Elizabeth Rennie commented, "Growth in the RPO market will remain strong in the period 2014 to 2017. The role of RPO is broadening significantly in support of major organizations and the RPO vendors are also increasingly offering more focused "source-only" services to meet the needs of smaller organizations."

Within large organizations, RPO has broadened beyond sourcing and selection & assessment services to play a much stronger role in the end-to-end recruitment value chain encompassing pipeline planning and development through onboarding. In particular, there has recently been a marked up-tick in employer branding services, now increasingly being complemented by the provision of workforce planning, building and management of talent pools, and labor market analysis.

RPO vendors are additionally moving beyond just permanent hires to offer a unified approach to addressing the major organization requirement for combined permanent and contingent labor through blended Managed Service Program (MSP)/RPO services.

These service enhancements are being complemented by rapid geographic expansion of the RPO market, with over a third of RPO contracts expected to cover multiple countries by 2015. This is leading to significant investment in new offices by RPO specialists, with 50% of vendors including for example Hays, KellyOCG, and IBM Kenexa currently undertaking significant geographic expansion, particularly in emerging markets in Asia and Africa such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia and in Nigeria.

NelsonHall's vendor evaluation and assessment charts for RPO are available for a limited period to buy-side organizations at RPO Vendor Evaluation.

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