The comparison matrix
| Full-scope RPO | Recruitment support | |
|---|---|---|
| Owns requisitions | Yes | No |
| Runs the ATS | Usually owns it | Works in it or alongside it |
| Manages hiring managers | Yes | No |
| Makes offers | Yes | No |
| Owns candidate experience | The provider | You |
| Pricing | Per hire, or management fee plus cost-per-hire | Fixed fee or monthly desk |
| Implementation fee | Common | None |
| Commitment | Multi-year typical | Rolling monthly |
| Reversible | Hard — the provider holds process knowledge | Within a month |
| Who a hiring manager calls | The provider | Your team |
| Best for | Sustained high volume, control handed over | Variable volume, control retained |
The four RPO models
Enterprise RPO
The provider runs all permanent hiring across the organisation, usually under a multi-year agreement with service levels and volume commitments. The highest commitment and the highest payback where volume supports it.
Project RPO
A defined hiring programme — a new site, a funding round, a seasonal peak — outsourced end to end for a fixed period. Lower risk, and frequently how an organisation tests a provider.
Selective or modular RPO
Named parts of the process handed over, such as sourcing or screening, with the rest retained. Closest to recruitment support, and where the terminology gets genuinely blurred.
RPO support
What we provide. The research and administrative layers run behind an in-house team or alongside an incumbent RPO, with no ownership of requisitions, ATS, hiring managers or offers.
When RPO is right
These are real reasons, and in these situations we are the wrong purchase.
- Sustained, predictable volume. Above roughly a hundred hires a year, implementation cost starts to pay back and consistency becomes worth more than flexibility.
- You want one accountable provider. A single throat to choke on time-to-hire and candidate experience has real value, and support deliberately does not offer it.
- Your internal function is too small for consistency. Where forty hiring managers are each running their own process, a provider imposing one is worth the loss of control.
- You are prepared to commit. RPO payback needs years, not quarters. If you are not willing to sign for that long, you will get the worst of both models.
- Candidate experience is not your differentiator. Where your employer brand is the main reason people join, handing the candidate relationship to a third party costs more than it saves.
When support is right
- Volume is variable. Peaks and troughs suit a desk you can start and stop monthly rather than a contract you cannot.
- You want to keep control of candidate experience. Everything candidate-facing stays with you, or goes out in your name.
- The bottleneck is admin, not process design. If your recruiters are good but buried, you have a capacity problem rather than a process problem.
- You are hiring across several markets. Market-specific compliance checklists are hard for a central team to maintain and are exactly what a support desk is set up for.
- You are a recruitment or search firm. White-label back office keeps consultants billing without permanent resourcer headcount.
- You want it reversible. Support unwinds in a month. RPO does not.
Three risks worth negotiating
Per-hire pricing reintroduces the fill incentive
A provider paid per hire earns more by filling roles, which is exactly the incentive that makes contingency recruitment problematic.
Negotiate: a management fee with cost recovery, or service levels that measure quality of hire rather than volume.
Your employer brand becomes someone else's output
Every candidate interaction — including every rejection — is delivered by a third party under your name.
Negotiate: approval rights over candidate-facing templates, and a measured candidate experience standard.
Exit is genuinely hard
The provider holds the process documentation, the candidate pipeline and the institutional knowledge of how your hiring works.
Negotiate: exit provisions at signature — data return format, pipeline handover, documentation, and a transition period. This gets the least attention and matters the most.
What belongs in the contract
- The scope boundary in writing. Which requisitions, which locations, which seniority, and what is explicitly excluded.
- Data and documentation at exit. What is returned, in what format, within what period.
- Employer brand control. Who approves candidate-facing communication, and what standard applies to rejections.
- Service levels and remedies. How performance is measured, and what actually happens when it is missed.
- Pricing at different volumes. What the fee does if volume halves, which is the scenario most contracts handle worst.
- Compliance responsibility by market. Who performs statutory checks, who holds the audit trail, and who carries the risk if one is missed.
