[On-Demand]: Recruiter On-Demand: How Project-Based RPO Can Solve Your Toughest Talent Challenges

[On-Demand]: Recruiter On-Demand: How Project-Based RPO Can Solve Your Toughest Talent Challenges

Right now, employers across all industries are dealing with a difficult talent market as demand accelerated at a record pace. If your organization is struggling to meet a sudden need for talent or your internal recruiting resources are stretched thin, selecting a project-based RPO solution can drastically improve your talent acquisition outcomes.

Join PeopleScout’s Trish Koester, senior director of client delivery, and Karen Wendelberger, operations manager for our Talking Talent webinar, Recruiter On-Demand: How Project-Based RPO Can Solve Your Toughest Talent Challenges, available on-demand now.

Trish and Karen discuss the advantages of project-based RPO and how employers can best leverage an on-demand recruiting solution to source and hire top talent.

This webinar will cover:

  • Common challenges faced by employers and how project-based RPO can help solve them
  • The difference between working with an agency and a project-based RPO provider
  • How sourcing specialized talent through a project-based RPO reduces time-to-hire metrics
  • Real-world case studies from PeopleScout’s Recruiter On-Demand team
  • And more!

Finding the Right RPO Provider for Your Healthcare Staffing Needs

Fuelled by an aging population and the growth of chronic conditions, jobs in healthcare are expected to grow 13% by 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations. In fact, nurse practitioners are predicted to grow by 46%. So, finding the right recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) provider is critical for healthcare organizations looking to hire top healthcare talent. Whether a healthcare organization is looking to improve its recruiting processes, improve healthcare staff retention or enhance its employer brand, developing a strong relationship with a trusted RPO provider begins with the selection process. In this post, we review the best practices when it comes to selecting the right RPO provider for your healthcare staffing needs.

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing for Healthcare?

To understand RPO solutions, it’s important to understand what they are not. RPO providers are not healthcare staffing companies or head-hunters. Rather, RPO providers implement solutions designed to streamline and improve the hiring process, and as a result, fulfill your healthcare hiring needs.

👉 What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Dig Deeper

CONQUERING TOP CHALLENGES IN HEALTHCARE TALENT ACQUISITION

From employer branding to employee engagement, hiring, onboarding and much more, a well-executed RPO program can make a huge impact on a healthcare organization. RPO solutions are not one-size-fits-all plans. Each RPO solution must be tailored to meet an individual company’s needs and take industry specific concerns into consideration.

Healthcare Staffing and RPO: Getting Started

Before contacting an RPO provider, a healthcare organization must first assess both its hiring and business needs. The following is a list of common healthcare staffing needs fulfilled by RPO solutions:

  • Recruit a small number of employees for niche positions, like NICU nurses.
  • Provide scalable engagements to fill a large number of open positions quickly with high-quality candidates.
  • Help healthcare organizations increase employee retention and improve employee turnover rate.
  • Help healthcare organizations staff positions that require specific technical experience or certifications.
  • Provide transparency by tracking metrics and milestones outlined in SLAs.

Once you have considered your own needs, you need to research to see what your prospective RPO partner brings to the table. When consulting with a prospective RPO provider ask yourself the following questions:

  • Does the prospective RPO have expertise in fulfilling the specific staffing needs of healthcare organizations?
  • Do they have multiple healthcare organizations as current clients?
  • Can they provide scalability with full-cycle, partial-cycle or modular recruiting solutions?
  • Where do they source healthcare professionals to build their talent pipeline?

How Does an RPO Provider Support Healthcare Staffing?

If you are looking to streamline your healthcare organization’s talent acquisition processes and procedures as a means to become more cost-effective, then engaging an RPO provider can help you reduce spend with healthcare employment agencies, yield lower turnover and create a higher quality pipeline of candidates for your open positions. The work of a good RPO provider will save your organization money throughout the new employee’s tenure at your organization, beyond when they’re hired.

