The Challenge

Any headhunter can sort through 100 resumes and give you the best 10. But it’s not so easy to find highly specialized talent in a tiny pool of prospects who are halfway around the world.

That’s what we were asked to do by a technology industry consortium that was staffing up its London office. With a membership that included over 200 leading companies, our client had to walk a political tightrope -- finding three individuals with a rare combination of engineering, management and standards expertise without soliciting employees of the member companies. It was also important to keep the search very confidential.

The Solution

Instead of outsourcing the assignment to a headhunter (who would have worked on contingency and charged a substantial placement fee), the organization retained The Center Group.

Because we had a long-standing relationship with this client, we were already well versed on their technical requirements and industry ecosystem. We began by developing a recruitment strategy that included an analysis of the U.K. labor market and outlined a search process using our network of specialized, in-region recruiters. With client approval, we began a direct sourcing effort to find the best candidates.

The Center Group quickly identified five qualified candidates for each position, resulting in three hires that are onboard and successful in their jobs. We also provided our client with a database of all the solicited and unsolicited applicants we had screened – a valuable resource (specific to this organization) that can be used in future searches for these hard-to-find professionals.