Consumer Goods & Retail RPO
An embedded recruiting team for manager-level and senior hiring programs: store openings, new categories and growth.
A retail group heading into its busiest trading period with three unfilled regional leadership roles. A food and beverage manufacturer building out a category function while running a confidential search for a commercial director. A D2C brand whose two-person talent team has hit its limit. In each case, the constraint is not the number of vacancies but the capacity, market knowledge, and process discipline needed to fill them well. That is where a structured outsourcing partner earns its keep, and it is the work SundryHall is built for.
Recruitment process outsourcing, or RPO, means transferring all or part of your permanent hiring process to a specialist partner who runs it under your brand. Our consumer goods RPO service does exactly that for brands, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. We combine sector-specific market knowledge, an established candidate network, and a disciplined search process, so your hiring keeps moving without your internal team absorbing the workload.
We work with hiring managers, HR and talent acquisition leaders, founders, and executive teams across the United States. Every program we run concentrates on permanent appointments at manager level and above, from experienced functional leaders through to senior and executive hires.
What consumer goods RPO covers at SundryHall
An RPO engagement with SundryHall is scoped around your hiring plan, then delivered as an extension of your own talent team. The components below can be combined into a full-cycle program covering every vacancy across a trading year, or selected individually where you need support in one part of the process only. That flexibility keeps the engagement proportionate to the problem you are actually trying to solve, whether that is a single commercial leadership hire, a new function built from scratch, or a multi-site recruitment plan spanning brand, supply chain, and retail operations.
Role scoping and job specification
We work with your hiring managers, HR leads, and wider stakeholders to define each role, its success measures, its reporting lines, and its place in the organization before any sourcing begins. Most failed hires trace back to a brief that was never properly agreed: two interviewers holding different pictures of the same job. We resolve that upfront, converting the discussion into a specification that can be used consistently for advertising, headhunting, screening, and final assessment.
Sector-focused sourcing and headhunting
We combine direct headhunting, our consumer goods and retail candidate network, and targeted market mapping to reach people who are not actively looking, which is where most strong leadership candidates sit. Sourcing is run against a defined list of relevant brands, manufacturers, and retailers rather than a generic keyword search, so the people we approach already understand the commercial rhythms of the sector: promotional cycles, retailer relationships, margin pressure, and the realities of moving product at pace.
Screening and assessment
Every candidate passes through structured screening and competency-based assessment before anyone reaches your desk. We test against the criteria agreed at scoping, probe evidence rather than claims, and check motivation, notice period, and salary expectations early so there are no surprises late in the process. The shortlist you see has already been filtered on substance, not résumé presentation.
Shortlist and interview management
We present calibrated shortlists with written assessment notes against each candidate, then coordinate the interview process end to end: scheduling, candidate preparation, interviewer briefing, and feedback collection. Your hiring managers spend their time only with credible contenders, and candidates experience a process that reflects well on your employer brand rather than one that leaks talent through delays and silence.
Offer management and negotiation
We manage offers, handle negotiation, and protect each acceptance through notice periods and counteroffer risk. This is the stage where well-run searches most often unravel without an experienced intermediary: a candidate who has been handled directly by the business is far more exposed to a retention offer from their current employer. We stay in contact from acceptance through to start date, flagging any hesitation while there is still time to act on it.
Market intelligence and benchmarking
Salary benchmarking, talent mapping, and competitor organization analysis inform every engagement, so your offers and expectations are set against live market evidence rather than last year's assumptions. Where a role is proving hard to fill, that intelligence tells you why: whether the package sits below market, the specification is drawn too narrowly, or the talent pool genuinely does not exist in the location and structure you had in mind. You then have the information to adjust the plan rather than repeat the search.
How our retail recruitment process outsourcing engagements run
Retail recruitment process outsourcing only works when the process is explicit and agreed in advance. Ours follows six defined stages, with reporting built in from the first week so you can see pipeline health without asking for it. Each stage has a named owner on our side, a clear hand-off point, and an agreed service level, so your internal team always knows what is happening with every vacancy and what is expected of them next.
