Offshoring is defined as the transfer of a business process to a foreign country to take advantage of the lower cost of operations in the foreign location.

Offshore Recruitment Process Outsourcing thus, can be defined as when some or all of the recruitment processes are outsourced at an overseas location to take advantage of the labor wage arbitrage.

Companies sometimes look at offshoring a select non-core group of functions that makes their internal teams more productive and thus improves the hiring manager satisfaction with the internal recruitment department.

However automated the recruitment process has become, a large portion of the recruiters time is still taken up with resume searching (Job Boards, ATS), Internet mining/sourcing, resume screening, response management, candidates processing (online technical tests, assessment centers) and other functions which, when managed correctly, can be successfully outsourced.

Most recruiters would rather utilize their time with business development, building relationships and networking candidates or spending time with their hiring mangers than undertaking many of these outsourceable functions.

Services that offshore RPO companies offer:

• Candidate Sourcing or Resume Mining: The offshore company can search your own database, ATS, their own database of candidates, job boards, search engines, blogs and forums to build a candidate pool. In many cases, due to the time difference, the offshore company will help reduce your time to fill by looking for the best active and passive candidates while your team in the US is sleeping.
• Job Marketing: Some offshore companies can help you write more effective job descriptions to improve the candidate response rate. They can advise you on what job boards to use to optimize candidate quality. Others may offer more vanilla offerings like taking on the work of posting jobs on the various job boards and community websites and keeping them updated. By keeping the job current, your posting will be viewed by many more candidates.
• Resume Screening: Tired out looking at unqualified resumes that don't fit the requisition? Recruiters are often inundated by resumes when advertising on job boards. Screening resume costs the recruiter a lot of time when their focus should be on building relationships and networking. Offshore companies can help screen resumes to find the best matches.
• Calendaring or Interview Scheduling: You can give away the onerous task of scheduling interviews and making travel arrangements for interviews etc to a staffing coordinator based offshore.
• Technical Interviews: Some offshore RPO companies offer assistance regarding conducting in-depth phone interviews or even technical interviews. The strong education, and sometimes technical, background of the recruiters does help here. You can use the offshore company to do a phone interview with the candidate and understand the candidate's motivation for a job change. The recruiters can evaluate at the candidates on role fitment, aptitude and attitude. Your choice of vendor becomes critical here. - some companies come very close to US onsite recruiters interims of evaluating candidates and building a strong relationship.
• Reference Check & Background Screening: Offshore companies to do offer reference check and background screening services.

Who should consider RPO?
Contrary to what people may believe, even one person independent recruiters can look at offshoring to increase their productivity. A lot of recruiters I connect with spend about 60-70% of their time looking for resumes, screening them, scheduling interviews etc. Almost all of them feel that their time can be better spent on developing client and candidate relationships or networking.

For larger companies, the decision is easier. They can offshore activities that are non core and keep the high value add activities for in-house recruiters. This not only increases the recruiter's productivity but also their job satisfaction.

Are you ready for offshore RPO?
The following checklist will help determine if you are ready of offshore some of the recruitment functions.
I am looking to solve the following problems (check all that apply):

• Your recruiters are spending too much time on job boards- searching for resumes and then screening unqualified resume responses
• You feel your recruiters should be spending more time on the phone building relationships
• Your hiring manager is dissatisfied and breathing down your neck to reduce the time to hire
• Your recruiting budget has been slashed and you are being asked to deliver more with less
• You want a focused group looking for diversity candidates.

Building blocks of a successful offshore RPO relationship

• Get executive buy in: Any outsourcing decision impacts the organization. When you decide to outsource some or all of your recruitment functions, you must make sure there is a top executive who wants this initiative to succeed.
• SLAs and Deliverables: Establish clear SLAs that establish services requirements and key deliverables. Vendors adhering to a strict set of SLA's with clear process guidelines, targets and QA procedures should remove the majority of service a delivery uncertainties.
• Assign a dedicated executive: Depending on the amount of work offshored, you need to have someone from your firm dedicated, full time or part time, into managing the relationships with the vendor. The vendor should know who to go to in case they have a problem.
• Contracts: A lot of people I meet with say "offshoring is too difficult" or "offshoring doesn't work". A large portion of "reasons for failure" for offshoring can be avoided with strong contracts between the client and vendor. However, one word of caution here- the state of local laws in some of the offshore countries is abysmal so pursuing contract grievances against vendors that are solely based in an offshore location is a nightmare. Look for companies that have US presence.
• Communication channels: You need to have a clear communication channel for work to flow between the vendor firm and yours and vice versa. Make sure you have the escalation procedures in place in case deliverables get delayed.
• Be patient: Don't look for offshoring to secure a quick win- offshoring has to be a long term strategy. It is like a new team you have added thousands of miles away- no matter how good they are, they will take a little time to understand your business, your company culture, the way you interact with your candidates, your clients and your employees.

Implementing a successful outsourcing program is usually a complex process but when managed correctly, will yield major rewards and ROI.

Authored by: RadixThink (www.radixthink.com)