RPO - Recruitment Process Outsourcing is a business model where a company outsource or transfers all or part of its recruitment activities to an external service provider.
According to the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (RPOA), the official definition is this: "Recruitment Process Outsourcing is when a provider acts as a company's internal recruitment function for a portion or all of its jobs. RPO providers manage the entire recruiting/hiring process from job profiling through the on-boarding of the new hire, including staff, technology, method and reporting. A properly managed RPO will improve a company's time to hire, increase the quality of the candidate pool, provide verifiable metrics, reduce cost and improve governmental compliance."
When a company uses recruiters who are based overseas to take on part or all of their recruitment process. This could mean merely finding contact details for candidates, choosing suitable candidates, or taking the candidates through the whole process, from initial contact to job offer.