RECRUITMENT PROCESS OUTSOURCING | AWARD WINNING RPO
A LEADING RECRUITMENT PROCESS OUTSOURCING (RPO) SOLUTION BUILT AROUND YOUR BUSINESS
Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) means transferring some or all of your recruitment to a specialist provider who runs it as an extension of your business: not filling individual vacancies like a recruitment agency, but owning the process: workforce planning, sourcing, screening, assessment, offers and onboarding, delivered under your brand and measured against your numbers.
When hiring demands increase, many businesses struggle to balance quality with speed. High agency costs, inconsistent processes and poor candidate engagement lead to inefficiency and missed opportunities. Internal recruitment teams often face resource constraints or outdated systems, making it difficult to scale effectively.
Named as the Best Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Business (Global Recruiter Awards 2025), Vermelo delivers a deeply integrated, strategic RPO model recognised for client immersion, continuous improvement and measurable outcomes.
Our award-winning RPO solution provides end-to-end recruitment management designed to optimise speed, quality and cost. We embed our expert recruiters, technology and analytics into your business, managing sourcing, selection, compliance and onboarding from start to finish.
We offer full-service or project-based models that flex with your hiring volume, backed by complete transparency and data-led reporting.
Faster hires, lower costs, zero compromise.
Vermelo RPO solution at a glance
| Service | End-to-end permanent hiring under the client's employer brand |
|---|---|
| Scope | Workforce planning, sourcing, screening, assessment, offer management, onboarding |
| Models | Full RPO, partial RPO, project RPO, hybrid RPO |
| Best suited to | Mid-sized UK companies, scale-ups and growing businesses making 20+ permanent hires a year |
| Primary sectors | Insurance, insurtech, pensions, fintech, financial services and other regulated businesses |
| Recognition | Winner, Best RPO Business, Global Recruiter Awards 2025 |
Rising costs, talent shortages and hiring pressures
Without a structured recruitment strategy, even the best teams can end up in reactive hiring mode, spending too much on agencies, losing great candidates, and risking compliance issues.
Common challenges include:
Overloaded HR teams juggling multiple roles and suppliers
High agency fees and poor-quality hires
Slow time-to-hire damaging your employer brand
Low applicant volume or niche skill shortages
IR35 and compliance pressures adding risk
These challenges don’t just delay hiring; they impact growth, customer satisfaction and retention.
That’s where a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solution, like Vermelo’s, changes everything.
What Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) delivers
Vermelo’s RPO solution replaces fragmented hiring processes with one seamless, data-driven recruitment engine.
We manage every stage of your recruitment lifecycle, from workforce planning and sourcing to onboarding and optimisation, giving you consistency, control and confidence.
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Reduce hiring costs & increase ROI
Lower cost-per-hire by replacing agency mark-ups with a predictable, performance-based model.
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Hire faster without sacrificing quality
Access deep candidate networks and AI-driven sourcing to cut time-to-fill and keep projects on schedule.
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Scale recruitment effortlessly
Whether hiring for a seasonal surge, a new location or a rapid growth phase, RPO flexes with your demand.
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Build a strong employer brand
Deliver a seamless, professional candidate experience that elevates your reputation and boosts retention.
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Gain data-driven insights
Real-time recruitment analytics improve decision-making and help forecast future hiring needs.
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Ensure compliance & diversity
Structured processes built around employment law and inclusive hiring, with the evidence recorded.
Moving you from reactive hiring to a proactive, scalable talent strategy that grows with your business.
When to choose our RPO solution
Our RPO model is built for organisations that need hiring to scale without losing control.
It’s the perfect solution, if you…
…are hiring at sustained volume across multiple roles or teams
…are running a growth or transformation programme with big hiring targets
…want to consolidate multiple agencies into one accountable process
…face unpredictable hiring costs and want a budget you can plan around
…have an internal team at capacity, or no internal recruitment function at all
…are planning a transition where TUPE may apply and compliance matters
Vermelo’s RPO gives you the structure, expertise and cost control to handle any of these, whether you outsource one team’s hiring or the whole lifecycle.
Flexible RPO models to fit your hiring needs
Every business hires differently. The beauty of Vermelo’s RPO model is its flexibility. We know a one-size-fits-all approach won’t cut it, so with each new instruction, we will design our RPO solution to match the scale, duration and complexity of your recruitment requirements. Whether you need a fully embedded team, a targeted short-term project or a blend of internal and external support, there’s an RPO approach that fits.
