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A grounded way to set things up, without disruption

If you’re considering Recruitment Process Outsourcing, chances are recruitment has started to feel heavier than it used to. 

Not because your team isn’t capable, but because hiring itself has changed. The market is more unpredictable. Candidate behaviour has shifted. Hiring managers are under pressure. Internal TA teams are often expected to deliver faster outcomes, with less capacity, and with very little room for error. 

That’s usually the moment organisations begin to explore an RPO partnership. And it can be an excellent move, when it’s done for the right reasons, and built on the right foundations. Because RPO isn’t simply another supplier relationship. It’s a more embedded way of delivering recruitment. It becomes part of your operating rhythm, your hiring culture, and your candidate experience. 

At Pillar by White Horse Employment, we believe that matters. Recruitment affects people, and how you recruit says a lot about who you are as an employer. 

So if you’re about to begin an RPO partnership, here are a few things worth putting in place first. 

Start with the “why”, not the workflow

Most RPO programmes don’t struggle because the provider isn’t capable. They struggle because the business hasn’t aligned early enough on what success looks like. Before you talk about process maps, SLAs or service design, it’s worth getting honest about the real problem you’re trying to solve. 

Is it speed? 

Is it quality? 

Is it agency reliance? 

Is it inconsistency across hiring managers? 

Is it candidate drop-out? 

Or is it simply that the team is stretched and needs breathing room? 

RPO works best when the focus is simple and shared and when the outcome is clear enough that everyone can recognise progress when they see it. 

Decide what “better” means, and what you want to protect

Metrics have their place. But good recruitment isn’t just numbers. It’s experience, reputation, fairness and trust. 

The best RPO partnerships balance performance measures with quality measures. You can absolutely track time-to-hire, but not at the expense of shortlisting standards. You can reduce agency spend but still keep niche hiring realistic. You can increase output, while protecting candidate experience. 

In many organisations, the things most worth protecting are the ones that aren’t always measured like hiring manager confidence, candidate care, fairness and consistency, employer brand and quality of decision making.

Those deserve a seat at the table too. 

Build the case

If you’re introducing RPO into an organisation, Procurement and Finance will quite rightly want to understand the rationale. And that’s fair, because a well-built RPO model should stand up commercially. The strongest business cases aren’t based on assumptions. They’re built on what your hiring actually looks like today: 

- volumes 

- pinch points 

- drop-off rates 

- time lost in admin 

- repeated shortlisting 

- duplicated effort 

- rising agency usage when internal teams are stretched 

Often, the story isn’t just cost reduction, it’s wasted time, lost talent, and unnecessary friction. When you can show that clearly, buy-in becomes much easier. 

Appoint one person internally who’ll keep it steady

This is one of the most overlooked factors in RPO success. It doesn’t have to be someone senior. It just needs to be someone trusted who will act as the internal “anchor” someone who can keep the partnership moving, support hiring managers, and ensure decisions don’t drift. 

RPO involves change. Even when it’s light touch. And in any organisation, change needs a steady hand. Without that internal point of contact, programmes can lose momentum, not because the service isn’t good, but because people revert to old habits when pressure rises. 

RPO should feel like support, not a takeover

One of the biggest fears organisations have is that RPO will feel like recruitment is being removed from the business. But when it’s designed well, that isn’t what happens. 

The best RPO partnerships feel like relief. Like structure. Like clarity. Not like control. 

They make hiring managers’ lives easier. They reduce noise. They stabilise delivery. They remove the “daily drag” that slows teams down. And importantly, they allow internal TA teams to get back to what they do best: partnering with the business, not chasing admin. 

Cultural fit matters more than most people realise

An RPO team doesn’t just deliver recruitment activity. They represent you, speak to your future employees and shape how candidates experience your business, often long before an interview takes place. That’s why cultural fit matters. Your RPO partner needs to sound like you. Respect your values. Understand your standards. Handle candidates with care. And build trust with hiring managers (not enforce process for the sake of it). 

At Pillar, this is where our B-Corp values really come to life, bias-aware hiring, inclusive sourcing, ethical decision making, and candidate experience that stays respectful even when hiring becomes high volume or high pressure. 

A final thought

If you’re considering RPO, here’s the simplest question we recommend starting with: 

What do we need to protect, while we improve performance?

Because that’s where responsible recruitment lives: in the choices you make when demand is high and time feels short. 

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If you’d like, we’re happy to share what a light-touch Pillar pilot could look like, designed to add capacity, improve consistency, and strengthen delivery without disrupting your existing model. Get in touch with Kelly at kelly.wand@wh-employment.co.uk to book a discovery call and find out if RPO is for you.

To delve deeper into RPO check out our blogs on What is RPO? And 10 Benefits of RPO.