What can offshore outsourcing offer the UK recruitment industry?

BT has just opened call centres in New Delhi and Bangalore; BAís back office administration is handled in New Delhi and Mumbai; and HSBC, Barclays, EDS, Channel 4, and GE all outsource some ëbusiness processesí to the country. Yet, the benefits of outsourcing are not just a privilege of the large corporate. Now the recruitment industry can also profit from outsourcing to India.

To understand the benefits of offshore outsourcing, it's important to take a close look at the way in which your business operates. Primarily, you should try to divide the companyís workload into core and non-core business activities. (For example, new business and client/candidate liaison might be considered core business, while CV sourcing, database searching and corporate intelligence gathering might be seen as non-core.) A good way of beginning is to look at why you employ each member of staff and whether you are capitalising on their strengths.

The majority of people working in recruitment have outgoing personalities, good business acumen and strong communication skills. Unfortunately, due the nature of the business, these individuals often spend a large portion of their day sitting behind a PC screening CVs, searching databases, inputting CVs, searching the internet for vacancies, using the internet to uncover hidden candidates, updating candidate databasesÖ and so on and so on.

Process improvements and cost reductions should be the motivating decision behind any companyís decision to outsource support functions offshore ñ and thatís exactly how recruitment companies can make improvements to their business models. With less recruitment administration, Internet research and resourcing to perform, staff are able to concentrate on what theyíre really good at: developing new business, liasing with customers and, most importantly, making placements.

For information about outsourcing non-core recruitment functions to India go to