Scaling Smart: How Project RPO Transformed European Recruitment

Situation

A sustainability consultancy operating across Europe needed end-to-end recruitment support. They were hunting for hard-to-fill positions that required serious sourcing expertise and multilingual capabilities.

As a consultancy, their business volumes fluctuated dramatically. They needed a solution that could scale up when projects boomed and scale down when things quieted—all while maintaining consistent service quality. Because when you’re a consultancy, your people are your product, and agility isn’t just nice to have, it’s business critical.

The organization turned to PeopleScout looking for a provider who could work seamlessly alongside their existing talent acquisition team throughout Europe. They wanted a partner who could bring sourcing experience for those tricky roles, language skills and talent advisory services that would give them a competitive edge.

Solution

We landed on something that would transform their entire recruitment approach: a team of Recruiters on Demand (RODs) who would partner with the client’s existing team, work directly with their systems, and support in a sourcing and screening capacity that could flex with their business needs.

They needed to amplify their capabilities with specialists who brought different skillsets and a different mindset to hard-to-fill roles.

Building the Partnership Framework

To make sure we were making the right hires the first time and every time, we partnered with the client to create a comprehensive playbook, a living, breathing guide that ensured every new ROD could hit the ground running.

We implemented buddy systems that got people up to speed fast. The approach was so effective that as our RODs demonstrated success, some started to own requisitions end to end.

The EMEA Expansion

Our creative solution grew to six RODs at the height of the European recruitment operation, including crucial German-speaking capability. The team delivered remotely from Poland, supporting recruitment across Romania, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Poland, and the UK—a truly pan-European effort that created competitive advantage across multiple markets.

Ultimately, the team filled over 150 positions spanning Finance and HR through to Environmental Consultants and Specialists. Each role required industry-first thinking and specialised sourcing techniques that our ROD team brought to the table.

Alongside the ROD specialists, we provided a dedicated account team consisting of an Account Director and Relationship Manager who conducted quarterly and annual business reviews, creating an environment for continuous improvement, genuine partnership, and thought leadership in action.

Conquering North America

The success in Europe was so compelling that the solution was extended, deploying two additional RODs to cover North America. Our team continued to work remotely from Poland, adjusting to U.S. hours to accommodate the work—proving that great talent solutions know no boundaries.

This expansion demonstrated the scalability of our creative approach and how the right people with the right mindset can deliver results regardless of geography or time zones.

Results

The numbers tell the story of a partnership that delivered exactly what the client needed:

• End-to-end excellence: Requisitions worked from start to finish with an impressive 55-day time-to-offer
• Quality that counts: 2.5:1 presentation-to-interview ratio, proving the exceptional quality of candidates being sourced, screened, and the team’s deep understanding of the business
• Seamless integration: PeopleScout’s ROD team worked so effectively with the client’s talent acquisition team that they became an extension of the client’s capabilities
• Scalable success: Solution flexed from 2 to 6 heads in Europe and successfully expanded to North America
• Multilingual mastery: German-speaking capability opened doors across key European markets