Banks using RPOs for hiring to focus on core business: experts

As the banking industry expands in India, lenders are gradually entrusting recruitment tasks in the hands of a professional organisation to focus more on core business, industry experts said.
"The scope of outsourcing the hiring practice has been thought about and implemented in fragments till the year 2012. Organisations have realised that they are essentially investing on manpower for recruitments and maintenance which has cost them high. They have also realised that the process of recruitments is time consuming and laborious," TeamLease Services Business Head, RPO, ShivaKumar N told PTI here.
The trend of large banks outsourcing their hiring began over a year ago to Resource Process Outsourcing (RPO) partner, he added.

The banking sector has the potential to become the fifth largest industry globally by 2020.
Most of the private sector banks are resorting to RPO as a recruitment solutions, he said adding that state-owned lenders hire through IBPS (Institute of Banking Personnel Selection).
RPO is mainly used for mass hiring process for roles in branch banking, sales (retail and corporate), relationship officers, BPO for bank back-end teams, mid-level hiring (team leaders, assistant managers and managers), ShivaKumar said.

Echoing similar view, Sachin Vohra. Director, IKYA Search and Business Head, PeopleNow opined that an RPO partner brings more efficiency into the entire process of hiring as they are specialists in this area.

"Unlike a traditional staffing vendors, an RPO partner is involved in the entire recruitment process -- engaging with the hiring manager early in the process to understand requirements to on-boarding the candidates." he added.
He said banks are mostly utilising RPO partners for hiring junior to mid-level employees, where volumes are high or unpredictable.
Michael Page India Director Nikhil Jaiswal said banks are
hiring in large volumes through RPO methodology mainly to reduce cost.
In the banking sector, it is primarily MNC banks which have their captive centres in India, who are warming up to this trend, he said.
"Their hiring requirements are massive in scale and volumes. These MNCs typically hire through RPOs largely for their technology and operations departments. I think recruitment for private sector banks through RPOs is still some time away. Indian banks, both public and private, do not possess such large operations level presence as MNC banks and, therefore, do not require such high volume hiring," he said.

For public sector banks, it is negligible as they rarely recruit through external services providers, he said.
Moreover, the banks are still not comfortable with the complex recruitment structure using this route and continue to engage with recruitment firms, he said.
"I think it will still be some time until we see RPOs becoming a general norm for Indian banks," he added.
GlobalHunt Managing Director Sunil Goel said that till now the banks have been following the traditional route of non consulting sources like tests and examinations.
"But in the last 2-3 years, the trend has changed and RPO is here to stay since the sector is getting mature from the cost optimisation perspective," he added.

As of now, he said, RPOs have been utilised by private sector banks, investment banks for hiring needs and this trend is expected to grow by 15-20 per cent going forward.