Finding the right talent is the most important part of growing a business. But for many companies, the hiring process is slow, expensive, and stressful. This is why more businesses are turning to Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO).
If you are looking for the best RPO companies to help you scale, especially in a world where remote work is king, you are in the right place. In this guide, we will break down the top providers, the benefits of RPO, and how to choose the right partner for your specific needs.
What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)?
Before we dive into the list, let’s define it. RPO is when a company transfers all or part of its permanent recruitment to an external provider. Unlike a standard headhunter who just sends resumes, an RPO partner acts as an extension of your own HR team. They manage the people, the technology, and the results.
What Are the Benefits of Outsourcing the Recruitment Process?
Outsourcing your hiring isn’t just about “getting it off your plate.” It is a strategic move that changes how your company grows. RPO companies act as a true extension of your HR team, handling some or all of your talent acquisition functions. These specialized firms manage everything from recruitment consulting and job postings to candidate screening and interviews, depending on your needs.
While it was once mostly large enterprises that used RPO companies, the industry has evolved. Today, RPO providers offer flexible services tailored specifically for small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs). This means businesses of all sizes can now access the same high-level hiring tools and expert recruiters that were once only available to giant corporations.
The Shift: Traditional vs. Remote-Focused RPO Services
In the past, RPO was mostly about filling desks in a local office. Today, the best remote recruiting companies focus on a global talent pool.
- Cost: Traditional RPO often involves high overhead for local office space and regional advertising. Remote-focused RPO cuts these costs by sourcing from lower-cost labor markets without losing quality.
- Scalability: If you need to hire 50 people in a month for a remote project, a remote-focused RPO can flip a switch and access global pipelines instantly.
- ROI: The Return on Investment (ROI) is higher with remote-focused services because you aren’t limited by geography. You get the best person for the job, not just the best person within a 20-mile radius.
1. Resource Savings (Time and Money)
Recruiting top talent is expensive. According to recent data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost per hire in the U.S. is approximately $4,700. For executive roles, this figure jumps significantly to an average of $28,000. When internal HR teams are stretched thin by handling payroll, employee disputes, and benefits, the pressure of sourcing hundreds of candidates often causes critical details to fall through the cracks.
By using recruitment outsourcing services, you save your internal team’s time and avoid the “hidden” costs of hiring. This includes expensive job board subscriptions, high-priced headhunters, and the thousands of dollars lost in manager time during endless interview rounds.
2. Flexibility and Scalability
Business isn’t always steady. One month you might need ten new engineers, and the next month you might need none. An RPO provider allows you to scale up or down based on your actual needs. You don’t have to hire (and then fire) internal recruiters as your hiring volume changes.
Finding qualified talent for any industry is increasingly competitive. In the most competitive sectors, efforts to fill vacancies can drag on for months. This delay has a cascading effect on the business:
- Strain on Teams: For critical roles, businesses may have to shuffle existing employees around to cover gaps.
- Reduced Productivity: Employees taking on unfamiliar responsibilities often face burnout, leading to suboptimal work and the need for expensive overtime pay.
- Loss of Momentum: Projects stall when key positions remain empty, costing the company potential revenue.
3. Better-Quality Hires (Avoiding the “Bad Hire” Trap)
The top RPO firms use advanced data and sourcing techniques to build deep “talent pipelines.” This prevents the most expensive mistake a company can make: a bad hire.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that a bad hire costs a business at least 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings. For mid-to-senior roles, these costs can range from $100,000 to $240,000 when you include recruitment expenses and lost productivity. Beyond the money, a bad hire can damage team morale and cause major project disruptions. The best RPO providers ensure a fast “time to hire” while filling roles with top-tier talent that fits your company culture perfectly.
4. All-Around Talent Management
A great RPO partner doesn’t just find a person; they help with the “employer brand.” They make sure your company looks like a great place to work. They handle the “candidate experience” from the first phone call to the first day of work. This ensures that even people who don’t get hired leave with a positive view of your company.
What Are the Different RPO Services?
Not every company needs the same thing. Here are the four main ways you can work with an RPO provider:
1. Partial-Cycle / Co-Sourced RPO
In this model, the RPO provider only handles certain parts of the process. For example, they might handle “sourcing and screening,” while your internal team does the final interviews and onboarding. This is great for companies that have a strong HR team but need more “top-of-funnel” leads.