RPO Providers Can Secure Specialized Healthcare Talent

The right healthcare RPO provider understands the unique challenges presented by the healthcare industry and has experience sourcing quality candidates for niche/technical healthcare positions.

RPO providers with expertise in the healthcare industry will quickly target and assess both passive and active candidates for hard-to-fill positions rather than placing an ad and waiting for job seekers to answer it. By understanding your healthcare hiring needs, an RPO provider reduces the need for training internal personnel or hiring those with healthcare-specific experience.

RPO Providers Can Provide Scalable Solutions to Accommodate Growth

As the U.S. population ages, the need for healthcare services is on the rise. As a result, many healthcare organizations are growing rapidly to meet the demand. If your organization is experiencing growth, an experienced RPO partner can source the right talent quickly to make sure your organization is staffed adequately to meet growth demands.

RPO providers can handle background checks, drug screens and other onboarding tasks as needed. They will make sure that all the applicants presented to you for interviews have the specific skills required for your open positions.

RPO Providers Can Improve Your Employer Brand to Attract Better Talent

Whether your healthcare organization is an established medical provider or a new player in the industry, building strong employer brand appeal can attract the best talent to your job postings. An RPO provider can help build your brand and your reputation as a good place to work. An RPO engagement can provide solutions to help you maintain healthy relationships with both prospective candidates—including ones that are not hired for open positions—former and current employees, which improves your employer brand in the healthcare industry.

Which RPO Provider is Right for Your Healthcare Staffing Needs?

Choosing the right RPO partner for your healthcare staffing needs is a carefully thought out process with many factors to take into consideration. You are not only selecting a company to help you with your recruiting processes, but you are also choosing a partner that will help you improve multiple business functions for your organization. Just like when choosing other products or services, you need to identify your specific business needs and what you want an RPO provider to handle or assist you with. This primarily means identifying your weaknesses/pain points and your organizational objectives, such as staffing cost reduction, organization expansion or reconfiguring your recruiting structure.

The Right RPO Provider Values Accountability

When hiring for healthcare, accountability is one of the most important factors in the relationship between an organization and an RPO provider. When you select the right healthcare RPO provider, they will deliver a high level of transparency and will encourage you to hold them accountable for how well the hires they make work out for your organization. A good RPO provider will also want to be judged on how quickly they can fill open positions and on how cost-efficient their service is for you.

The Right RPO Provider Understands Healthcare Staffing

The right RPO provider knows healthcare staffing top to bottom. They have strong connections with healthcare professional organizations, they understand the technology used to source top healthcare talent, they know how to screen candidates effectively and they understand the compliance requirements for each healthcare position.

An RPO provider who is knowledgeable about healthcare hiring can easily fill any position in your organization and will help you find the best candidate both in terms of cultural fit and fitness for the position.

They Understand Your Needs

Each healthcare organization is unique, so a cookie-cutter approach to your healthcare staffing needs may not work to your advantage. The right RPO provider will take the time to form an in-depth understanding of your staffing needs and preferences, and will work to tailor a seamless RPO plan for you.

No matter how many positions you need to fill, the right RPO provider will take that into consideration and make sure your new 10 or 1,000 employees all hit the ground running and seamlessly integrate into your organization.

They Employ Best-Fit Technology and AI-Powered Sourcing Methods

In a tight healthcare labor market, sourcing and attracting the best talent can be difficult. The right RPO provider understands this, and will employ cutting-edge recruiting technology and sourcing methods to meet a client’s healthcare staffing needs.

Healthcare recruiting technology that utilizes AI and machine learning to source and screen candidates give healthcare organizations a distinct advantage in finding the right candidates quickly. What’s more, recruiting technology can reduce the cost-per-hire and streamline the often disjointed healthcare staffing process by merging multiple recruiting functions into one easy-to-use interface.

They Understand Your Talent Market

Whether your healthcare organization has one location or multiple locations across many regions, the right RPO provider understands the laws, regulations, customs and structures in your regions of operation. Your RPO provider should possess the know-how and have experience in sourcing candidates in your talent market(s) to make sure you hire the best talent available. The right RPO provider will take as little time and money as possible sourcing your new workforce, and get them hired as quickly as possible.

