We worked with a remarkable award-winning technology and digital technology and management consultancy firm with a unique culture and values-led approach. Less than ten years old, it has grown to 1,500 people across the UK. At the heart of its success is its organisational model, an empowering and inclusive culture, and its exceptional approach to nurturing talent growth and development.
A key part of their vision for continued growth was the management consultancy team. Their strategic capability and ability to influence and impact at the leadership level is vital to their “value add”, making it distinct from other businesses in their field.
The consultancy had an established and well-regarded internal recruitment team. However, for six months they had been unsuccessfully trying to fill the role of HR Consulting Director, to lead their People Strategy and Transformation Consulting team.
The difficulties were:
a) the team finding the time to devote to this HR consulting role given the extreme pressures from the “volume” hiring of digital and technology staff.
b) their lack of experience in the complex management consultancy recruitment market, a small part of their overall remit.
Given the importance of this role, the delay in appointing was business-critical and the decision was made to select an external recruiter. Prism was chosen because of our reputation as a specialist management consultant recruiter with several of the leadership team.
Prism had an initial meeting with their Talent Lead to agree terms. Following this, we met with the MD of the management consulting business and an HR Consulting Director from another geography.
While the job details and candidate specification was fairly straightforward it became obvious in the discussion that culture and values would be a key part of the selection process. Given the business’s growth, long-term development potential was also of critical importance, and the hire should ideally help with the D&I policy!
We agreed to an exclusive mandate given the work and focus required for this key HR Consulting appointment, including the detailed candidate screening and interviewing.
The business already had attractive candidate briefing information, which we agreed to use for selected candidates.
We advertised the role using a variety of sites, approached active and passive candidates from our extensive database and contacted our network, as well as other relevant LinkedIn users.
The job vacancyLess than two weeks after our initial meeting we were in a position to commence shortlisting CVs, even though this was during the summer lull.
Given their challenges filling the HR Consulting Director role in the past, we agreed with the client to continue actively seeking candidates and shortlisted seven applicants over a period of four weeks.
All candidates had an initial meeting with one of the directors and four candidates subsequently met with the MD.
The final stage for three candidates was a panel interview, focusing on culture and values fit.
As a result, one candidate was offered the role, with a second “in reserve”.
Fortunately, despite two other offers, the selected candidate accepted our client’s offer.
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