Working as recruiters, we naturally have contact with HR Managers, Talent Acquisition Partners and Recruitment Managers on a daily basis – it’s professionals from these sectors we probably have the most contact with. However, this doesn’t mean that when recruiting for Talent or Human Resources jobs we take the all-too-common overly simplistic approach of ‘HR Manager for a life sciences start-up means they want an HR Manager from another life sciences start-up’. We always drill down into the values of the organisation, as well as the key essentials and ‘good to haves’ for any HR or Talent role we recruit for. In a way when recruiting for these roles, we are working with the most scrutinising clients and candidates so we are always glad to hear we’re doing a great job!
Cambridge Talent Partnership have extensive experience as a HR & Talent recruiter across Cambridge, St Albans, Peterborough, Leicester, East Anglia, Milton Keynes and the East of England, as well as select clients across the UK. We’ve been tasked with sourcing candidates for many forms of HR position from HR Assistant, HR Administrator and HR Advisor roles to Head of Human Resources, Senior HR Business Partners and Global Talent Acquisition Lead. The approach we take for each role is the same, ensuring our clients receive a full market shortlist on every occasion.
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Case Study
Internal Recruiter – Tech Start-Up
Approached by a former client who had moved to an exciting new start-up, we were tasked with identifying candidates for their first Internal Recruiter role. With proof of concept and Series A funding secured, the company had ambitious growth plans that required substantial recruitment across certain departments, with an emphasis on digital/development roles and customer services positions.
From the initial meeting with the client, it was clear that the Internal Recruiter would need to be able to understand the intricacies of relatively complex technical roles, as well as being able to appraise personality types for the customer-facing roles. Over the course of the following conversations, we established that the ‘ideal’ profile for the candidate would be someone who had experience of working in and recruiting for start-ups that had been through both Series A and B funding. We would be looking for someone who could do the day-to-day recruiting required immediately, yet with the ability to develop and roll out a longer term hiring strategy. Our client also made it abundantly clear that experience within a company using similar technology was key.
The approach we took initially was to a certain extent back-to-front: rather than looking for specific candidates, we earmarked firms in similar industries who were a few stages ahead of our client in terms of funding and growth. The shortlist of companies was compiled using our own internal knowledge, feedback from individuals in our network, and proactive research.
After discussing the company shortlist with the client, explaining why we felt they were the most valid options for identifying potential candidates, we moved onto the next stage. Again, this stage of the process involved us using our networks for referrals, as well as proactively identifying potential candidates who either currently worked at the target companies, or who had worked at them during relevant stages of the company’s growth. We also identified a handful of candidates from outside the target sector, yet with experience of recruiting intensively across a similarly broad range of roles.
Using a ‘headhunt’ approach, we made contact with our shortlist of candidates, and by and large their response was positive, showing interest – the client company had established itself as a ‘cool’ place to work. The majority of those we contacted were not actively looking for a new role, so the traditional contingency recruitment model of ‘advertise and filter’ would have failed to attract them.
The client heeded our advice of taking a step back from the intense focus on people from the same industry and interviewed one of the non-industry candidates we had shortlisted, and eventually took them through to the second stage. The client did not end up hiring her and favoured someone with similar experience from the same industry, yet the feedback we received was the interviews with her flagged up some elements of the role they hadn’t really considered, which then fed into how they appraised the other candidates.
For us this was a great role to recruit for, and a clear example of how spending time to really drill down into the client’s requirement at the start of the recruitment process will always pay dividends.