Healthcare staffing can be complicated, that’s why partnering with the right RPO provider is crucial for success. Once you have found the right RPO provider for your staffing needs, it can take time to build a strong relationship. Once the relationship is established, you will see all of the benefits the right RPO provider can bring to the table, and you will see how much easier the healthcare staffing process can be.

Specialized Nurse Recruitment at a Not-for-Profit Healthcare System

Specialized Nurse Recruitment for a Not-For-Profit Healthcare System

Project RPO for Healthcare

Specialized Nurse Recruitment for a Not-For-Profit Healthcare System

A not-for-profit healthcare system serving the New England area of the United States engaged PeopleScout to help find specialized nursing candidates through a project-based recruitment solution.

6 Weeks to Fill Vacancies that Had Been Open for Over a Year
13 Week Engagement Renewed—Twice
Improved Quality of Hire
Improved Quality of Hire

Situation

This healthcare facility is the only level III NICU and level I trauma center in the region. Offering this kind of specialized medical care requires specialized nursing recruiting. The client’s HR team had difficulty sourcing candidates who met the minimum education and experience requirements.

The client engaged PeopleScout for Recruiter On-Demand™ project-based recruitment solution to hire nurses at two facilities, included labor and delivery nurses, surgical nurses and emergency nurses.

Solution

PeopleScout deployed a Recruiter On-Demand solution with virtual recruiters working alongside the client’s internal TA team by sourcing and recruiting specialized nursing talent.

Our recruiters developed a close relationship with the client’s hiring managers to better understand their needs and company culture. This helped us to source candidates that closely aligned with the organization’s values and expectations.

To attract nursing talent in a competitive labor market, PeopleScout positioned the client’s employer value proposition to better align with candidate expectations for career growth, sign-on bonuses and educational assistance. We also monitored the regional labor market and identified recruiting opportunities at competitors or facilities closing operations or laying-off staff.

Our healthcare experts also posted on job boards and updated content regularly on niche healthcare sites, social media and medical association sites to source both active and passive candidates.

Results

Unfilled Positions Sourced Within Six Weeks

In the first six weeks, PeopleScout sourced and hired nurses for eight vacancies that had been unfilled for a year.

Contract Renewed

As a result of the success of the program, the client renewed its initial 13-week project RPO contract with PeopleScout, not once but twice.

Dedication and a Quality Partnership

The healthcare system’s HR team valued the quality of candidates our dedicated nursing recruiting brought to the table, and the relationship continued to improve with each engagement.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Not-for-Profit Healthcare System
  • INDUSTRY: Healthcare
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • About the Client: This New England-based not-for-profit healthcare system operates a level III NICU and level I trauma center in the region.

Three Potential Pitfalls of High-Volume Hiring and How to Avoid Them

A fairly large handful of colleagues and clients are aware that my family and I are having some fairly extensive renovation work done on our home. Partly because I have moaned about it on a weekly basis since January. Partly because the endless background sounds of drills, hammers and circular saws— and on one particularly fraught occasion, a builders exposed backside descending from a loft ladder behind me—have all permeated some of my Zoom video calls. 

Now that the work is 90 percent finished, I look back on the project, and there are some aspects of it that I wish we had done differently. In doing such a lot of work at one time, we inevitably compromised on our standards in some small ways when faced with the size of the project ahead. 

Hopefully, you can see where the analogy is leading. When we, or our clients, are faced with a mountain to climb in terms of the complexity or scarcity of required talent in big numbers, it’s easy to deviate away from best practice. And this is never more common than now. 

As organisations switch from hiring freezes to acute growth mode, we are seeing a dramatic shift back towards a candidate-driven market. As the next 12 months play out, I personally believe this will prove to be one of the most dramatic shifts in several decades, and employers will be scratching their heads at just how they are going to close the hiring gap. 

