Do You Need an RPO in 2027? How to tell
If agencies are filling more than one in five of your hires, it’s worth taking a closer look at how your recruitment is set up. It’s one of several signs that an outsourced recruitment partner could make a real difference, and most of them are easy to spot once you know what to look for.
Most businesses don’t wake up one day and decide they need RPO. It’s usually a build-up: a hiring spike nobody planned for, a team stretched past what it can absorb, or a target that can’t be hit with the people and time available. This checklist helps you see where you stand.
Nine signs RPO could help
Tick any that apply:
- You use recruitment agencies for more than 20% of your hires
- Your hiring has peaks and troughs rather than a steady pace
- Your recruitment team has shrunk and capacity or expertise is limited
- You’re finding it hard to recruit for one or more areas of the business
- You have a large one-off project on the horizon
- You have significant growth plans without the resource to deliver them
- Turnover of new hires is running above 30%
- Your team is working hard, but the business needs hiring to move faster
- You’d like to use AI in your recruitment process, or want better data on KPIs and EDI
What your answers tell you
Any one of these is a good reason to start a conversation. Several together usually point towards a particular model. And a tick doesn’t always mean RPO is the answer: sometimes a small change to what you already have is the better fit, and we’ll tell you if that’s the case.
RPO isn't one model, it's five
This is where a lot of businesses get stuck before they start looking for a partner: they assume RPO means one thing, usually a full, long-term takeover of recruitment. In reality there are five models, and the right one depends on what’s going on in your business.
Strategic RPO
A good fit if you ticked: growth plans, limited capacity or expertise, high agency use.
We take on a complete talent acquisition solution tailored to your business: your careers website, recruitment marketing, candidate attraction, assessment and the full hiring process, working directly with your line managers. It’s normally a commitment of two years or more, and it frees your HR team to focus on proactive people projects. This is the World Duty Free model, a partnership that started with one project in 2007 and now covers every skill area across the UK.
Project RPO
A good fit if you ticked: a large one-off project, a hiring surge.
For a one-off, urgent, high-volume need with a clear end date. You need a partner who can mobilise fast, scale to meet it and deliver. This is the SSP model: a defined need, a tight timeframe, and a partner who delivers before the peak arrives.
Department RPO
A good fit if you ticked: hard to recruit in one area.
We manage recruitment for a single department, division or skill set, while the rest of your hiring carries on as it is. Wolseley UK, the country’s largest plumbing, heating and cooling trade merchant, outsourced recruitment responsibility for all 500 UK retail outlets to ResourceBank, delivering 1,200 hires a year through a 15-person team.
Early Careers RPO
A good fit if you hire graduates or apprentices.
Early careers recruitment has its own rhythm, channels and candidate expectations. We manage the end-to-end process on your behalf. Charles Russell Speechlys attracts over 3,000 applications a year for its Training Scheme & Apprenticeship Programme and has outsourced the management and assessment of that volume to ResourceBank since 2021, freeing its core team to focus on experienced hires.
On-Demand RPO
A good fit if you ticked: peaks and troughs.
For unpredictable volumes that don’t justify a permanent setup. We’re retained and ready to step in when you need us. Coats plc, a world leader in thread manufacturing employing 17,000 people across 70 countries, uses ResourceBank this way for executive search, an overflow service that has now delivered 250 executive hires across 15 countries.
Three questions we hear most
- My recruitment team is at capacity. What are my options?
Broadly there are three: add permanent headcount, cover the gap with agencies, or bring in an RPO partner who adds capacity and expertise for as long as you need it. Agencies are quick, but the cost adds up. According to the CIPD, the average cost of filling a vacancy in-house is £6,125, and using an agency can double that.
- A hiring surge doesn’t have to mean a permanent increase in headcount.
Project and On-Demand RPO are designed for exactly this. Capacity scales up when the volume arrives and back down when it passes, so you meet the demand without carrying the cost afterwards.
- What does an RPO partner do alongside your existing team?
We work as an extension of your team, not a replacement for it. Depending on the model, that might be the whole hiring process, one department, or just the stages that put the most pressure on your people, such as screening. We work directly with your hiring managers, which leaves your HR team free to focus on the work only they can do.
So, do you need an RPO in 2027?
If several of these sound familiar, the question probably isn’t whether RPO and outsourced recruitment could help, but which of the five models fits. To see two models in practice, read how a Project RPO built for speed and a Strategic RPO built to last each delivered for their clients read our latest case study. If urgent hiring keeps cropping up, you may also like to read our latest insight.
Not sure which fits your business? Let’s chat and we’ll help you work it out.
