Recruiting a new, or building upon, a small specialist team requires a fine blend of recruitment capability, cultural insight and industry understanding.
The first task is to ensure potential new recruits complement the existing team both culturally and technically. The technological issue is the easier one to resolve, through structured interviews and, if required, technical testing, one can quickly ascertain who is expert and who is not. The cultural question? Now that is a different matter, and by far the most crucial and most difficult to resolve.
Today's fast paced technology industry places greater demands than ever on what may be termed the softer skills of team fit, relationship management and resilience under pressure. Take for example, one of our clients, the global risk management specialist Optial.
Optial has grown in an organic and highly structured manner. Headquartered in London, with offices in Atlanta and Sydney, Optial is a leading supplier of web-based compliance and risk management solutions, enabling businesses to demonstrate a culture of compliance and strong governance. Their products have been implemented by Fortune 500 organisations in almost 50 countries.
The company has developed an impressive product and service portfolio, clients such as Standard Chartered, Rothchild, SEB and The Bank of England, pay testimony to the capability and power of their service offering.
Recruiting Engagement Consultants for Optial, people who provide expert relationship management in ensuring the company's product and services integrate seamlessly and successfully with the client organisation is a perfect case in point.
The skills, mindset and professionalism of the Engagement Consultant must match the high expectations set by the company in the mind of the customer. Three words describe the Optial culture - dynamic, agile and smart.
The Optial employees come from a wide and varied background but share a common attitude and values which place high importance on personal integrity, professionalism and fair dealing.
To succeed in the working environment, requires a strong work ethic, a team focus and high personal drive. People are allowed the freedom to excel and innovate.
Great working environment, but tough to recruit into. The smaller working environment deters many, but also attracts with the opportunity to fill broader based roles and not be narrowly restrained functionally and commercially.
But this adds to the pressure to recruit. There are no hiding places. Compromising on quality of recruit is not an option. Timescale might be an issue, so too workload but to compromise on quality of recruit would defeat the whole company ethos.
The need is to identify a small number of potential recruits who each:
Marketing to potential candidates is a critical stage of the process. The need is to set the proper expectation from our own client perspective and to engender appropriate buy-in and interest from well matched candidates. After our own interview, if appropriate, the candidate is referred to the client for further assessment.
The Optial screening process is rigorous; two formal structured interviews, a presentation exercise and an informal meet to get an understanding of social skills and to communicate fully what the challenge is.
Time spent on intelligent assessment and a considered debate on fit are pre-requisite.
No easy task, no easy challenge but worth the effort in the long term. Cultural fit, mindset and team ethos are forefront in the selection thought process together with a technological know how that's a cut above the rest.
No easy solution but we always get there in the end through tenacity, perseverance and having the confidence to recommend the 'right' fit to the team based upon recruitment skills, cultural insight and industry knowledge.
Want to build specialist teams? Please
Haydn Parry or telephone
him on +44 (0)20 8334 8804.
