"RPO reviews" means two different things. If you are looking for reviews of RPO providers, start with how to tell a reputable RPO provider and our top ten RPO providers in the UK. This post is about the other meaning: how to review the Recruitment Process Outsourcing partner you already have, so you know whether the arrangement is working before the renewal date tells you.
Why the review matters more with RPO than with an agency
An agency gets paid when it fills a role. An RPO provider is usually paid a management fee, monthly or per hire, whether the hiring that month was good or not. That is the right model for ongoing hiring, but it moves the accountability from the invoice to the review. If nobody is looking at the numbers, the arrangement is judged by anecdote, which in practice means by whichever hiring manager complained most recently.
The other reason is drift. An RPO team starts with a brief, a set of targets and a lot of attention from both sides. Eighteen months later the business has changed, the roles have changed and the targets were set for a company that no longer exists. A review is where the arrangement gets brought back into line with what the business now needs.
What to measure, and how to define it
Every measure below needs a written definition agreed with the provider, because most of the arguments in RPO reviews are about definitions, not performance.
Time to fill and time to hire: Time to fill runs from the role being approved to the offer being accepted. Time to hire runs from the candidate first entering the process to acceptance. They answer different questions: the first is about the whole system, the second about the provider's part of it. Agree the start and end points and report both. For context, the average time to hire across sectors was 44 days in 2023 according to AMS and The Josh Bersin Company; your own baseline from before the RPO started matters more than any benchmark.
Quality of hire: The measure that matters most and gets measured least. Three proxies work: probation pass rate, retention at twelve months, and a hiring manager rating at ninety days. None is perfect; together they tell you whether the people coming through the door are the right ones.
Offer acceptance rate, and where candidates drop out: A high decline rate at offer usually means the role was mis-sold somewhere in the process, on pay, on working pattern or on the job itself. Drop-out by stage shows where the process is losing people.
Cost per hire, and total cost against the baseline: Cost per hire is the RPO fee plus advertising, tools and assessment, divided by hires. The more useful comparison is total recruitment cost now against what you spent before, including agency fees. Our agency fee calculator gives you the agency-spend baseline to compare against.
Service levels: These are the provider's own turnaround measures: days from brief to first shortlist, hours to acknowledge an application, days to give interview feedback. They are the early warning system, because they move before the outcome measures do.
Candidate experience: A short survey at the end of the process, whether or not the candidate was hired, with a score and a free-text box. Every rejected candidate is a customer, a future applicant or a referrer. What a poor experience costs is in is your candidate experience costing you?
Hiring manager satisfaction: A similar survey on the other side: was the shortlist right, was the process fast enough, did the provider understand the role. This is where cultural fit and understanding of the business get measured, rather than asserted.
Compliance: Right-to-work checks, references and any sector-specific screening completed before start date, every time, with the evidence filed. For contractors, status determinations under the off-payroll rules. This is a pass or fail measure, not a trend.
Flexibility: Did the provider scale up when volume rose and scale down when it fell, and how quickly? Did the team handle the roles they were not built for, or push them to agencies?
How often to review
Three rhythms, each doing a different job. Monthly, an operational review of the numbers: open roles, service levels, offers made and accepted, anything stuck. Half an hour with the RPO lead and the head of talent or HR. Quarterly, a business review that looks at trends rather than single months: quality of hire, retention, cost against baseline, candidate and hiring manager feedback, and the forecast for the next quarter. The provider's account director and someone senior from your side should be in the room. Annually, a review of the contract itself: scope, pricing, service levels and whether the targets set at the start still fit the business.
What a good review looks like
The provider brings the data, in the agreed definitions, with the trends already drawn. You bring what the business is planning, because the provider cannot resource next quarter's hiring if they hear about it next quarter. Every issue leaves the room with an action, an owner and a date, on whichever side it belongs. And the review covers what your side owes the provider too: hiring manager availability, quality of job specs, speed of interview feedback and offer sign-off. An RPO team starved of those will miss targets whoever they are.
Warning signs
Numbers that only appear when they are good. Time to fill quoted without a definition. Hiring managers quietly going round the RPO to agencies. No candidate feedback being collected. The provider's own team changing every few months. A quarterly review that keeps being postponed. None of these is fatal on its own; two or three together mean the next review needs to be a serious one.
If the numbers are off
Take the measures to the review, not the anecdotes. Show what is off target and over what period, and ask for a remediation plan with dates and a named owner on the provider's side. Give it one review cycle. Meanwhile read what the contract says about service levels, credits and exit, and take legal advice before you rely on any of it.
Then ask two honest questions. Is it the provider or the brief? And is it the provider or the model? A business with twenty hires a year across three specialisms may be better served by an embedded recruiter or a specialist agency than by any RPO, however good. Eleven ways to resource your hiring, compared sets out when RPO fits and when it does not. If the model is right and the provider is not, a well-run exit with handover of the pipeline and the data is part of what you are entitled to expect.
If you are not sure whether the problem sits with the provider or with your own process, a recruitment process review is one of the things our talent advisory team does.
How Vermelo reports
We measure our own work on four things and report them to every client: quality of hire, overall candidate experience, hiring manager satisfaction and time to fill. We would rather be judged on those than on how the last conversation went. If you are starting an RPO or reviewing one, Recruitment Process Outsourcing from Vermelo explains how we set targets at the start, and the free Hiring Score shows you where your hiring stands on the same measures today.
Talk to us about reviewing your RPO, or about what a review would show if you had one.
Reviewing an RPO partner, answered
Three rhythms, each doing a different job. A monthly operational review of the numbers: open roles, time to fill, shortlist and feedback turnaround, offers made and accepted, anything stuck. A quarterly business review that looks at trends rather than single months: quality of hire at probation, retention, cost per hire against the baseline you started with, hiring manager and candidate feedback, and the forecast for the next quarter. And an annual review of the contract itself: scope, pricing, service levels and whether the targets set at the start still fit the business. If your provider only turns up with numbers when they are good, that is the first thing to change.
Enough to see the whole process, with each one defined in writing. Time to fill and time to hire, with the start and end points agreed. Quality of hire, measured by probation pass rate, retention at twelve months and a hiring manager rating at ninety days. Offer acceptance rate and where candidates drop out. Cost per hire, and total cost against what you paid before. Service levels for the provider's own turnaround, such as days to first shortlist and time to give candidates feedback. Candidate experience, usually a short survey with a score. And compliance checks completed before start date. Targets and definitions belong in the contract, not in a slide deck produced later; the wording of service credits and remedies is one for your legal adviser.
Take the numbers to the review, not the anecdotes. Show which measures are off target, over what period, and ask for a remediation plan with dates and a named owner on the provider's side. Give it one review cycle to work. Meanwhile check what the contract says about service levels, credits and exit, with legal advice before you rely on any of it. Two questions are worth asking honestly before you change provider. Is the problem the provider or the brief, because an RPO team starved of hiring manager time or fed vague job specs will miss targets whoever they are. And is the problem the model, because a business with twenty hires a year in three specialisms may be better served by an embedded recruiter or a specialist agency than by any RPO. If it is the provider, a well-run exit with handover of the pipeline and the data is part of what you are entitled to expect.