How AI is changing RPO

AI has already had major impacts on the recruitment industry, and RPO is no different. Let’s discover how the technology is changing the world of RPO.

There’s no arguing against the fact that AI is changing the world of recruitment in a big way. We’ve already written about some of the changes likely to come to recruitment in the next year thanks to artificial intelligence. Still, one area that deserves more attention is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO).

While many people can predict the ways AI will be used in general recruitment – such as using generative AI to write job adverts or finding candidates with machine learning-powered search engines – the future of RPO is less clear. Here is how AI is currently revolutionising RPO, and what the future might hold for embedded recruitment.

AI in RPO

RPO is the practice of contracting an established agency to embed themselves within your organisation, using their expertise and technology to improve the way your recruitment processes work. This can be anything from a long-term transformation to a project-specific contract, and its flexibility is one of the reasons people can sometimes struggle to see the role AI can play in RPO.

However, there are some clear uses for AI that are much more relevant in RPO than in traditional recruitment. For example, one of the strengths of RPO is it allows organisations to recruit proactively, with the embedded agencies looking at the needs of the business and anticipating when new hires will be needed. This is a complex process that requires a lot of data analysis, which is something at which AI excels.

An AI-powered embedded recruitment team can use the technology to predict your staffing needs, down to the skills and qualifications you will require, enabling you to be prepared for the future. Similar technology can be used to predict the career paths of new hires, based on data from previous employees, letting you plan even further ahead.

One underlooked aspect of AI in RPO is knowing when not to use the technology. Because an embedded recruitment team is able to see your company’s everyday operations and big picture, it will be able to consider things like your employer brand and candidate experience. For all the benefits of AI, candidates still prefer a human touch to the recruitment process, and an RPO team is more likely to strike the right balance.

The Impact of AI on RPO Recruitment

All the above technologies have had huge impacts on RPO as an overall industry. For example, a survey of recruiters found that 89.6 percent reported that AI had sped up their hiring process.

Similarly, 85.3% said AI had reduced the time it takes to hire a candidate, while 77.9% said the technology had made recruitment cheaper. This is a major benefit for both RPO agencies, who will see reduced costs, and clients who will be able to vastly increase their time to hire.

RPO requires talented, experienced recruiters; however, a lot of the process involves menial, number-crunching tasks. A huge benefit of AI has been to streamline these tasks, leaving the recruiters the time to actually utilise their knowledge and expertise to improve the client’s processes. 

However, speed and efficiency are not the only benefits. When used properly and trained on the right data, AI can be more accurate and adept at finding candidates.

One major benefit of the technology is that it can look purely at candidates in terms of their skills, qualifications and experience. This means it can ignore demographic data in a way a human recruiter cannot. Recruiters looking through hundreds of possible candidates can end up letting unconscious bias cloud their decisions, rejecting talented people for reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to do the job. An AI prevents this from happening, making it all the more likely that the best candidate will end up securing the role.

The Future of AI In RPO Recruitment

As AI becomes more advanced, it can provide even more benefits for RPO. However, these benefits are not always clear, and often embracing the technology too quickly can lead to issues. For example, nearly 80 percent of recruiters believe that in the near future there will be no need for human beings to be involved in the recruitment process at all.

However, the same study found that most candidates would like a human to at least make the final decision about who to hire. For more senior jobs, the lack of a human touch might make it seem like your company doesn’t care about hiring them. The future of RPO will likely see companies trying to strike a balance between automation and candidate experience in order to secure the best hires.

Another key consideration will be the use of AI by candidates. It is possible to reverse-engineer algorithms to understand what the AI is looking for, and 90% of people surveyed think that AI can be manipulated by candidates in a way that could lead to them securing the job.

The future of RPO therefore needs to be one in which embedded recruiters are aware of this risk and are taking steps to prevent it. This is another reason why it is so important for humans to be involved in the process. However, by combining human and AI insight, RPO can become much more effective and efficient, producing excellent results.

While the future is unclear, one thing that is certain is that companies looking to utilise RPO need to have access to skilled recruiters with plenty of experience utilising technology. That’s one reason why so many use Allen Embedded. We’ve been trailblazers when it comes to using AI in recruitment, and we can ensure your business moves forwards in the right direction. Get in touch to find out more.

About Allen Recruitment

We are a team of expert recruitment consultants with offices in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Sweden, Belgium and Poland, providing recruitment solutions and job opportunities all over Europe. We offer temporary, permanent, contract and contingency roles in a variety of industries such as IT, Tech, Finance, Telecom, E-commerce, Engineering and more.