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Full RPO
End-to-end recruitment partnership
A fully integrated, long-term solution for ongoing or high-volume hiring. We manage the entire recruitment process, providing continuous insight and improvement.
Best for: sustained growth and data-driven workforce planning -
Partial RPO
Plugging the gaps with outsourced support
Ideal for teams that need expert help with sourcing, screening or onboarding while managing other stages of the recruitment process in-house.
Best for: businesses with strong HR teams who need targeted support -
Project RPO
Targeted short-term recruitment support
Perfect for recruitment surges, product launches or seasonal campaigns. We deploy a dedicated team to deliver results fast, no permanent overhead.
Learn more about Project RPO → Best for: quick, focused hiring bursts like projects and seasonal hiring -
Hybrid RPO
The best of both worlds
A blend of in-house and outsourced recruitment. Keep culture-fit and interviews internal while outsourcing time-consuming sourcing or compliance tasks.
Best for: teams transitioning to full RPO or scaling gradually
Why Choose Vermelo
Choosing an RPO partner is a long-term decision. Here is what you get with us.
Award-winning RPO delivery: Named Best Recruitment Process Outsourcing Business at the Global Recruiter Awards 2025, recognising an RPO model built on genuine integration rather than arm's-length service delivery
Full ownership of the recruitment lifecycle: From workforce planning and attraction through to offer, onboarding and reporting. One accountable partner, one process, and a delivery model that flexes as hiring volumes rise and fall rather than one that only works at a fixed size
Real sector knowledge: Deep experience in insurance, insurtech and financial services. We know the roles, the market and where the talent actually sits
Compliant workforce transition: TUPE is where RPO moves often come unstuck. We have run these transitions before and manage consultation, transfer and continuity of hiring without the process stalling
Reporting you can act on: Live visibility of time to hire, cost per hire, pipeline health and source performance. Shared openly, including when the numbers are uncomfortable. What to measure and how often to review it: how to review your RPO partner.
ISO 9001 certified: our quality management system has been certified to ISO 9001 since 2023 and was recertified in June 2026
Smarter, faster and more human recruitment, built as a partnership rather than a supplier relationship.
Sector expertise that stands up to scrutiny
Vermelo can run RPO programmes for businesses in any sector, but most of our experience and track record sits inside regulated businesses: insurers, insurtechs, pensions, fintechs and financial services firms, where hiring at volume also means FCA screening at volume and where a compliance shortcut isn't a shortcut. If our process holds up there, it holds up anywhere. The same rigour, structure and reporting come as standard, whatever your industry.
In-house, agency or RPO: what changes?
All three models have their place. But when you’re hiring at sustained volume, the differences start to matter. Weighing RPO against building your own team? The comparison and the five questions that decide it.
An in-house team, at volume, typically means:
- Fixed salaries and tooling costs, whether you’re hiring or not
- Slow to scale up, and harder still to scale down
- Recruiters stretched thin when demand spikes
Agency support, at volume, typically means:
- Fees that climb with every single hire
- Process and candidate experience that vary by agency
- Nobody owning the full picture across your hiring
RPO gives you:
- A predictable, agreed fee structure, so costs don’t climb with every hire
- Capacity that flexes with demand, without hiring or letting anyone go
- One accountable process end to end, run under your brand
- Clear KPIs and reporting, so you can see what’s working
Best fit for RPO: sustained hiring at volume, or businesses that want one accountable process from attraction to onboarding. It’s a partnership rather than a quick fix, and shows its value over months, not weeks.
Talk to us about outsourcing your recruitment
If you're hiring at volume and the process is eating your team's week, it's worth a conversation. Tell us roughly how many roles a year, where they sit and what isn't working now. We'll come back with what an RPO would look like for you, what it would replace and what it would cost against what you're spending today. Nothing gets scoped until you've seen the numbers.
Download the "Why you need RPO" factsheet, a one-page summary of the hiring problems RPO solves, the benefits of a full RPO model and how ours works in practice, for taking into a leadership or budget conversation.
Or, complete the below form and we’ll be in touch
What a good RPO looks like (and what it’s not)
A great RPO partnership is more than outsourcing; it’s true collaboration. Here’s what to look for and what should worry you.
