Client: Non-Food Services Organisation
Roles: Head of Procurement (Indirect) & Category Manager (Indirect)
Package: £100 - £120k (Head of Procurement) & £65k-75k (Category Manager) plus excellent bens
Outline: Retained by our client, a privately owned European technology services organisation, that was setting up a greenfield ‘indirects’ procurement team to lead the ‘commercial function’ within the business. Their aim was to establish a procurement team, which would be able to penetrate & work with the separate internal business units and assist in setting up a best practice procurement function. Our client was also keen to maximise their supplier relationships (improving SRM generally), raising profitability and minimising risk around the commercial aspects of supplier engagement.
Being a European organisation, the client needed cross-cultural experience as well as candidates who had experience of working in non-mandated procurement functions who could demonstrate an ability to build relationships, overcoming resistance from challenging stakeholders.
How we handled the search:After an initial face-to-face detailed briefing session with the client, we began the search, identifying the ‘long list’ within c. 2 weeks. Initial face-to-face competency based interviews were completed by using the Langley 360™ Assessment Tool to develop a short list of eight candidates. Detailed documented profiles were submitted to the client alongside the original CVs of candidates and a shortlisting meeting was held with the client. After selection the client carried out further interviews with four candidates. Both roles were filled by excellent candidates. Both candidates had cross-cultural experience and had multiple languages and both had worked successfully in a non-mandated function.
What difference did our candidates make? Follow up with our client confirmed that the candidates had successfully begun to build a procurement function from scratch. They had both begun to penetrate areas of the business that were initially seen as non-compliant and ‘out of scope’. An SRM Programme (Supplier Relationship Management) was developed, bought into by the business and this contributed significantly to an improvement in supplier relationships, limitation of risk and other ‘added value’ bottom-line benefits.
Time to appointment was 8 weeks for the Head of Procurement and 9 weeks for the Category Manager. Candidates were appointed within the nominated salary and package banding.