Case study
Scaling smart: Europe and beyond
A sustainability consultancy was facing a recruitment puzzle that would make most talent teams break out in a cold sweat. It was a puzzle that started in Europe and travelled across the Atlantic. Here’s how PeopleScout solved it.
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Countries of recruitment delivery
ensuring consistent, high‑quality hiring at scale0
person flexed solution
supporting rapid growth across Europe and North America0
day time to offer
speeding up hiring from requisition to acceptanceThe challenge
A Europe-based sustainability consultancy needed end-to-end recruiters who could actually source – not just post jobs and hope for the best. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill office roles either; they were hunting for hard-to-fill positions that required serious sourcing expertise and multilingual capabilities.
As their partner, we’d work seamlessly alongside their existing talent acquisition team. Bringing sourcing experience for tricky roles, language skills, and talent advisory services that would give them a competitive edge.
The 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 amplifying their capabilities with specialists who brought different skillsets and a different mindset to hard-to-fill roles.
The scalability challenge
As a consultancy, their business volumes swung dramatically. They needed a model that could scale up when projects surged and scale down when things quieted — all without compromising service quality. When your people are your product, agility isn’t optional; it’s business‑critical.
Making capability transferable
To ensure we were making the right hires the first time and every time, we built a comprehensive Playbook. We introduced buddy systems that got people up to speed fast. The approach worked so well that, as RODs demonstrated success, several began owning requisitions end‑to‑end.
The EMEA Expansion
Our solution grew to six RODs at the height of the European operation. Delivering remotely from Poland, the team supported recruitment across Romania, France,
Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Poland, and the UK — a truly international effort that created competitive advantage across multiple markets.
On to 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 US hours to accommodate the work – proving that great talent solutions know no boundaries.
Results
The numbers tell the story of a partnership that delivered exactly what the client needed:
- Requisitions worked from start to finish with an impressive 55-day time-to-offer
- 2.5:1 present-to-interview ratio, proving the exceptional quality of candidates being sourced, screened, and the team’s deep understanding of the business
- PeopleScout’s ROD team seamlessly integrated with the client’s talent acquisition team
- Solution flexed from 2 to 6 heads in Europe and successfully expanded to North America
- German-speaking capability opened doors across key European markets
- Successfully supported recruitment across 11 countries with consistent service quality
We created a blueprint for how specialist consultancies can scale their recruitment capabilities while maintaining the agility that’s crucial to their business model. The ROD model proved that when you get the right people in the right roles with the right support, you don’t just make hires – you make the right hires, creating lasting value for clients across continents.
