Some hires you make one at a time. Others come in waves: a new site, a new region, a function you're building from nothing.
Contingent search isn't built for that. Neither is a retained assignment repeated fifteen times.
RPO is. We become your embedded talent function: your process, your employer brand, your hiring managers: run by people who already know the specialty chemical and plastics market, because it's the only market we work.
When RPO is the right call
You're commissioning or scaling a site
Dozens of hires against a fixed start date, across operations, EHS, quality and technical. Every one of them needs to understand your chemistry.
You're entering a new geography
You know the market you want. You don't yet know the talent pools, the salary norms, the notice-period conventions or which competitor is quietly shedding people. We work both sides of the Atlantic and can tell you.
You're building a function from scratch
A commercial team in a new region. An R&D group around a new platform. The first ten people set the next hundred.
Your internal team is at capacity
Not a failing: a maths problem. RPO flexes up for the peak and back down after, without you carrying permanent headcount you'll need to unwind.
What "embedded" actually means
Not a vendor sending CVs. A named sector specialist working inside your process:
- Your systems and your employer brand. Candidates experience your business, not ours.
- Full process ownership from role definition through offer, onboarding and start.
- One market map, reused. The mapping that goes into hire one makes hire twelve faster, instead of starting cold every time.
- Weekly reporting on pipeline, conversion and market feedback, including the feedback you won't enjoy, like where your package is losing you people.
- Documented handback. Pipelines, maps and market intelligence leave with you at the end.
Why sector specialism matters more in RPO than anywhere else
A generalist RPO provider can learn your process. They cannot learn your market inside a project timeline.
They won't know that a formulation chemist in coatings and a formulation chemist in personal care are not interchangeable. They won't know which three competitors within an hour's drive of your site are the realistic source of your operations hires. They won't know that the candidate who looks ideal on paper has been on the market for nine months for a reason.
We work one market: 15+ sectors across specialty chemicals and plastics, and a team that speaks to this market every week rather than when a brief lands.
How an engagement runs
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| 01 Scoping | Volume, roles, locations, timeline, and an honest conversation about whether the plan is achievable in the market as it actually is. |
| 02 Embed | Systems access, brand alignment, hiring manager onboarding. Your team meets ours. |
| 03 Map and build | Full market map across every role family in scope, built once and worked continuously. |
| 04 Deliver and report | Shortlists, interviews, offers, starts. Weekly reporting, monthly recalibration. |
| 05 Hand back | Documented pipelines and market intelligence transfer to you. You should be stronger at hiring when we leave than when we arrived. |
Questions we get asked
Can you run RPO in the US and Europe at the same time?
Yes: that's the point of a transatlantic team. One search team across both markets, coast-to-coast in the US and across the UK, DACH, Benelux and the wider European chemical corridor from London.
Do you use our employer brand or yours?
Yours. Candidates should experience your business, not a recruitment agency standing in front of it.
What happens to the market intelligence when the project ends?
It's yours. Maps, pipelines and salary data hand back at close.
How is RPO different from just using contingent search repeatedly?
Contingent search prices and works each role independently, so the mapping starts from scratch every time and nobody owns the overall plan. RPO maps the market once, works it continuously, and gives you a single accountable process across every hire in scope.
Is RPO only for large hiring volumes?
It's about the shape of the hiring, not only the size. A cluster of related roles against a fixed deadline usually suits RPO better than the same number of unrelated hires spread across a year.
Talk to us before you commit to headcount.
Tell us what you're building and where. A sector specialist will come back to you within one business day.
Book a Confidential Briefing →