A well-established, highly-regarded, and successful boutique management consultancy firm, our client works globally across a range of business sectors including construction, automotive, aerospace & defence, infrastructure, manufacturing, healthcare, and chemicals. Their expertise, with experienced performance improvement consultants, is to restructure complex businesses, turn around performance, improve efficiencies, and increase profitability.
The business had grown slowly, reliant upon the direct hiring of people in its own network and especially the associate base of freelancers and contractors.
Post-Covid, they were keen to kickstart the business’s growth with the appointment of a senior operations consultant as Director Performance Improvement Consulting
After six months of unsuccessful attempts to source this key operations consultant role from their usual routes, as well as their own advertising, they realised they needed a more proactive approach. They were failing to find the right candidate for a number of reasons:
Prism Executive Recruitment was asked to help and commenced with a full briefing from the Operations Manager and a key member of the Senior Leadership Team who had responsibility for this hiring. In particular, we were keen to ensure there was agreement on “must have” and “nice to have” credentials for potential Consulting Director candidates.
We also helped the firm to articulate its key “selling points” for potential hires, something they hadn’t needed to do when hiring from a pool of people familiar with them. As the performance improvement consultant and business development skills they sought were in high demand, they needed to ensure they were an attractive option to a candidate.
Given the work and focus required for this key Consulting Director appointment Prism agreed a retainer payment. Our services included the detailed candidate screening and interviewing.
We produced a comprehensive candidate briefing document, approved by the client, which set out in a positive but clear and factual manner the company, the role and the attractions of the opportunity.
We approached active and passive candidates. Our sources included our extensive database and we also contacted people in our considerable LinkedIn networks. We also widely advertised the Director Performance Improvement Consulting role using a variety of sites we knew to be good sources of relevant applicants.
In accordance with Prism’s policy, all candidates were swiftly and professionally contacted and advised those not being taken forward.
A large number of interested parties were whittled down to 15 “potentials” who were given full information on the role and from which, 12 were selected for Prism interview.
As requested by the client, a “long list” of 7 potential candidates was discussed with the firm.
As advertised on our websiteFive candidates were selected for an initial interview with the hiring Director. Of these, two were taken to the next stage, which was a meeting with the CEO and Operations Manager. The final stage, for one applicant, was for them to present a short case study as part of a two-hour session in which they also met other key people in the business.
As a result, they made this candidate an offer for the role of Consulting Director – Performance Improvement with Prism’s guidance, which they were delighted to accept despite having one other offer.
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