Recruitment is now undergoing a transition phase what with business process outsourcing kicking it up a notch.

In the wider global economy, business services have always been the fastest growing segment. One of the key drivers of growth in this area is the trend that is moving towards business process outsourcing. Today, recruitment has undoubtedly become one of the newest business functions to undergo a transformation through business process outsourcing.

The process of recruitment involves the delegation of tasks and responsibility to a third party. When you’re talking about business process outsourcing recruitment, it would mean that the overall direction of the recruitment policy would remain in-house but the entire responsibility for the implementation of the policy would reside with a recruitment process outsourcing vendor.

However, recruitment process outsourcing is very different from a search-and0selection consultancy, headhunting or any of the HR related services. The trend towards business process outsourcing started in the 70’s, when the corporate giants became aware of the fact that they could no longer efficiently handle their businesses effectively.

What are the Growth Factors?

Globalization and advancing technology are two main growth drivers in the world of outsourcing. Both these factors have succeeded in driving down costs by moving business processes to platforms where labor costs are lower and the talent pool is wider.

The advanced communications technology brings people from all over the world together and drives efficiency. Besides this, risk management techniques provide for a better management module. The new business models focus largely on the shareholder and stakeholder value, which leads to an increase in the transparent recruitment costs.

Lastly, because the workforce tends to be more diverse, the work patterns in turn become more flexible. Mobility of labor globally makes recruitment a more dynamic process today.

What are the Future Prospects for Recruitment?

The trend towards globalization reinforces polarization of workforces into a large group of non-core workers and a smaller group of core workers. Organizations have become increasingly keen on looking for core value within their businesses, and an increase in the transparency of costs helps to encourage organizations to outsource their recruitment processes to external parties (if the price and the scale of operations are right).

In future, whether organizations prefer outsourcing depends largely on the trust and culture harbored within the organization. Rather than price, success generally depends on relationships. Recruitment process outsourcing vendors on the other hand will have to show a greater level of expertise than any internal recruiter but will also have to demonstrate qualities such as good governance, sustainability, and leadership, in order for companies to start trusting them.

But the potential market for recruitment process outsourcing is huge. In a world where market is largely global, the future prospects for recruitment are practically limitless.