Recruitment Process Outsourcing

More than RPO—talent realized

Our scalable recruitment process outsourcing solutions help your business succeed

Our recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is all about finding the right people to realize your organization's full potential. Our approach is simple — we listen, understand your needs and build a talent acquisition model that can adapt and evolve with your business. We've been partnering with clients around the world across all types of industries, building bespoke recruitment solutions for needs varying vastly in size and complexity for more than 20 years.

As part of a global organizational consultancy and backed by decades of RPO experience, we ensure that every part of the talent acquisition journey — from recruiting to developing and retaining the best people — works for you. That's why we were named a Leader in RPO by Everest Group in 2023 and the HRO Today Baker's Dozen 2022.

We work alongside you. Our global recruitment teams are full of local experts — analyzing the latest RPO market insights, understanding your company's specific needs and finding candidates that are the right fit for your team. We understand the nuances that make a big difference in recruiting the best talent.

With Korn Ferry you get more than talent acquisition, you get a talent partner.


How partnering with Korn Ferry helped Alcon transform their talent acquisition


Korn Ferry and Westpac discuss what makes a good partnership

How we help you

Creating an RPO staffing model to adapt and evolve

What makes your business succeed? People. Our recruitment process outsourcing is committed to finding you the right people at scale so your business can thrive. As part of a global organizational consultancy, Korn Ferry RPO knows how to listen and analyze your current and future recruitment needs to create a talent acquisition model that can adapt and evolve with your business. Our experts, supported by 50 years of people science and predictive AI technology can recruit, at speed, talent that will realize your organization’s potential.  

Powered by the science of talent recruitment

Korn Ferry recruitment process outsourcing is powered by Korn Ferry Intelligence Cloud – our AI end-to-end talent platform that combines employee data, market data and Korn Ferry-owned data and insights to accurately inform talent decisions with precision. It gives you and our recruiters the competitive edge to not only source talent, but make sure the talent is the right fit for your business. This seamless flow of data creates a faster end-to-end process from sourcing, assessing, securing and developing talent. Simply put, you get the best talent faster.

Korn Ferry Recruit – our AI enabled sourcing platform leveraging Korn Ferry’s intellectual property and talent market insights to improve talent acquisition outcomes with better decision making, increased recruiter productivity and more robust candidate pools.

More than RPO, your talent partner

We are a global organizational consultancy, helping organizations and people realize their potential. We do this by making sure that every part of the talent journey – from recruiting to developing and retaining the people that make your business a success – works for you, and for them. When your people thrive, so does your business. Our recruitment outsourcing expertise, methodologies and tools support everything from workforce planning to total workforce management, while keeping diversity core to everything we do. Korn Ferry RPO offers more than recruiting the best talent – we also make sure that talent has the best opportunity to succeed.

A global team of recruitment process outsourcing experts

Our firm is global and local to you where it matters. Not only do we have regional industry expertise and advisory consultants that have deep local knowledge, our recruiters are in-country and on the ground working side-by-side with you. We understand the cultural nuances that make a big difference in hiring the best talent. We can flex and scale as you need. We have both the scale and knowledge to deliver complex, global and agile RPOs.

Positively embracing RPO change

To successfully implement a recruitment process outsourcing strategy, your business needs to buy in to the change process, which can be difficult. We are experts at people transformation. It’s what we know best – how to implement organizational change through people. Korn Ferry RPO follows a robust and agile strategy to make sure we deliver the highest possible service. From discover and diagnosis, through to implementation, our transformation experts are 100% dedicated to making your RPO staffing a success, providing reliability and continuous improvement in a world where the only constant is change.

Each RPO partnership is personalized

We provide each organization with a personalized talent acquisition model that aligns with their needs

No two recruitment outsourcing partnerships look the same for our organization. That is because no two organizations have the same challenges to tackle in the same way. We know how to listen and analyze your current and future total workforce needs to create an innovative talent acquisition model that will enable you to adapt and evolve with your business.

Below are some ways we help our clients step into Korn Ferry RPO.

  • Full outsourcing

    A recruitment process that is fully outsourced allows us to partner together, discover organizations’ individual needs and goals and create a plan together that helps transform to perform end-to-end in a hiring process. This highly scalable model allows the flexibility and agility your organization needs to succeed in the ever-changing world of hiring. It tackles talent acquisition needs across all areas in your business with a consistent, strategic plan.

  • Blended/hybrid/co-sourced

    A blended approach to recruitment process outsourcing allows for that partnership to focus, tackling certain locations, divisions or talent areas of businesses while retaining some in house. Organizations that want to preserve some internal management but still reduce recruitment costs and improve time to hire in their recruitment process might consider this hybrid model.

  • AI and data-enabled recruitment technology

    Korn Ferry Nimble Recruit is our fully integrated end-to-end technology solution for high-volume, professional, and early career hiring. Using artificial intelligence and our best-in-class IP, Nimble Recruit automates the hiring process, delivering a candidate-driven experience built around your brand, including 24/7 candidate care via a chatbot.

