Building Long-Term Success: Our Ongoing Partnership with a Leading Defence Business

Client: Leading Defence Business

Duration: Since 2019

Objective: To identify and place top-tier candidates for various key roles, ensuring the selected individuals possess the expertise and strategic vision required to drive the company’s growth and competitive advantage.

Overview: Since 2019, we have partnered with a leading defence business, playing a major role in their executive search efforts. This organisation is involved in the delivery of critical defence projects, including the British Army’s new Mechanised Infantry Vehicles.

As their main executive search partner, we have successfully placed a number of key roles and continue to work on ongoing searches.

Key Roles Placed:

• Head of IT
• Head of Procurement
• Head of Quality
• Head of Health and Safety
• Head of Payroll
• Head of Transformation
• Head of Bid Management
• Commercial Director

Understanding Client Requirements: To fully understand the client’s requirements, we immersed ourselves in their culture through a comprehensive ‘discovery’ session. This included:

1. Meetings with senior executives
2. Site tours
3. Reviewing company results, values, and future business plans

Following this session, we produced a detailed briefing document summarising our insights. This document included information on the organisation, role specifications, salary and benefits, the search and assessment process, required experience, leadership behaviors, and responsibilities. This collaborative effort ensured we had a thorough understanding of the client’s culture and values.

Promoting the Client: Given the client’s status as a newly formed business, establishing a strong employer brand was crucial. Despite their association with well-known parent companies, the client needed to effectively communicate their unique value proposition. We provided shortlisted candidates with detailed briefing documents that highlighted the client’s principles, values, job descriptions, and the exciting journey they were undertaking.

Our initial research targeted professionals from businesses of comparable size and complexity. We utilised both internal research functions and external partners for:

• Market intelligence
• Identifying successful and competitor companies
• Gathering third-party opinions and market views
• Sector awards and rankings

Through comprehensive research, we approached over 100 professionals for each search, actively promoting the client to senior executives in the market.

Client Expectations: To ensure client expectations were met, we provided live access to our search data via an online client portal, updated in real time. Additionally, we delivered weekly KPI updates, feedback on roles, and process pipelines.

We conducted first-stage interviews with all shortlisted candidates, assessing them against key criteria before presenting them to the client for second-stage interviews. Our assessments included:

• Competency evaluations
• Motivation analysis
• Relocation/family considerations
• Current compensation
• Personal style and impact

This thorough vetting process ensured all candidates met the client’s brief and cultural requirements, saving them significant time during the selection process.

We also provided a bespoke assessment and insights report, which included personality assessment profiles, top strengths, risks, possible derailment factors, and supplementary interview questions.

Outcome: Since partnering with the client, we have successfully completed multiple retained executive search assignments.