2. Full-Cycle / Full Outsourcing
This is the “end-to-end” solution. The provider handles everything: writing job descriptions, sourcing, interviewing, background checks, and onboarding. This is the best RPO service for remote recruitment for companies that want to focus 100% on their product while the experts handle the people.
3. Project-Based RPO
Do you have a specific launch coming up? Or perhaps you are opening a new branch? Project-based RPO is a short-term contract. The provider helps you hire a specific number of people in a specific timeframe. Once the project is done, the contract ends.
4. AI-Automated Hiring Process
Modern RPO providers now use AI to speed things up. AI can screen thousands of resumes in seconds to find the top 5% of talent. It can also help with scheduling and initial “chatbot” screenings. This reduces human bias and ensures that no good candidate is ignored.
12 Best Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Companies
Here is our curated list of the top players in the industry today, starting with the leader in remote-focused recruitment.
1. Redirecruit
Best For: High-growth companies, remote-first teams, and scalable global hiring.
Redirecruit is at the top of our list for one simple reason: we understand what future holds. While many older RPO firms are still trying to figure out “work from home,” Redirecruit was built for it.
Give it a read: Future of RPO in 2026 and Beyond
We offer a high-touch, data-driven approach that helps companies find top-tier talent across the globe. Whether you need to build an entire remote department or find specialized executive talent, we act as a true partner. We focus heavily on diversity hiring and employer branding, ensuring that your company attracts the best of the best.
- Key Strength: Specialized in remote recruitment and high-speed scaling.
- Best Service: Full-cycle RPO with a focus on candidate quality and cultural fit.
2. HireWithNear
The Company: Founded to bridge the gap between North American demand and Latin American (LatAm) talent, Near manages a massive pre-vetted pool of over 45,000 professionals. They operate with a focus on “nearshoring,” ensuring that remote hires are in compatible time zones.
Services Offered: Talent sourcing, vetting, and a “360 solution” that includes payroll management and compliance for LatAm workers. They offer both pay-per-hire and subscription-based models.
Best For: US companies looking for highly skilled, affordable talent in Latin American time zones.
3. Floowitalent
The Company: Floowitalent is a boutique RPO firm that specializes in the “human” side of technical recruiting. They position themselves as an extension of a company’s brand, focusing on storytelling to attract talent in competitive markets like Silicon Valley and European tech hubs.
Services Offered: Strategic sourcing, recruitment marketing, and employer branding audits. They help companies overhaul their candidate journey to reduce drop-off rates.
Best For: Tech startups that need to stand out through strong employer branding and storytelling.
4. Somewhere
The Company: Formerly a niche provider for virtual assistants in the Philippines, Somewhere has evolved into a sophisticated RPO partner for global operations. They focus on leveraging the English-proficient and highly educated workforce of the Asia-Pacific region.
Services Offered: Bulk recruitment for operational roles, customer support team building, and back-office RPO. They handle the logistical heavy lifting of offshore team management.
Best For: Scaling operational and customer support teams using affordable talent from the Philippines.
5. TalentMSH (Airswift)
The Company: Operating as part of the Airswift group, TalentMSH is a global powerhouse with a presence in over 70 countries. They have a long history of supporting heavy industries like energy, infrastructure, and STEM fields, where specialized technical skill is paramount.
Services Offered: Global talent mobilization, onsite program support, and managed service programs (MSP). They provide deep market intelligence and workforce analytics to help enterprises plan long-term.
Best For: Large enterprises in STEM, energy, or infrastructure needing global talent mobilization.
6. Expert Executive Recruiters (EER Global)
The Company: Established in 2008 by veterans of the London and New York financial sectors, EER Global specializes in high-stakes headhunting. They operate as a boutique executive search firm that applies RPO scalability to senior-level roles.
Services Offered: Executive search, professional headhunting for “passive” candidates, and global recruitment research. They are known for finding talent that isn’t actively looking for work.
Best For: Companies needing specialized executive search or headhunting for C-suite and senior management.
7. Lupa Hire
The Company: Lupa Hire is an agile RPO provider that focuses on the SMB (Small and Medium Business) market. They are built on “Radical Transparency” and an “Ethics of Care,” moving away from the volume-heavy metrics of larger firms to focus on “match quality.”
Services Offered: Flexible RPO for short-term sprints, deep cultural consultation, and end-to-end recruitment for North and Latin American markets. They offer fixed monthly fees for predictable budgeting.
