most productive end-to end

BANGALORE, INDIA: It is said that constraints lead to innovation. Recession forced various organizations to cut down operational costs and look for outsourcing options. While outsourcing in technology and process had been in the industry for a long time, what came up newly was outsourcing of HR processes.

Companies hire thousands of employees in a span of 4-5 months. As this is never possible with a team of handful HR employees, it is supported by a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) firm. Vati consulting is one such firm which found the opportunity and harnessed the space long before recession hit the market.

Speaking to Akanksha Prasad, CIOL, Amitabh Das, Founder, CEO - Vati Consulting, talked about the company, the significance of an RPO and the challenges.

Amitabh, could you tell me something about your company?

We established Vati Consulting in 2003 in order to provide end- to-end hiring solutions to organizations. We realized that there is a pool of talent, but there was a need to locate the right talent for the right role in the right organization.

We also work with job seekers and young professionals in improving their skill set to achieve higher career objectives.

What services do you provide and what are the benefits involved?

We basically offer five solutions. Starting from Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), which involves retainer-ship and success based hiring, second is permanent hiring like mass hiring (turnkey solutions), Executive / Niche Hiring and Senior-level Hiring.

Outsourcing is another part of our services, where we provide with temporary and payroll hiring. We also help with Off Campus solutions like customized training solutions and Training & Deployment of freshers/laterals. Our last offering OnyHR is a unique initiative for HR Professionals. This helps organizations to search for the best HR talents.

All these processes help organizations in reducing cost and increasing interest and motivation levels, leading to better attrition management. However, it involves few risks like the time to get productive may be more if the training program is not effective, since the hiring is managed by a third party it may not foster innovation and there is also a risk of people getting stagnated at roles or levels.

A lot of companies are looking at outsourcing a few responsibilities to RPO. But is it just a handful of MNCs? Or Indian companies are looking at it as well?

The trend of off shoring in this space is seeing a good growth. However, MNCs are leading the pack, while Indian companies still have a mind block. Indian companies still believe in 'building my own empire'. I see that a few forward looking companies have already joined the bandwagon, but it would take a while for other Indian companies to follow the suit.

I cannot name my clients for the confidentiality reasons, but we work with both Indian organizations and MNCs.

What are the risks involved in this business for the companies and RPO vendors?

There are a few risks involved. An organization can risk fulfillment time lines, while working with a wrong service provider. Another risk is that wrong hiring can bring down the quality and lead to productivity issues.

Running an RPO itself is an expensive affair, given the various indirect costs.

Another challenge is that companies outsource the process when they feel that in-house recruitment process is not matured. So, when an organization partners with a RPO, they expect it to sort out the unstructured process.

One of the biggest unstructured stage we have seen is demand / requirement management and forecasting. This involved too many low and high, hot and cold requirements shared and then taken back.

For organizations, there is a risk that a lot of RPO vendors lack functional expertise that leads to repeating the same mistakes time and again, and due to this, they fail to suggest/forecast process changes for the client.

Do you see any evolution in roles and responsibilities of an RPO? Would they start looking at complete recruitment in a company rather than contracts and requirement based hiring?

Despite the challenges of working with an RPO, I believe that it is a boon for large companies. And because of this more and more companies would outsource their complete recruitment process rather than just giving out contracts for requirement specific hiring.

RPOs perform best when they work end-to-end, having a complete view of the processes than just a part of it. Companies who have believed and outsourced the complete recruitment process have benefited the most. This also needs the organization to be mature enough to be able to forecast requirements and where growth is planned.