Situation 

A highly regarded industry association faced an urgent leadership crisis requiring immediate CEO replacement. With the Board temporarily filling executive responsibilities, critical organizational tasks were falling behind schedule, creating significant risk of membership dissatisfaction. The role demanded rapid filling while maintaining a robust selection process.

The challenge was compounded by multiple influential stakeholders within the membership, each holding different agendas and diverse opinions about selection criteria. Despite these complexities, the organization required a new CEO within a tight 10-week timeframe.

The association engaged PeopleScout’s Apex professional search solution to deliver a collaborative, consensus-driven recruitment process under extreme time pressure.

Solution 

The Apex team implemented a comprehensive four-pillar strategy designed to balance speed, quality and stakeholder alignment:

Speed-to-Market Strategy: Accelerated the entire process from initial conversation to live advertising campaign deployment, ensuring maximum market exposure within the compressed timeline.

Volume Generation: Targeted 100+ candidates through PeopleScout’s extensive professional networks and LinkedIn outreach, with advertising copy specifically crafted to maximize response rates across multiple channels.

Quality Assurance: Conducted thorough post-application review to tailor the screening strategy, followed by detailed candidate profiling to ensure only the highest-caliber applicants progressed through the process.

Stakeholder Consensus Building: Shared candidate longlists with multiple stakeholders to secure agreement on the final interview shortlist, implementing a structured panel interview process with formalized feedback mechanisms to ensure all voices were heard and considered.

Results 

The strategic approach delivered exceptional outcomes within the demanding timeframe:

• Rapid deployment: From initial brief to live job advertisements in just 8 days
• Extensive reach: Research team leveraged LinkedIn and multiple sources to generate a candidate pool of 200+ qualified professionals
• Efficient process: Panel interviews and stakeholder feedback completed on the same day to maintain momentum
• Successful placement: Written acceptance from the preferred candidate received just 9 weeks after the initial brief
• Stakeholder alignment: All key stakeholders achieved consensus on the final selection despite initial differing views

The collaborative approach not only delivered a successful CEO appointment within the critical timeframe but also strengthened stakeholder relationships through the transparent, inclusive selection process.

Situation 

A state government department required a Divisional Director for an extremely niche role with a highly limited candidate pool. The position had been vacant for six months, with complex selection criteria encompassing technical skills, relevant experience, cultural fit, and emotional intelligence. The client faced additional challenges including a remuneration package at the lowest end of the market pay scale and an unsuccessful previous advertising campaign. With such specific requirements and a constrained budget, a bespoke search approach was critical to success.

The organization engaged PeopleScout’s Apex professional search solution to overcome these recruitment challenges.

Solution 

The Apex team implemented a comprehensive, multi-faceted search strategy designed to address the unique challenges of this niche government role:

Comprehensive Market Approach: Conducted broad, national market intelligence across the entire sector to identify potential candidates who might not be actively seeking new opportunities.

Strategic Advertising Campaign: Launched an anonymous advertising campaign to protect candidate confidentiality while maximizing response rates.

Flexible Search Methodology: Deployed multiple search approaches simultaneously to cast the widest possible net for suitable candidates.

Collaborative Process: Provided transparent, timely end-to-end service across all recruitment steps, including shared market feedback with the client.

Criteria Re-evaluation: Worked closely with the client to re-evaluate selection criteria based on market realities and candidate availability.

Compliance Management: Ensured all processes met strict government recruitment standards and compliance requirements, the professional search team presented a tight shortlist of four strong candidates to the client.  

Results 

The strategic approach delivered exceptional outcomes for this challenging assignment:

• Identified 50 qualified candidates through targeted national search activities
• Conducted market-based review leading to improved advertising response rates
• Successfully shortlisted 6 strong candidates who met the refined selection criteria
• Completed recruitment in 10 weeks from vacancy brief to candidate’s verbal acceptance
• Delivered full compliance including comprehensive background, reference, and compliance checks

The preferred candidate accepted the offer within the government’s budget constraints, successfully filling a critical leadership role that had proven difficult to recruit through traditional methods.

Situation

A local council in the UK were seeking a Director of Law & Governance. This was a prominent and complex role responsible for delivering legal and governance services, including a team of 100 employees across the council. This role would not only contribute to the direction of services across law and governance but also take part in the leadership group.

This role would also act as a monitoring officer, which is a legally mandated role within all local authorities in England. This individual ensures the council, its officers and its elected members meet their statutory obligations and act according to their codes of conduct.

With a monitoring officer in every council, the market was rich in opportunity to find individuals who had this experience at the director and deputy director level. The main challenge for this client was ensuring that the council found an individual who also had the leadership experience to transform the services into one seamless organization. They were looking for a senior leader who had previous experience driving innovation that made material difference to their organization and customers.

The search and selection depended on engaging candidates with the right blend of skills and experience—the technical skills of a monitoring officer with a track record of leading transformational change. The council turned to PeopleScout for our Apex senior professional hiring solution.

Solution

After taking a detailed brief with the Corporate Director and CEO of the council, the PeopleScout Apex team worked with the client to agree the parameters of the search and the timeline.

We supported the process by:

• Executing comprehensive, research-driven headhunting across the UK into relevant organizations in local government
• Delivering a full senior leadership assessment center, including engaging an expert in the field as a technical assessor, to provide a well-rounded view of each candidate shortlisted for the panel interview
• Hosting virtual interview via Microsoft Teams
• Developing tailored questions via our in-house occupational psychologists to support the final stage interview
• Creating in-depth reports for each candidate outlining strengths and risk areas in relation to the role

We delivered the whole process from end-to-end, meeting all deadlines and timelines as agreed at the kick off.

Results

Our nationwide search gave us a healthy pool of candidates to consider for the role. We submitted a shortlist of 12 candidates to the panel to review. Following this, we conducted five technical interviews along with personality assessments, providing the panel with reports on the strengths, development areas and technical capabilities of each candidate. Two candidates reached the final panel stage, both sourced by the PeopleScout Apex team, which led to a successful hire.