During these impending and inevitably large-scale campaigns, there are three potential risks that stand out to me:

1. Introducing new people will impact the company culture.

Firstly, hiring lots of new people can present a risk to the company culture you’ve spent a lot of effort crafting. This may be more prevalent within smaller organisations or for those hiring at the leadership level, but no organisation is truly immune. With any hiring that significantly impacts a team, you must consider not only the skills and competencies match, but also how the existing cultural makeup of that group will be affected. One way to counter this is through thorough training to help align old and new employees on the same cultural path. This should be led by leadership and serve as a catalyst for people—old and new—to embrace your organisation’s mission and values. 

2. High-volume hiring can increase the risk of compromising on quality.

When it comes to high-volume hiring, hiring managers are more inclined to drop their standards on quality-of-hire. Not so much in terms of matching skills and experience, which tends to be a more objective. Plus, a deviation away from the requisite profile can be harder for the hiring manager to justify in their own mind. However, I’ve seen a “lowering of the bar” when it comes to the softer skills—the personality traits and competency matches which are naturally more subjective. One effective antidote here is robust candidate assessment practices. Backing up your gut feel with a bespoke or even “off the shelf” assessment package can help make your judgement more objective. 

3. Diversity amongst new hires suffers.

Thirdly, there is naturally a risk to diversity in your hiring. We’re all hopefully well-versed on the myriad benefits that fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce can bring. But, what is a valid, primary consideration when hiring one or two team members can begin to feel like an added challenge when filling a large number of openings starts to weigh down on a manager. Is there a temptation to let diversity standards slip if the challenge of filling critical gaps on your team already feels impossible? Is one allowed to be pragmatic in the circumstances and just hire, regardless of the diversity credentials? 

I would argue that you wouldn’t hire someone who has the wrong skills for your team, so you shouldn’t be any more inclined to lower standards on diversity. As we all know, the wrong hiring decision now, only costs us in the long-term when we have to re-hire down the line. Better to get it right first time, whether that be a diversity match or a skills match. 

Ultimately, any short-term concessions we might be tempted to make under pressure to hire at the time will be a source of regret. So, don’t lower your standards and suffer from these pitfalls. Take it from me—the decision not to fit underfloor heating in our family bathroom will likely haunt me for the next decade or two!

Candidate NPS: What are Candidates Saying About You When You’re Not in the Room?

We hear a lot about ‘customer-centricity’, putting the customer at the heart of everything you do. For years, organisations have been using Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure their customer experience and to generate feedback that boosts data-driven decision making. However, when it comes to measuring the candidate experience, companies are missing out on candidate NPS.

What is NPS?

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, began as way for organisations to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. By asking one question—“On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague?”—organisations can gauge which customers are promoters, and which are detractors.

Graphic depicts how candidate NPS  is scored.

Overall NPS score can range between -100 and +100, and the higher the score the better.

Why Candidate NPS?

Why is NPS an important measurement for talent acquisition leaders? Our research into candidate experience revealed that: 

  • Only 5% of candidates rated their experience excellent
  • But 66% of candidates have never been asked to provide feedback on their recruitment experience.
  • Yet, 9 out of 10 have provided feedback when asked.

With such a small percentage of candidates having an excellent recruitment experience, it’s imperative for organisations to start benchmarking their candidate experience in order to make data-driven improvements.

Yet, so few organisations are leveraging Candidate NPS. In a recent poll, we asked whether our database currently use, intend to use or have no plans to use NPS to measure their candidate experience. Our audience told us the following:

  • 7% currently use NPS
  • 21% don’t plan to 
  • 64% intend to start
  • 7% have other plans

Getting Started with Candidate NPS

Consider adding a communication to your CRM after critical stages in your recruitment process like the assessment centre or hiring manager interview—regardless of outcome. By asking one simple question and the candidate’s reasoning for their rating, you can gather valuable data to drive continuous improvement in your candidate experience.  