- Sub-contracting. Whether the provider may subcontract sourcing or research, and to whom.
Running both
The arrangement we see most often in mature organisations is not a choice between the two but a deliberate combination: a full-scope or selective RPO running the volume process, with commissioned support for the parts it does not do well.
That is usually specialist sourcing in a scarce function, credentialing in a market the provider does not know, or out-of-hours cover across time zones. We work alongside incumbent RPO providers regularly and it works fine, provided the split of responsibility is written down before anyone starts.
What does not work is two providers with overlapping scope and no written boundary. The gap between them is where candidates get lost and compliance items get missed, and both providers will reasonably believe the other had it.
RPO FAQs
What is the difference between RPO and recruitment support?
RPO takes ownership of the end-to-end hiring process: requisitions, ATS, hiring manager management, candidate experience and usually the offer, under a multi-year contract priced per hire or as a managed service.
Recruitment support provides the research and administrative layers behind your team without owning any of those things, on a fixed fee or a monthly desk with no minimum term. The practical test is who a hiring manager calls when something goes wrong.
What is RPO?
Recruitment process outsourcing is an arrangement where a provider takes responsibility for all or part of an organisation's hiring process, acting as an extension of or replacement for the internal talent function.
Models range from enterprise RPO covering all hiring, through project RPO for a specific programme, to selective or modular RPO covering named parts of the process.
When is full-scope RPO the right purchase?
When hiring volume is sustained and predictable, when you want a single provider accountable for time-to-hire and candidate experience, when your internal function is too small to deliver consistency across many hiring managers, and when you are prepared to commit for long enough for the provider to recover implementation cost.
Below roughly a hundred hires a year the implementation overhead rarely pays back, and support or sourcing usually delivers more per pound.
What are the risks of RPO?
Three come up repeatedly. Per-hire pricing reintroduces the incentive to fill rather than advise. Candidate experience becomes a provider's output rather than your brand, which matters most in markets where your employer brand is the main draw. And unwinding a multi-year contract is genuinely hard, because the provider holds the process knowledge.
None of these makes RPO wrong. They make the contract and the exit terms worth real attention.
Can we use recruitment support alongside an existing RPO?
Yes, and it is common. An RPO strong on process and volume is often weak on specialist sourcing or on a particular market's credentialing requirements.
Supplementing rather than replacing needs a clear written split of responsibility, which we agree at scoping so nothing falls between the two providers.
Do you provide RPO?
We provide RPO support, not full-scope RPO. We run the research, sourcing and support layers inside your hiring process — market mapping, name generation, longlisting, contact discovery, screening support, credentialing, pipelining, out-of-hours cover and compliance support — either behind your in-house team or alongside an incumbent RPO provider.
What we do not do is take ownership of your requisitions, run your ATS, make offers or price per hire. If you need that, a full-scope RPO is the right purchase and we will say so.
How is RPO priced compared with recruitment support?
RPO is typically priced per hire, as a management fee plus cost-per-hire, or as a fully managed service with volume commitments. Implementation fees are common and multi-year terms are standard.
Recruitment support is a fixed project fee or a monthly desk, rolling, with no minimum term, no implementation fee and no per-hire component.
What should be in an RPO contract?
At minimum: the scope boundary in writing, what happens to candidate data and process documentation at exit, who owns the employer brand in candidate communication, how service levels are measured and what happens when they are missed, and whether the pricing model changes with volume.
The exit provisions matter most and get the least attention at signature.
Is modular or selective RPO the same as recruitment support?
It is closer, and the terms overlap in practice. Selective RPO usually still involves the provider owning a defined part of the process end to end, including candidate-facing accountability.
Support sits behind you throughout. If the provider is answering to your hiring managers directly, it is RPO of some kind, whatever it is called in the contract.
How do we decide?
Volume, control and commitment. High sustained volume, willingness to hand over control, and appetite for a multi-year contract point to RPO. Variable volume, a desire to keep control of candidate experience, and reluctance to commit point to support.
If you are unsure, support is the lower-risk starting point because it is reversible within a month.