Situation
A local council in the UK were seeking a Director of Law & Governance. This was a prominent and complex role responsible for delivering legal and governance services, including a team of 100 employees across the council. This role would not only contribute to the direction of services across law and governance but also take part in the leadership group.
This role would also act as a monitoring officer, which is a legally mandated role within all local authorities in England. This individual ensures the council, its officers and its elected members meet their statutory obligations and act according to their codes of conduct.
With a monitoring officer in every council, the market was rich in opportunity to find individuals who had this experience at the director and deputy director level. The main challenge for this client was ensuring that the council found an individual who also had the leadership experience to transform the services into one seamless organization. They were looking for a senior leader who had previous experience driving innovation that made material difference to their organization and customers.
The search and selection depended on engaging candidates with the right blend of skills and experience—the technical skills of a monitoring officer with a track record of leading transformational change. The council turned to PeopleScout for our Apex senior professional hiring solution.
Solution
After taking a detailed brief with the Corporate Director and CEO of the council, the PeopleScout Apex team worked with the client to agree the parameters of the search and the timeline.
We supported the process by:
- Executing comprehensive, research-driven headhunting across the UK into relevant organizations in local government
- Delivering a full senior leadership assessment center, including engaging an expert in the field as a technical assessor, to provide a well-rounded view of each candidate shortlisted for the panel interview
- Hosting virtual interview via Microsoft Teams
- Developing tailored questions via our in-house occupational psychologists to support the final stage interview
- Creating in-depth reports for each candidate outlining strengths and risk areas in relation to the role
We delivered the whole process from end-to-end, meeting all deadlines and timelines as agreed at the kick off.
Results
Our nationwide search gave us a healthy pool of candidates to consider for the role. We submitted a shortlist of 12 candidates to the panel to review. Following this, we conducted five technical interviews along with personality assessments, providing the panel with reports on the strengths, development areas and technical capabilities of each candidate. Two candidates reached the final panel stage, both sourced by the PeopleScout Apex team, which led to a successful hire.
