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What Is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Recruitment process outsourcing is a strategic HR partnership in which an outside firm assumes responsibility for some or all of a company’s recruiting activity. The RPO provider supplies the people, processes, and technology to source candidates, screen applicants, manage interviews, extend offers, and onboard new hires — all while operating as a seamless extension of the client’s internal HR function.

There are three primary RPO delivery models:

• Full-cycle RPO — The RPO provider manages every stage of talent acquisition end-to-end: workforce planning, job description creation, sourcing, screening, interviewing, offer management, compliance, and onboarding coordination. Best for companies ready to hand off recruiting entirely.
• Project RPO — A time-boxed engagement for a specific hiring initiative: a plant opening, a team build-out, or a seasonal surge. Catapult stands up the full recruiting infrastructure, fills the roles, then transitions or winds down.
• On-demand RPO — Flexible recruiter capacity you activate when internal hiring volume exceeds what your team can handle. Pay for recruiter time and output, not a full-time headcount or agency markup.

RPO vs. Staffing Agency vs. Internal Recruiter

Understanding where RPO fits requires comparing it directly to the alternatives most mid-market employers already use.

Factor	RPO (Catapult)	Staffing Agency	Internal Recruiter
Cost Structure	Flat monthly fee or cost-per-hire; no placement markup	20-35% of first-year salary per placement	Full-time salary + benefits (~$75K-$110K/yr)
Employer Brand	Recruiter presents as your company; you own all brand assets	Agency recruits under their own brand; candidates may not know your company	Full brand ownership; may lack sourcing scale
Speed to Fill	Fast ramp (Catapult live in 1-2 weeks); scales with volume	Fast on commoditized roles; limited for specialized hires	Dependent on one person; bottlenecks under volume
Scalability	Flex up or down with business need; no re-hiring cycle	Add agencies, but cost multiplies with each placement	Hard to scale; one recruiter = one throughput ceiling
Compliance	I-9, E-Verify, OFCCP, VEVRAA, FCRA background check protocols built in	Handles their own workers; your hires are your compliance risk	Depends on recruiter knowledge and HR infrastructure
ATS / Data	You own all candidate data, pipeline reports, and ATS configuration	Candidate data lives in agency database; you see only finalists	Full ownership; setup and admin burden falls on internal team
Long-Term CPH	Decreases as pipeline matures; benchmark $3,500-$6,000/hire	Static per-placement cost regardless of volume	Low CPH at scale but fixed cost even when hiring is slow

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What’s Included in Catapult’s RPO Services

Our RPO engagements are comprehensive. Every deliverable below is included as part of the Catapult RPO partnership — no hidden project fees, no per-service add-ons.

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Who Is RPO Right For?

Recruitment process outsourcing delivers the strongest ROI for mid-market employers who are outgrowing reactive, transactional hiring. Catapult’s RPO clients typically share one or more of the following characteristics:

• 10 or more open requisitions per year — At this volume, the economics of RPO consistently beat both staffing agency placement fees and a dedicated internal recruiter salary.
• High turnover in hourly or skilled-trades roles — Manufacturing, healthcare, distribution, and food processing employers with revolving-door positions benefit most from a structured, always-on sourcing pipeline.
• No dedicated internal recruiter — HR generalists and office managers pressed into recruiting duty lose focus on compliance, culture, and strategy. RPO returns those hours.
• Rapid growth or a planned expansion — Opening a new location, launching a new service line, or scaling from 50 to 150 employees requires hiring infrastructure that a generalist team cannot build in time.
• Government contractors subject to OFCCP, VEVRAA, and Section 503 — Federal contractors must maintain documented good-faith efforts for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. Catapult builds those audit-ready records into every RPO engagement.
• Industry verticals in NC/SC — Healthcare systems, financial services firms, technology companies, and precision manufacturing employers across the Research Triangle Park corridor, Charlotte MSA, and Upstate South Carolina manufacturing belt.

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Why RPO Outperforms Staffing Agencies for Sustained Hiring

Staffing agencies serve a purpose — they can fill a single urgent opening quickly. But for employers with ongoing hiring needs, the economics and strategic limitations of the staffing model become a drag on business performance.

A typical staffing agency charges a placement fee of 20-35% of first-year salary. For a $65,000 role, that is $13,000-$22,750 per hire — and every hire resets the fee. There is no equity building, no employer brand ownership, and no candidate data that stays with you when the engagement ends.