After gaining an initial benchmark, you can measure Candidate NPS overtime to see how your process improvements are impacting the candidate experience. Combined with other metrics, you’ll be on your way to understanding the impact of your talent acquisition program and improving your recruitment outcomes.

Building an Effective Veteran Hiring Program

Building an Effective Veteran Hiring Program

If you want to hire veterans, you can’t just wait and hope it happens. Veterans won’t apply through your one-size-fits all careers page. Their skills and experience don’t fit into a standard application. And if veterans do apply, do you have a team that can understand the military language? Can you translate their achievements and place that veteran in the best position for their skill set?

In this ebook, Best Practices for Hiring Veterans, you’ll learn:

  • The most important and effective steps to take when creating a veteran hiring program
  • The veteran hiring landscape
  • The unique challenges veterans face as they transition into the civilian workforce

A Dynamic IT Recruiting Solution to Support Growth and Improve Candidate Experience

A Dynamic IT Recruiting Solution to Support Growth and Improve Candidate Experience

RPO Recruiting for IT Professionals

A Dynamic IT Recruiting Solution to Support Growth and Improve Candidate Experience

PeopleScout partnered with this healthcare revenue and payment cycle management company to provide RPO recruiting solutions for niche IT roles.

3,000 + Annual Hire in IT Roles
40 % Reduction in Time-to-Hire
Tech-Enhanced Candidate Experience Powered by Affinix™
Tech-Enhanced Candidate Experience Powered by Affinix™

A healthcare revenue and payment cycle management company needed an RPO partner to support the rapid growth that occurred when it acquired a healthcare IT business. Healthcare IT is a niche field with a limited number of candidates and many hard-to-fill positions. To meet its new workforce demands, the client engaged PeopleScout to implement a full-cycle RPO program for both exempt and non-exempt hiring. In addition, they partnered with PeopleScout to provide additional support to their internal talent acquisition teams in areas where hiring volume increased through our Recruiter On-Demand (ROD) solution. 

Situation

The client requires a scalable RPO solution that is flexible enough to navigate hiring spikes throughout the year and to access talent in the niche healthcare IT field. PeopleScout’s RPO program spans high-level technology roles as well as HR, finance, marketing, sales, legal, customer service and sourcing for executive-level candidates. Due to COVID-19, the client also required a new digital interviewing platform to create a consistent experience for candidates as they move through the hiring process.

Solution

Solution Highlights

  • Full-Cycle, Exempt and Non-Exempt Hiring  
  • 3,000+ Annual Hires 
  • Recruitment of Hard-to-Fill Roles 
  • Dedicated Veteran Hiring Resources  
  • Tech-Enhanced Candidate Experience Powered by Affinix™ 

SOURCING FOR LEADERSHIP ROLES

The client leverages PeopleScout’s experience and expertise to source executive-level candidates to fill key leadership roles. 

SOURCING FOR NICHE ROLES

PeopleScout’s expert recruiters work with the client to identify qualified candidates in the competitive healthcare technology talent landscape. 

EMPLOYER BRANDING

PeopleScout’s RPO teams consult with the client to craft precise employer branding messaging and a social media strategy to attract talent for hard-to-fill open positions. 

ATS IMPLEMENTATION

PeopleScout assisted the client in the implementation of a single ATS platform to decrease redundancy and recruiting errors and create a pipeline of better-quality candidates. 

IMPROVED CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE 

PeopleScout implemented Affinix digital interviewing technology to ensure a consistent experience for candidates as they move through the hiring process.  

EMBEDDED RECRUITMENT SUPPORT

PeopleScout recruiters are embedded within the client’s organization and work with their internal teams to navigate sourcing, screening and hiring challenges to improve talent acquisition outcomes for all positions in scope. 

DIVERSITY & VETERAN HIRING

To support the client’s commitment to diversity and veteran recruiting, PeopleScout has a specialized focus and dedicated resources in this area. 

IMPROVED METRICS

PeopleScout’s RPO team provides the client’s leadership with full transparency by monitoring and reporting on metrics important to them including time-to-fill, candidate quality and the speed of the recruiting program.

