The law firm of Bierce & Kenerson, P.C., specialists in outsourcing, describes outsourcing as "the transfer or delegation to an external service provider of the operation and day-to-day management of a business process."  If we adjust that definition for RPO, the definition of RPO would be "the transfer or delegation to an external service provider of the operation and day-to-day management of the recruitment process."  Hyrian is one of only a handful of companies that provides a true RPO service.

To qualify as a true RPO provider, a company must have taken on the majority of recruitment for a significant company — enough to truly claim to be a "provider of the operation and day-to-day management of the recruitment process".

Because RPO has become a trendy term, many staffing companies and similar organizations use it to describe their services.  Close examination, however, will likely reveal that the majority of these companies do not fit the RPO concept.

If you are speaking with RPO companies about taking over your hiring, be sure to ask them the history of their business and understand what viewpoint they bring to the table.  Is their goal to fill an immediate need or to serve as a long-term solution? Are they focused on selling candidates from a database, or on providing a centralized, dedicated recruitment process? Do they offer the benefits of both technological and personalized approaches, or do they require you to work within a technology-centric, low-touch framework? Also, ask for client references to ensure that your recruitment function doesn't become their laboratory in which to test a newly developed but unproven delivery model.