Embedded RPO that cut time-to-hire by 40%.
A multi-plant industrial group was growing faster than its hiring could keep up. Roles sat open for months, agency spend was climbing, and line managers were losing patience. They didn't need another agency — they needed a hiring engine.
The brief
The group was opening capacity across several sites and hiring continuously across plant operations, quality, maintenance and support functions. Their lean internal team couldn't keep pace, and a patchwork of agencies was producing inconsistent quality at rising cost.
They wanted one partner to own hiring end to end — fast, consistent, and accountable.
The challenge
- Chronically long time-to-hire that was delaying production ramp-ups.
- Inconsistent candidate quality and experience across multiple agencies.
- Rising cost-per-hire with little visibility into where money was going.
- No single point of accountability for hiring outcomes.
"Within a quarter it stopped feeling like we'd outsourced hiring — it felt like our talent team had simply got bigger and better."
Our approach
We deployed a managed RPO: an embedded SForce team operating under the client's brand and inside their process, with a named account director owning the numbers.
1 · Standardise the engine
We rebuilt the hiring workflow into one consistent, documented process across every site — intake, sourcing, screening, interview and offer — so quality no longer depended on which agency picked up the role.
2 · Build a live talent pipeline
Instead of starting cold on each vacancy, we maintained warm pipelines for recurring plant and ops roles, so hiring managers had candidates in days, not months.
3 · Report on what matters
Weekly dashboards gave leadership real visibility — time-to-hire, fill rate, cost-per-hire and retention — turning hiring from a black box into a managed function.
The outcome
Time-to-hire fell by 40% within the first year and has held there since. Cost-per-hire dropped roughly a quarter as agency reliance fell away, and twelve-month retention rose by 18 points thanks to better-matched hires. Three years on, SForce still runs the group's hiring as a single, accountable partnership.
Hiring continuously and tired of the agency churn? See how managed RPO works, or talk to our enterprise team.
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