How to Select a Global RPO

This article accompanies Thinking Global, Hiring Local.

Lowell Williams, director of the Shared Service and Outsourcing Advisory at KPMG in New York (and the Outsourcing columnist for this magazine), offers these suggestions for hiring a recruitment-process-outsourcing provider:

1 Look at the provider's existing client base. If it has experience in your industry or a related industry, then it may be able to ramp up operations more quickly than a vendor lacking this experience.

2 Consider the vendor's stability. It's frustrating to finally iron out the kinks in your relationship with an RPO provider only to have it bought out by another company and experience a major change of personnel.

3 Evaluate its technology. How difficult is it to train on the RPO provider's applicant-tracking system? What support and training does it provide?

4 Find out if the provider offers service-level contracts based on metrics such as time-to-hire.