Finding perm and contract consultancy talent

  • Client
    Presence
  • Industry
    Digital Products
  • Location
    Global
  • Projects
    Finding consulting talent
  • 33 contract hires

    We used all the tools in our arsenal to guarantee that the best contract talent was being found using local and national talent community building, networking and referrals, market mapping, strategic headhunting and targeted advertising campaigns.
  • 8 permanent hires

    We made sure to find the best and most suitable perm hires that had all the skills needed in a product management and digital design space.
  • Building partnerships

    We talk to them around 3-4 times per week to advise, support and consult them on management decisions with contract staff.

Finding Consultancy Expertise… FAST

Presence is a digital product consultancy who work with mission-led organisations committed to helping the world become a better place. 
Their expertise is in design, development, product management and emerging technologies. As they grow and win new projects, multidisciplinary experts are needed to deliver high-quality, reliable and sustainable solutions for their clients. 

But such talent is hard to find and even harder to attract as consulting firms battle it out to secure the best candidates in the market. With no in-house recruiting team and a time-short CTO finding themselves more and more responsible for the hiring process, Presence needed a reliable talent partner who could hire permanent and contract experts quickly.

This is no easy task, but we were sure with our quality ways of working and network of quality candidates that we were up to the task. Here’s how we helped them…

How we helped Presence save time and win more projects…

Consultative partner.

Presence has quickly become one of our best friends – we talk to them around 3-4 times per week to advise, support and consult them on management decisions with contract staff. 

We have helped them structure T’s & C’s and billing processes with new clients, been a listening ear during challenging times, provided reassurance on all things talent-related and supported with process design.

Interview support.

Fundamental to the success of Presence is their quality-driven, collaborative team who work together to deliver the best possible solution for their clients. We needed to ensure that every candidate shortlisted would be aligned with Presence’s ethos. 

We encouraged candidates to talk candidly about the challenges they faced, the types of projects they enjoyed working on, the things they didn’t like so much about their job, what their learning and development needs were, how they collaborated with others and anything else that would help us determine whether they would be the right fit. 

Bid confidence.

Presence is one of our clients who rely heavily on new talent to deliver high-profile projects for their customers. They are a growing company with a strong reputation to maintain and need to be certain they will have the right people, at the right time – without fail. 

Because of our history of attracting great talent to Presence, they came to trust our ability to quickly mobilise teams which gave them the confidence to bid for new projects. One of these required us to build a team of 14 engineers. This campaign became our highest priority. We took a whole team approach and had a shortlist sent over within 48 hours of briefing.

Finding the talent.

To help Presence identify and attract a diverse selection of candidates, we needed to ensure our approach to talent attraction was broad and inclusive. Presence asked us to hire for strategic permanent and contract roles, with skills across multiple tech stacks and specialisms needed.

With a major initiative to build a truly diverse workforce, Presence needed us to use our knowledge and network to create candidate attraction initiatives that were fully inclusive and would result in a broad, unbiased shortlist.

We used all the tools in our kit to ensure no stone is left unturned. This included:

  • Local and national talent community building, networking and referrals
  • Market mapping and strategic headhunting
  • Targeted advertising campaigns
  • Community partnerships that support DE&I initiatives
  • Social media engagement
  • Database search
  • Blogs/individual content engagement
  • Events & meetups attendance

Improving the candidate experience increases hires…

Maintaining candidate engagement in a fast-paced market is challenging enough – good candidates know their value and often won’t do coding challenges. Presence was losing out simply because candidates felt disengaged with the two-hour coding assessment they had to complete – other companies were snapping the talent up quickly. 

We helped them re-design the process to include a screen share live code review within the 2nd stage interview which helped them stay engaged with the candidates and gave candidates the opportunity to discuss their strengths and training needs with their future employer.

  • Talent is such a fantastic recruiter. They are always responsive and happy to jump on the phone on short notice. They ask very smart and insightful questions to make sure they understands our hiring needs. Talent does a great job of finding us quality people. Most importantly, the people working for Talent are great at communication. Every interaction with them is professional, friendly, and honest. I trust that they will represent our needs to potential candidates. I would gladly work with Talent again.
    CTO
    Presence
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