Both outsource part of your hiring to an external partner who works as an extension of your business. What differs is scope. A traditional RPO provider covers every level and is built for throughput across a high volume of vacancies, which is why most providers reckon full RPO only pays for itself at around 30 hires a year. Leadership RPO covers the leadership layer alone, which in practice means roles like VP Global Operations, Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs and Associate Director of Supply Chain Management, alongside specialists such as Principal Scientist. In standard RPO vocabulary it sits closest to project RPO, run for a defined set of roles over a defined period. People at that level are rarely applying for anything, so every hire runs on proactive search rather than advertising, drawing on a network of more than 150,000 life science leaders. Each one carries the same guarantee as a single search: if your leader doesn’t pass probation, we run it again at no cost. The measure that decides whether it worked is quality of hire, tracked years after someone starts rather than at the point they accept.

You keep the decisions, and we run the work behind them. Our team handles the market mapping, direct approach, screening and shortlist preparation, while your hiring managers interview, choose, and own the offer conversation. Where you already have an internal talent acquisition function, we work alongside it rather than replacing it, lifting the leadership roles off their desk so they can keep everything else moving. Reporting lines, governance and meeting rhythm get agreed before the programme starts, so nobody is guessing who is accountable for what. Our US biotech European market entry programme ran on that split, with our consultants covering the European roles across regulatory, market access, commercial and supply chain. That programme is set out here.