Case study: IT services for The Guinness Partnership

As part of the ongoing transformation of their business services, The Guinness Partnership decided to create a centralised IT services department and needed to build and develop a team of high calibre IT professionals.

The restructure created a number of new IT disciplines, with new roles to be recruited primarily in their Oldham office. These roles addressed all levels of the IT function, including managers and individual contributors and would contribute to the standardisation, simplification and modernisation of the IT estate at large.

As a result there were 25 vacancies within their IT department that Michael Page Technology was asked to recruit for. These roles included helpdesk, infrastructure and desktop, technical operations, application maintenance and support, IT asset management, systems development,, testing, IT project management, IT business relationship management, architecture, data modelling and information management, governance and risk and supplier management.

The key challenges were:

All of this combined with the ‘Guinness Behaviours’ – the values that they look for all in their employees.

The Guinness Partnership decided that they wanted all the new candidates in post by the start of the 2013 financial year. They wanted to engage with a recruitment partner who had the expertise and capacity to recruit a large number of roles within a very short timeframe. We were mindful of the urgency of their requirements, combined with the importance of sourcing the best candidates and suggested a broad search methodology that would utilise our database, advertising responses and proactive networking.

We proposed a cost-effective, bespoke advertising solution that provided core coverage on Michael Page websites, social media and external recruitment websites to attract the widest pool of talent in the shortest timeframe. This included CW Jobs, Total Jobs, Jobserve, Jobsite, Charity Jobs and LinkedIn.

To support our engagement with potential candidates and to help attract talened individuals, we also created and hosted a bespoke mini-site to capture information about the organisation, values, benefits and vacancies on offer. This was designed by the Michael Page in-house marketing team and had the ‘look and feel’ of The Guinness Partnership website.

The Guinness partnership had never undertaken a recruitment campaign of this volume before and it was a departure from their normal practive of appointing. We carried out all the initial resourcing, screening and first stage face-to-face interviews on their behalf. Throughout the process we were also asked to interview internal candidates alongside external applicants so that they could assess candidates and benchmark them fairly.

Our approach allowed us to provide comprehensive interview notes along with each shortlisted candidate and where possible arranged a convenient time to speak with the individual hiring managers to discuss the candidate’s strengths and motivations.

Throughout the campaign, we reported to the group IT director and recruitment manager weekly. This ensured that we were able to advise the organisation of any challenges we encountered in the market and give recommendations to overcome them. It was important that we remained delivery focused and consultative throughout.

The target was to recruit the original team before the 1st April 2013. We had recruited 86% of the team before this date and offered the final candidate in June 2013.

Following the original 25 roles, we have since recruited a further 15 roles within a 12 month period. The benefit of our approach and the positive experience that candidate’s have received has resulted in a high retention of their employees and their organisation has been promoted and recognised as an ‘Employer of Choice’. 

To find out how we can aid your recruitment process, get in touch with the Michael Page Technology team.

“During what has been a period of significant transformational activity for Guinness, which included a complete re-design and implementation of both the IT team and the IT estate, Michael Page Technology have been responsive and understanding of the pressures within our business. The degree of the teams involvement and the reassurance that have had in Michael Page, has allowed us the freedom to select those candidates that best fit our company’s style, culture and business drivers.

The IT Services team is now fully formed and I am proud to have a range of individuals whose technical knowledge, energy and determination should support the Partnership in achieving all of its goals in the future and will transform our technical landscape. I am really please how smooth is has all been. The team have been a credit to your company and I sincerely hope that we can work together again in the future.”

Group IT Director

The Guinness Partnership