Leading Financial Services Organisation (Bath)

Sourcing a Senior Business Intelligence Professional to Build Data-Driven Decision-Making Capability From Scratch

The Challenge

Our client was a prominent financial services organisation based in Bath. They had decided to create a Senior Business Intelligence role for the first time, recognising that the reporting and analytics capability the business needed was not going to emerge from existing resource. The role was tasked with driving data-driven decision-making, improving reporting across multiple departments, and working directly with senior leaders on strategic initiatives.

Having never recruited for a position like this before, the organisation had no internal benchmark for what good looked like, no established process for assessing BI candidates, and no clear view of what the market would expect in terms of salary and seniority. They needed a recruitment partner who could guide them through that process as much as execute the search itself.

Bath adds its own complexity. Financial services organisations outside London compete for senior BI talent against Bristol, remote-first employers, and the capital itself. Candidates with strong Power BI and Tableau experience, financial analytics capability, and the stakeholder management skills to work at a senior level have options. Making a Bath-based role attractive to that profile requires more than a job advert.

The Solution

Xist4 ran a targeted search designed around the specific challenge of hiring for a role the organisation had never recruited for before.

• Worked with the hiring team to define the role properly before going to market, building a success profile around the business outcomes the hire needed to deliver rather than a generic BI job description.
• Provided honest market intelligence on salary expectations, candidate availability, and how the Bath location compared to competing employers, giving the organisation a realistic picture before outreach began.
• Combined targeted advertising with direct outreach to passive candidates across financial services BI, data analytics, and reporting functions, reaching people who were not actively looking but had the right profile.
• Assessed candidates on technical depth across Power BI and Tableau, financial analytics experience, and the ability to translate complex data into clear, actionable insight for non-technical senior stakeholders.
• Supported the client through the assessment and decision process, helping them evaluate candidates confidently given their limited prior experience hiring at this level.

The Result

Within eight weeks, Xist4 presented a shortlist of qualified Senior BI professionals with the right combination of technical capability, financial services experience, and stakeholder credibility.

The client appointed their first choice. The hire brought the data visualisation depth, analytical rigour, and communication skills the role demanded. For an organisation creating this kind of capability for the first time, getting the first appointment right mattered more than getting it quickly. Getting both was the outcome.