Key Findings & Highlights:

The Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) market remains confident in 2017, with vendors expecting double digit growth. PESTLE factors, maturity mix of RPO markets, and the shift towards total talent are challenges which the RPO vendors face on a daily basis and are “par for the course”, making for a complicated talent landscape.

Organizations are increasingly realizing that to win the war on talent, they need to leverage the expertise of RPO (or wider talent) vendors, as they cannot keep up to date with the pace of change in the talent acquisition space. RPO (and wider talent) vendors are focused on meeting the expectations of their client organizations by offering a broad range of RPO (and wider talent) services as part of an RPO (or blended RPO) offering; differentiating themselves (through niche offerings geared towards certain size organizations or industries, etc.), offering specialist consultancy services, or being flexible in RPO/blended models on offer, in a bid to be attractive to potential client organizations. 

Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of analytics around their own talent acquisition data, and expect data/analytics services as part of an RPO (or wider talent) offering. 2016/2017 has therefore seen investment by RPO vendors in analytics and multifunctional recruitment platforms, to meet growing client organizational expectations/wider talent trend needs.

In a bid to save some internal operational costs/client organizational spend on RPO services, deliver better client organizational business outcomes, meet changing trends in talent acquisition, and deliver on the vendor service promises, the vendors have restructured their service delivery in favor of centers of expertise, automation of transactional processes, increased expertise of own resources, etc.).