From 14 vendors to one RPO, and a 38% drop in cost-per-hire in the first year.
The savings were the easy part to model. What sold it internally was that hiring never skipped a beat while we did it.
The outcome, in numbers.
The situation
Fourteen staffing vendors meant fourteen quality bars, duplicated candidate submissions, no consistent data, and a cost-per-hire nobody could actually see end to end. The case for a single RPO was clear on paper.
The risk was the switch. Rip out fourteen live pipelines at once and hiring stops for a quarter — which no operating centre can absorb.
What we did
We ran the transition in phases, not a big bang. High-volume, well-understood roles moved first to prove the model and free up the biggest cost, while the existing vendors kept the rest of the pipeline warm until each function was safely migrated.
Underneath, we standardised the things that were costing money invisibly: one screening bar, one candidate database with de-duplication, and one reporting layer the centre could finally see.
- 01 A phased migration sequenced by role type, so live pipelines never went dark.
- 02 A single screening standard and de-duplicated candidate database across all roles.
- 03 One reporting layer giving the centre true end-to-end cost and funnel visibility.
- 04 A quality-of-hire feedback loop with hiring managers from week one.
The outcome
By the end of year one, cost-per-hire was down 38% — from removing duplicated fees, agency margins, and rework. Hiring never stalled through the transition because no function moved before its replacement pipeline was proven.
The quieter win showed up in month four: with a consistent screening bar, quality-of-hire steadied and early attrition began to fall, which is where the real cost of scattered vendors had been hiding.
If a case like this looks like your problem, that's usually a sign.
Send us a brief or just describe what you're dealing with. We'll come back with one observation — even if we don't end up working together.