Not for profit professional body
To fulfil an immediate requirement for a technical services manager for a small not-for-profit professional body.
The Challenge
For smaller organisations, adjusting to the departure of a key manager needs to be handled quickly and carefully - ensuring that the right individual can be sourced quickly to maintain continuity is critical. One such membership body, based in Bristol, was faced with having to replace their technical services manager at short notice. Being time poor and faced with the urgent need to find the right person, the company took the strategic decision utilise the services of locally based Xist4 stepped in with the know-how and ability to source relevant local candidates who were available with little or no notice.
The Solution
A technical services manager has an important role in any organisation. But in this instance, the role was pivotal to the professional body maintaining their website’s e-learning and e-commerce functions. In addition to this, the right candidate would be required to manage all the internal office IT systems and coordinate and manage third party service providers.
Given such a complex and immediate requirement, Xist4 wasted no time assigning an experienced account manager to act as a technology recruitment partner and exploring what key technical and non- technical skills were important to this role. Armed with this information, Xist4 focussed their search on finding available local professionals who had a broad technology skill set, along with experience of managing outsourced vendors. Using their wide networking contacts, Xist4 undertook intensive job board advertising, which they ran in conjunction with a social media search and featured the job on their own high traffic website as well.
The Result
By focusing their search within 30 miles of Bristol, and having pinpointed the exact skills needed, Xist4 was able to recommend suitable candidates. Before presenting the client with the candidate CVs, Xist4’s account manager took time to personally speak to each candidate to thoroughly assess their suitability and availability. This thorough process ensured the right candidate was ready and available to start on time and on budget.
Xist4 were given a brief to identify technical competence, operational experience and partnership working. Character and approach to work were also really important to the organisation as we maintain an open, friendly and member focused culture. The real challenge with the brief however, was the turn-around time to ensure sufficient handover. We are delighted with the result of the search and the appointee is adding considerable value and allowing us to progress a number of fronts.