Discovery and workforce planning
We map your hiring plan, timelines, and the commercial context behind each role, including seasonality and growth drivers. That means understanding peak trading periods, store opening schedules, distribution and headquarters requirements, and the attrition patterns that shape your real volume of hires. The output is a prioritized hiring forecast and a role-by-role profile we both sign off before any sourcing begins.
Process design and calibration
We agree interview stages, assessment criteria, and communication rhythms with your team so every stakeholder judges candidates against the same standard. Calibration sessions with hiring managers define what a strong candidate looks like for each role, and we document the scorecards, response times, and escalation routes in a shared process map. This is also where we agree employer branding messages, candidate communication templates, and the data we will report on.
Sourcing and assessment
Our consultants run structured sourcing and screening against the agreed specification for each vacancy. That combines direct approaches, advertised campaigns, referrals, and talent pools built from earlier rounds, so you are not reliant on a single channel when volumes spike. Every candidate is screened against the agreed scorecard, and only those who meet the standard move forward.
Shortlist and interview coordination
You meet a managed shortlist while we handle scheduling, candidate preparation, and feedback collection. We brief candidates on your business, the role, and the interview format so they arrive prepared, and we chase feedback from each stage so decisions are not delayed and strong candidates are not lost to competing offers.
Offer, close, and onboarding follow-up
We manage the offer process and stay in contact with placed candidates through the first months of their employment to protect retention. That includes handling salary and package conversations, managing counter-offer risk through resignation and notice periods, and checking in after start date so any early issues surface while they can still be resolved.
Review and reporting
We report on pipeline health, process performance, and market feedback so the program keeps improving over time. Regular reviews cover time to shortlist, time to hire, offer acceptance, source effectiveness, and retention of placed candidates, alongside what the market is telling us about pay, availability, and competitor activity. Where the data shows a bottleneck, we adjust the process with you rather than repeating the same approach.
What a CPG RPO program should deliver
The practical test of any CPG RPO program is what changes for the people running the business. Hiring managers should get hours back each week because screening, scheduling, interview coordination, and candidate chasing sit with us rather than with them. Candidates should experience a consistent, professional process that reflects well on your brand, which counts for a great deal in a sector where today's candidate is often tomorrow's customer, retailer contact, or commercial partner.
You should also see the quality of shortlists hold steady as volumes rise. The calibration work done at the start of an engagement compounds with every role we fill, because each search teaches us more about what good looks like inside your organization, from commercial and category management through to supply chain, manufacturing, and marketing. Over time, the market intelligence gathered through live searches, including salary movement, competitor structures, and talent availability, becomes an asset your business keeps and can apply to workforce planning rather than something that leaves with an agency at the end of a contract.
Finally, a well-run program replaces fragmented agency spend with a single accountable partner. One process, one standard of assessment, and one point of responsibility for results means hiring performance can be measured and managed against agreed metrics such as time to hire, quality of shortlist, and offer acceptance, not simply guessed at.
Choosing SundryHall as your RPO provider
Plenty of firms will take on outsourced hiring. Fewer can tell you how a category manager's remit differs between grocery and specialty retail, or why a supply chain leader's profile changes when a brand moves from wholesale into D2C. As an RPO provider working exclusively in consumer goods and retail, we bring that context to every brief, and it shows in the relevance of the people we put forward, the speed at which shortlists convert to offers, and how long those hires stay in the role.
Our positioning is clear. We prioritize quality of shortlist over volume of résumés, we communicate transparently at every stage, and we handle senior and confidential searches with the discretion they require. In practice that means a named consultant who owns your account end to end, agreed response times, and honest feedback when a brief needs reshaping rather than a silent pipeline. We build long-term relationships with clients and candidates, so our network deepens with every program we deliver and each new search starts from a stronger position than the last.
We recruit across the United States from offices in Atlanta, Marlborough, Parsippany, and Cheyenne, giving us coverage of the Southeast, Northeast, and Mountain West hiring markets without losing local knowledge of each. Engagements are structured on contingent, retained, or exclusive terms depending on the seniority and sensitivity of the work, and we are equally comfortable running a single embedded recruiter alongside your talent team or taking on a full end-to-end hiring program across multiple functions and locations.