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Deep workforce insights that inform strategy
Reporting that only tells you what happened, never what to do next
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Seamless, on-brand candidate experience
Candidates can tell exactly where your business ends and the provider begins
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Shared goals and accountability between HR and hiring managers
SLAs that measure activity, like CVs sent, rather than outcomes, like roles filled well
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Smart use of technology without losing the human touch
Automation used to cut corners, so candidates only ever hear from a system
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Predictable costs and measurable ROI
Pricing you can’t forecast, and value you’re asked to take on trust
Our clients see faster hiring, lower costs, stronger retention and happier teams. Don't take our word for it. How to tell whether a UK RPO provider is reputable gives you the questions to ask, the compliance test and a scorecard, and it applies to us as much as anyone.
RPO + MSP = Total Talent
One partner covering your whole workforce, permanent and contingent.
Permanent hiring
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)
Your permanent hiring, run end to end under your brand.
You’re hereContingent workforce
Managed Service Provider (MSP)
Your contractors and suppliers, managed and compliant.
Learn more →The result
Total Talent
Every hire, every worker type, one accountable partner: one process, one data set and total visibility of your workforce.
Explore Total Talent →RPO, answered
Scope, cost, your in-house team, and how to compare providers.
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As much or as little as you scope. A full RPO owns the recruitment lifecycle end to end: workforce planning, sourcing, screening, assessment, offer management and onboarding. Partial and project models take on specific stages or campaigns. Whatever the scope, it runs under your brand, in your systems, against agreed KPIs. Strategic decisions stay yours; the engine is ours to run.
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Full RPO suits sustained, high-volume hiring where you want one accountable partner. Partial works when a strong in-house team needs specific stages lifted: sourcing, screening, onboarding. Project RPO handles a defined burst: a launch, a new site, a seasonal campaign. Hybrid blends in-house and outsourced, and is often the route for teams moving towards full RPO gradually. If you're not sure, tell us what you're hiring and we'll say which fits, including if the answer is "not full RPO yet".
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Usually, they stay. RPO most often adds capability around an in-house team rather than replacing it. Where a programme does involve transferring people or an existing outsourced arrangement, TUPE may apply, and we have experience running compliant workforce transitions. Every situation is different and the legal detail needs proper advice, so we scope this openly and early rather than leaving it as a surprise in the contract.
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It depends on the scope of the brief. A project can move quickly: think weeks, not quarters. A full programme takes longer to stand up properly, because process design, system integration, team onboarding and governance are worth doing right rather than fast. We'll give you an honest timeline on a scoping call.
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There's no single number, and anyone who gives you one without asking questions is guessing. What we can say: RPO replaces unpredictable per-placement agency fees with a model you can budget, typically a management fee, a cost-per-hire arrangement or a blend, shaped around your volumes. For most businesses hiring at scale, that means a meaningfully lower cost-per-hire and a number the CFO can actually forecast. Run your current spend through the agency spend calculator, then tell us and we'll model it against what you're paying now.
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Start with fit rather than size. Ask what the minimum annual hiring volume is, whether they've recruited in your sector before, how the fee is structured and what happens if volumes fall, whether the programme runs in your ATS or theirs, what the exit looks like, and whether it can flex into project or embedded work when the pattern changes. For the record, ours is 20 or more permanent hires a year. Our comparison of UK RPO providers puts the main options side by side, Vermelo included.
What our clients say
“We were very happy with the service provider and couldn’t recommend the team enough for any process outsourcing needs. We would absolutely work with them again in the future.”
Head of People, London
“Vermelo were an excellent RPO partner and helped build a team that has excelled. Thank you.”
Head of Talent Acquisition, London
“The calibre of candidates was excellent, and I was able to focus on other areas of the business whilst feeling confident that Vermelo RPO were taking care of this recruitment process from end to end”
MD, London
Trusted talent solutions specialist* for leading brands across insurance, insurtech, pensions, financial services, fintech and more:
*Across the GWV Talent Solutions Group
When new FCA legislation mandated annual maintenance checks, including DBS and financial reviews, for all staff, a major UK insurer needed a robust, auditable system for detecting post-employment risks and ensuring full compliance. Vermelo collaborated with HR, compliance, and leadership teams to design and implement a streamlined end-to-end process, conduct gap analyses, and provide ongoing advisory support. The result: a repeatable, transparent screening framework that secures FCA compliance, lowers regulatory exposure, and frees HR to focus on strategic priorities.