What is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)?

RPO means handing your recruitment - some of it or all of it - to a specialist provider who runs it as an extension of your business. At Vermelo that covers sourcing, screening, assessment, offer management and onboarding, delivered under your brand. You keep strategic control; we run the engine. It's built for businesses hiring at volume who want quality and speed without an ever-growing agency bill.

What's the difference between RPO and MSP?

RPO manages your permanent hiring; MSP (managed service provider) manages your contractor and contingent workforce - the suppliers, the rates, the onboarding and the IR35 compliance. Plenty of businesses need both, which is where a total talent programme comes in: one partner, one data set, both sides of your hiring covered.

What is embedded recruitment (RaaS)?

Embedded recruitment - sometimes called Recruiter-as-a-Service - places experienced recruiters directly inside your team. They use your systems, carry your brand and represent you to candidates, but you switch the capacity on and off as hiring demand changes. It's the answer to hiring spikes that don't justify permanent headcount but do outgrow your current team.

How much does RPO cost compared to using recruitment agencies?

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. Book a discovery call and we'll model it against what you're spending now.

Do you handle IR35 and FCA compliance?

Yes - it's designed into the model rather than added afterwards. Our MSP solution manages IR35 status determinations, right-to-work checks and supplier standards across your contractor workforce, and our screening services cover FCA pre-employment and annual maintenance checks for regulated businesses. We're not lawyers and don't replace your own legal advice, but compliance is the reason many regulated firms come to us in the first place.

How quickly can you get started?

Faster than you'd think. Embedded recruiters can usually be turned round in a matter of days; a full RPO or MSP programme takes longer to stand up properly, because doing it properly matters. Tell us what's urgent and we'll tell you honestly what's achievable - that conversation costs nothing.

VERMELO | TECHNOLOGY & DIGITAL RECRUITMENT SOLUTIONS

SENIOR HIRING CARRIES THE HIGHEST RISKS AND IT DESERVES THE MOST RIGOUR

Plenty of providers recruit developers. Far fewer can recruit developers into an insurer, a fintech or a financial services firm, where the technology team sits inside a regulated business and hiring carries screening, right to work and often IR35 obligations along with it. That intersection, technology talent for regulated environments, is where Vermelo does its best work.

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Explore all our talent solutions

Who we recruit

Developers and software engineers
Data scientists, analysts and engineers
Business analysts and product professionals
IT leaders from team lead to CTO
Digital transformation and change specialists
Plus the contractor populations that technology functions run on, which is often where the risk quietly accumulates.

How we deliver it

Embedded Recruitment (RaaS) for technology hiring surges: experienced tech recruiters inside your team, under your brand, scaled with the roadmap
Managed Service Provider (MSP) deserves particular attention in technology, because tech teams accumulate contractors faster than any other function, supplier by supplier, until nobody owns the rates, the IR35 determinations or the full picture. Our MSP brings all of it under one accountable model
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) for sustained technology hiring at volume
Total Talent Solutions when your tech workforce is permanent and contingent in roughly equal measure, which most are
Talent Advisory for ATS selection and implementation, technical assessment design and workforce planning

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Solution finder

Hiring one specialist engineer through an agency? Gerrard White Consulting, our sister brand, recruits technology and change talent across the UK, Europe and US.

Some commonly asked questions

We’ve been asked many questions about our services and detail some of the most common questions here, but sometimes a quick call is the best way to get more detail about your specific challenge.

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That is the single most common technology workforce problem we see, and it is an MSP conversation. One model takes over the suppliers, standardises rates and contracts, runs consistent IR35 status processes and gives you one real-time view of spend and risk. The agencies can still supply, but to your standards.
Yes. Structured technical assessment is part of delivery, and our advisory team designs testing frameworks as standalone projects. In one client engagement, introducing structured IT skills testing improved interview-to-offer ratios by 25 percent. Fewer interviews, better hires.
Our recruiters work the technology markets daily, from mainstream engineering to the data and pricing technology that regulated businesses run on. Where a stack is genuinely rare, we say so upfront and tell you honestly what the market looks like, because a confident shortlist built on keyword matching helps nobody.

VERMELO | TECHNOLOGY & DIGITAL RECRUITMENT SOLUTIONS

SENIOR HIRING CARRIES THE HIGHEST RISKS AND IT DESERVES THE MOST RIGOUR

Who we recruit

How we deliver it

Some commonly asked questions

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