Sectors and functions we hire for
Within consumer goods, we regularly run searches across FMCG, food and beverage, beauty and personal care, and household products. On the retail side, our work spans grocery and specialty retail, ecommerce and D2C brands, and wholesale and distribution.
Functionally, most of our RPO programs cover sales and account management, marketing and brand, supply chain and logistics, and category management and buying. These functions sit at the heart of how consumer and retail businesses grow, so they tend to carry the highest hiring volumes and the tightest deadlines.
This is a selection, not an exhaustive list. If your sector or function is not shown here, get in touch and we will tell you honestly whether we can help or point you in a better direction.
Engagement models and fit
RPO is not a single product, and we shape each program around the hiring challenge in front of you. Broadly, engagements fall into three shapes. End-to-end RPO hands us the full recruitment cycle for a defined period, from role definition and market mapping through offer management and onboarding handover. Project RPO brings us in for a bounded piece of work, such as a multi-hire leadership build-out ahead of an expansion, or a new function being created from scratch. Selective or hybrid RPO suits teams who keep day-to-day recruitment in-house and outsource specific functions, geographies, or seniority bands to us on an ongoing basis.
Which model fits depends on hiring volume, how predictable that volume is, and the capacity of your existing talent acquisition team. A business hiring in concentrated bursts usually gets more value from a project engagement than from a permanent retainer. A business with steady, year-round demand and no internal recruiter typically benefits from end-to-end cover. Where an internal team already exists and performs well, the stronger play is usually to extend it rather than replace it.
Our programs are designed for permanent appointments at manager level and above, including senior leadership and executive search. At that level the work is weighted toward direct approach, assessment, and stakeholder management rather than volume processing, and our process is built accordingly.
If your requirement sits outside that scope, we will say so at the first conversation and point you toward a better route. A poorly fitted engagement costs you time and damages the candidate experience we are both relying on, and declining the work is cheaper for everyone than discovering the mismatch three months in.
Frequently asked questions
How is RPO different from using a recruitment agency role by role?
A traditional agency works individual vacancies as they come up, which leaves your team coordinating several suppliers, repeating briefings, and living with inconsistent processes and candidate experience. Recruitment process outsourcing embeds a partner inside your hiring process instead. We take ownership of sourcing, screening, interview coordination, offer management, and reporting across an agreed scope of roles, and we are accountable for the health of the whole pipeline rather than a single placement.
Which roles sit within scope?
We focus on permanent positions at manager level and above, spanning commercial, operational, and corporate functions, up to and including executive appointments. Scope is defined at the outset, so everyone knows which hires run through the program, which sit with your internal team, and how the two work together.
How are engagements priced?
Terms are agreed during scoping and depend on the structure and volume of the program. Contingent, retained, and exclusive arrangements are all available, and many programs blend them across different role types. We will walk you through the options, what each one costs, and the trade-offs involved before anything is signed. There are no surprise fees introduced mid-program.
Can you handle confidential searches inside an RPO program?
Yes. Discretion is a core part of how we work on senior hires. Sensitive searches can be kept separate from the wider program, with restricted communication, a named point of contact, and limited visibility inside your own organization, so a succession plan or a replacement hire stays private until you choose to make it known.
How quickly can a program start?
Most engagements begin with a short scoping period to agree roles, process, service levels, and reporting. Once that is signed off, sourcing can start immediately, and your first search activity typically runs in parallel with the final set-up of reporting and systems access.
Where do you operate?
We cover the whole of the United States, with offices in Atlanta, Marlborough, Parsippany, and Cheyenne supporting delivery nationwide.
Talk to us about your hiring program
If you are carrying unfilled leadership roles, planning a hiring campaign, or simply want to know whether outsourced recruitment would work for your business, the next step is a scoping conversation. We will ask about your plans, give you a straight view of the market, and outline what a program with SundryHall would look like. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too.
A scoping call usually takes about half an hour. It helps to come with a rough sense of the roles you need to fill, the timeframe you are working to, and any hiring you have already attempted. From there we can talk through how the search would be structured, who would run it, and how progress gets reported back to you.
Call us at +1 888-202-9809 or email [email protected] to get started.
Brief us on the role you need to fill
Tell us about the position, the location and the timeline. A consultant who works your sector will follow up to talk through how we would run the search.