By contrast, Catapult’s RPO model operates on a flat retainer or cost-per-hire structure. Your cost-per-hire typically lands in the $3,500-$6,000 range — and declines over time as your talent pipeline matures. More importantly:

• Candidates experience your employer brand, not a third-party agency. That matters for offer acceptance rates and Day 1 engagement.
• All ATS data and candidate records belong to you. When an RPO engagement ends, you walk away with a populated talent database, configured workflows, and reporting history.
• Compliance documentation is yours. I-9 records, E-Verify case numbers, OFCCP good-faith effort logs, and background check authorizations are organized in your systems, not buried in an agency’s back office.
• Hiring managers get better at hiring. Catapult’s RPO engagements include structured interviewing frameworks and scorecard training — skills that persist in your organization long after the engagement ends.

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NC and SC Market Expertise Built Into Every Engagement

Catapult HR is headquartered in North Carolina with deep roots across both Carolinas. Our RPO recruiters work local talent markets daily — not as remote generalists who parachute in, but as practitioners who understand where candidates live, what they earn, and how competitive your openings need to be to win.

• Research Triangle Park (RTP) corridor — Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill compete hard for technology, life sciences, and financial services talent. Our RPO team knows the compensation benchmarks, the competing employers, and the talent pools that generic national job boards miss.
• Charlotte MSA — Financial services, corporate headquarters, healthcare systems, and a fast-growing technology sector. We know what it costs to recruit a CFO candidate in Ballantyne versus a plant supervisor in Gastonia.
• Upstate South Carolina — Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson form one of the most active advanced manufacturing corridors in the Southeast. BMW, Michelin, GE, and hundreds of suppliers compete for the same skilled trades talent. Catapult’s RPO team has the local networks and sourcing strategies to succeed here.
• NC and SC compliance specifics — North Carolina General Statute 64-26 requires private employers with 25 or more employees to use E-Verify. South Carolina’s Illegal Immigration Reform Act similarly mandates E-Verify for employers with 100 or more employees, with phased thresholds. Catapult builds state-specific compliance checkpoints into every RPO workflow so your business never falls out of step with the law.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Recruitment Process Outsourcing

What is the difference between RPO and a staffing agency?

A staffing agency finds candidates and places them for a one-time fee — typically 20-35% of first-year salary. You get a hire, but the agency owns the sourcing process, the candidate relationship, and all the data. RPO is fundamentally different: the RPO provider works as an extension of your HR team, recruits under your employer brand, configures and manages your ATS, builds your talent pipeline, and gives you full ownership of every record and process. The result is a lower long-term cost-per-hire and a recruiting infrastructure that makes your company stronger over time.

How much does RPO cost compared to hiring an internal recruiter?

A mid-market internal recruiter typically costs $75,000-$110,000 in base salary plus benefits, tools, and job posting fees — whether or not they have roles to fill. Catapult’s RPO model is structured around your actual hiring volume: a monthly retainer that scales with activity, a cost-per-hire rate, or a hybrid of both. For companies hiring 10-50 roles per year, RPO almost always delivers a lower fully-loaded cost and eliminates the single-point-of-failure risk that comes with one internal recruiter.

Can RPO handle E-Verify, OFCCP, and I-9 compliance for government contractors?

Yes. Catapult’s RPO team has extensive experience supporting federal contractors subject to OFCCP, VEVRAA, and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act. We build compliant job postings (including required equal opportunity language), maintain good-faith effort documentation for protected veteran and disability outreach, manage I-9 and E-Verify processing in alignment with North Carolina General Statute 64-26, and organize audit-ready hiring records. If your company holds federal contracts and is approaching a compliance review, RPO with Catapult significantly reduces your risk exposure.

Is RPO right for a company with fewer than 100 employees?

Absolutely. Some of Catapult’s most successful RPO clients employ 50-80 people. The deciding factor is not headcount — it is hiring volume and hiring pain. If your company is making 10 or more hires per year, spending meaningful time and money on recruiting without a system, or struggling to compete with larger employers for talent, RPO will deliver a positive return. Catapult offers on-demand and project RPO models specifically designed for smaller employers who need flexible capacity rather than a full embedded recruiting team.

How quickly can Catapult start filling open positions with RPO?

Most Catapult RPO engagements are fully operational within one to two weeks of contract execution. During the onboarding sprint, we conduct intake meetings with hiring managers, audit or configure your ATS, build role-specific scorecards, activate sourcing channels, and post optimized job descriptions. For most positions, qualified candidates are in the pipeline within the first two weeks. More complex roles — senior leadership, highly specialized technical positions — typically see first qualified candidates within 3-4 weeks. We provide weekly pipeline reports from day one so you always have visibility into progress.

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