    Learn more

  • Project recruitment

    Whether you need 10 people or 200, from new grads to senior managers, our project recruitment team will match the right talent, numbers and locations for your corporate relocation, new product launch, mergers and acquisitions, geographical expansion, graduate recruitment, or special skill demand.

    Learn more

Let us be part of your success story

Contact us and see how our consulting services can help you achieve your business goals.

Frequently asked questions for RPO

What is recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)?

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is the process by which a business outsources part of or all its recruitment function to an external partner. This allows an organization who wants to improve recruitment to benefit from an RPO organization like Korn Ferry – we use our global outsourcing recruitment teams of local experts, our 50 years of people science and predictive AI technology to better understand your goals and how to accomplish them together.

Whether your organization has specific roles to fill or simply wants to enhance their RPO staffing with a specialized team, RPO offers greater flexibility and agility in the search for the best talent. The most effective RPO solutions are customized to fit the unique recruiting needs of an organization based on the present market.

Why is RPO important and when should you outsource recruitment?

Talent Acquisition is a crucial part of a business’ strategy and RPO can help make talent acquisition a strategic business function. Every company needs to build and run recruiting as a highly professional, agile, and flexible solution that gives the business access to the right talent, in the right place, at the right time. Every day a business goes without filling a position is a day that business is not operating at maximum capacity. Instead of rushing to replace employees with poor-fit candidates and risking higher employee turnover, partnering with an RPO company like Korn Ferry will be a highly effective outsourcing solution to today’s recruiting challenges.

A team of RPO experts will help create custom candidate profiles, fill key positions, and empower diversity. The key to recruitment process outsourcing at Korn Ferry is in the alignment between recruitment goals and long-term business objectives.

What are the benefits of recruitment process outsourcing?

An effective recruitment process outsourcing solution creates the opportunity to reduce costs, add efficiency to hiring, find better candidates and minimize time to hire. Outsourcing recruitment opens organizations up to expertise in nearly every field, removing restraints that expanding may present; meaning new territories, new ideas and new goals no longer have the same boundaries. RPO partners excel at working in tandem with internal teams, delivering on the strategy and goals of the business, and combining additional skills and expertise to form an integrated, holistic recruitment approach.

What are the KF consultation steps of Recruitment Process Outsourcing?


Korn Ferry will work to understand your business’ current state and future goals, and will make a plan to be the bridge between both. This process works best in a partnership that is transparent at each step. It continues to evolve and grow throughout the partnership to remain up to date with the needs of our clients.

What is the importance of talent recruitment in an organization?

It is imperative that companies develop smart, forward-thinking solutions for talent discovery that maximize resources, deliver results efficiently and make the most of their time and investment. Business thrives on recruitment getting the best fitting candidate in each job every time. A process that can anticipate the needs of an organization and flex with it can reduce your hiring costs, speed up hiring and help you find quality candidates so you can grow faster with motivated, high-performing teams.

What’s the difference between an RPO recruiter and a RPO staffing company?

When companies outsource all or part of their hiring and recruitment processes, they partner with a third-party RPO company. An RPO provider is a strategic partner that works closely with organizations to understand their strategy, processes, technology, people, brand and culture. An RPO provider’s goal is to build strategic solutions that help organizations find the best candidates for roles as quickly and efficiently as possible, immediately and in the future.

Staffing agencies are more transactional and less strategic than RPO providers. They’re focused on solving an immediate problem: sourcing candidates for a specific role or temporary, contract or seasonal positions. They don’t have expertise in handling aspects of the talent acquisition process other than recruitment. They don’t offer consulting or strategic services designed to improve a company’s overall talent acquisition.

What’s involved in RPO services?

RPO services vary depending on your needs. An RPO provider will help you diagnose the current status and work hand in hand with you. You can choose full-service RPO solutions, where a provider supports you in evaluating and changing your approach to talent acquisition and takes care of every aspect of the recruiting process. These companies manage sourcing, screening, assessing, interviewing and even onboarding candidates, all while informing strategy.

You may also want to outsource recruitment for just one set of jobs or one location, or outsource a portion of the recruitment process that has become a challenge. RPO services take the processes out of your team’s hands so they can focus on higher-priority work.

What should you look for in a top RPO company?

Leading RPO companies take a holistic approach to talent acquisition and apply talent science, technology and process to solve recruitment problems. Top RPO companies realize that they can’t take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to recruitment and bring the experience, assets and science to the table to solve problems. Every organization is different and needs an agile, personalized approach to RPO.

The best option is likely a firm with experience in a variety of areas. Look for experience in talent acquisition, talent management, digital recruiting technology and organizational consulting. This way, your recruitment processes benefit from a micro and a macro view. With the help of a top RPO company that takes a holistic approach to RPO, you’ll see the impact your people make on an individual, team and enterprise level.

You’ll also want to work with an RPO company that views you as a partner. The ideal partner will strive to understand your people, workflows, culture, market and industry. And they’ll be able to use their expertise to determine the best RPO solutions to propel your business forward.

Talk to an RPO expert