Best For: SMBs that need an agile, high-touch partner who acts as a true extension of their internal culture.
8. Korn Ferry
The Company: One of the most recognized names in global consulting, Korn Ferry is a publicly traded firm (NYSE: KFY) with nearly 10,000 employees. They are a global leader in organizational strategy, not just recruitment.
Services Offered: Comprehensive RPO via their “Talent Suite” AI platform, organizational consulting, executive coaching, and workforce planning. They use 50 years of “people science” to inform hiring decisions.
Best For: Fortune 500 companies seeking data-driven, massive-scale organizational consulting and hiring.
9. Cielo
The Company: Cielo is a dedicated “pure-play” RPO provider, meaning they focus entirely on recruitment outsourcing without the distractions of general consulting. They are pioneers in “RecTech” (Recruitment Technology).
Services Offered: Enterprise RPO, hybrid RPO models, and “Digital Accelerators”—a suite of AI-driven tools designed to remove bias and improve the candidate experience.
Best For: Companies looking for innovative technology and a seamless, modern candidate experience.
10. Randstad Sourceright
The Company: As a part of Randstad N.V., the world’s largest talent company, Sourceright has access to a staggering amount of global candidate data. They operate on a “Tech & Touch” philosophy, balancing massive databases with local human expertise.
Services Offered: High-volume RPO, Managed Services Programs (MSP) for contingent workers, and “Total Talent” solutions that unify permanent and temporary hiring.
Best For: Organizations with high-volume hiring needs or those needing a mix of permanent and temporary staff.
11. Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS)
The Company: AMS is a veteran in the workforce solutions space, employing over 11,000 experts worldwide. They are known for their “blue-chip” client list and their ability to handle complex, multi-country recruitment projects.
Services Offered: Strategic workforce planning, talent labs for upskilling, and “Project RPO” for short-term surges like mergers or product launches. They focus heavily on the long-term sustainability of a workforce.
Best For: Global organizations focused on long-term strategic workforce planning and large-scale transitions.
12. PeopleScout
The Company: PeopleScout is a global RPO leader known for its proprietary technology platform, Affinix. They have a strong reputation for navigating the complex compliance and security requirements of North American industries.
Services Offered: Full and partial-cycle RPO, “Affinix” mobile-first candidate tracking, and specialized recruitment for highly regulated sectors like healthcare and government contracting.
Best For: Companies requiring high-volume hiring with a focus on strict legal and diversity compliance.
How To Decide Who To Work With
Choosing an RPO partner is like choosing a co-founder. You need to get it right. Here is how to decide:
- Define Your Goal: Are you looking to save money, or are you looking for the “purple squirrel” (the rare, perfect candidate)?
- Check Their “Remote” IQ: If you are hiring remote workers, ask the provider how they verify skills and culture fit across borders.
- Evaluate Their Tech Stack: Do they use AI? Do they have a good ATS (Applicant Tracking System)? You want a partner who is tech-forward.
- Look at Their Compliance Record: Especially for international recruitment agencies, you need to make sure they understand local labor laws in every country they source from.
- Cultural Alignment: Does the RPO team feel like they “get” your company culture? They will be the first voice your future employees hear.
Conclusion
The “old way” of hiring is dead. In a world where the best talent could be in New York, London, or Buenos Aires, you need a partner who can navigate the global market.
While there are many top RPO companies, the best choice is one that scales with you and understands your unique brand. At Redirecruit, we pride ourselves on being that bridge. We don’t just fill roles; we build teams.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the difference between RPO and a staffing agency?
A staffing agency is usually “transactional”—they provide a person for a fee. An RPO is a “partnership”—they manage the entire process, including the strategy, technology, and branding.
Is RPO only for large companies?
No! While large companies use RPO for bulk hiring, many startups use RPO to build their initial core teams without having to hire a full-time internal recruiter.
How does RPO help with diversity and inclusion (D&I)?
The best rpo companies for diversity hiring use “blind screening” and AI tools to remove human bias. They also have access to diverse talent pools that a standard job post might miss.
Does RPO save money?
Yes. By reducing the “Time to Hire” and “Cost per Hire,” and by avoiding the high fees of traditional headhunters, most companies see significant cost savings within the first six months.
Can an RPO handle remote hiring?
Absolutely. In fact, remote recruitment process outsourcing companies like Redirecruit are often better at it than internal teams because they have the infrastructure to vet global talent.