Results

IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

PeopleScout has improved the client’s recruitment performance by merging people, process and technology to enhance the experience with the recruitment process for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Average days to offer accept dropped from 62 days to 37 days for exempt positions, and from 40 days to 22 days for non-exempt, below the client’s target goal of 50 and 40, respectively.

INSIGHTS & EXPERTISE

The client values the input and insights provided by PeopleScout’s experienced RPO team and their ability to quickly source and hire candidates for hard-to-fill positions.

ACQUISITION SUPPORT  

The client has successfully navigated the challenges presented by its acquisition of the previous client’s healthcare IT business with the support of PeopleScout talent acquisition professionals. 

EXPANDED TALENT POOL

PeopleScout’s RPO solution has expanded the client’s talent pool and now sources veteran and diverse candidates more efficiently. 

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Healthcare revenue and payment cycle management company
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Affinix
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 3,000+ IT roles

Transport for Wales: Recruiting a Crucial Tax Expert

Transport for Wales: Recruiting a Crucial Tax Expert

Transport for Wales: Recruiting a Crucial Tax Expert

As Transport for Wales’ RPO partner since their inception, PeopleScout helped TfW find a Tax Accountant to support the management of their finances.

Situation

Transport for Wales (TfW) is on a mission: to deliver an integrated travel system across Wales and revolutionize travel. To achieve this, they quickly expanded their workforce in partnership with PeopleScout, their RPO partner.

They were now looking for a new Tax Analyst, a qualified VAT subject matter expert, to provide guidelines in line with legislation to help TfW reclaim VAT to reinvest into the transport network. This is a highly competitive sector, and the Tax Analyst needed specialty skills.

Solution

This was a particularly challenging role to recruit. There is a very small talent pool of qualified candidates in Wales. This market is competitive, and many candidates are reluctant to move jobs unless for a significant increase in salary. Plus, these roles are known for low turnover; tax professionals are risk-averse and require significant consultation before considering a new opportunity. In addition, the global COVID-19 pandemic was at its height—a climate that contributed to candidates’ reluctance to change jobs.

We adopted a fully consultative approach and took a detailed brief from the hiring manager. By using a blended approach of media, advertising across a number of well-known recruitment websites to drive applications, and hands-on sourcing of passive candidates.

Attraction did not produce results, so we doubled down on a thorough search of the passive market. Our specialist recruiter knew straight away when they found a candidate that would be a good fit for TfW. This candidate had worked as a tax expert for a similar government body, they understood government processes and they were a strong fit culturally for Transport For Wales.

Results

In total, we approached over 100 qualified professionals in South Wales and beyond. Our strategic passive candidate search produced an ideal candidate who has moved into the Tax Analyst role.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Transport for Wales (TfW)
  • ABOUT TfW: Founded in 2016, Transport for Wales (TfW) was set up by the Welsh Government to make sustainable travel a reality in Wales. Their multimodal, integrated transport network aims to increase the number of journeys on public transport by 40% by 2040.

London College of Fashion: Finding the Perfect Professor for a Vibrant New Enterprise

London College of Fashion: Finding the Perfect Professor for a Vibrant New Enterprise

London College of Fashion: Finding the Perfect Professor for a Vibrant New Enterprise

PeopleScout helped the London College of Fashion find a one-of-a-kind professor to support their new research center.

Situation

As part of the University of the Arts London (UAL), London College of Fashion has been nurturing creative talent for over a century. They offer courses in all things fashion, from business to design and fashion curation.

LCF’s newly established Center for Fashion Business & Innovation Research operates at the intersection of fashion business and the economy, culture and society. To successfully launch the program, they needed a professor who could lead the direction of research, funding and collaboration.

They engaged PeopleScout to provide a shortlist of high-caliber candidates to set the direction of the center.


Solution

We took an in-depth, face-to-face brief and from this created a candidate profile. Exhaustive research built an international target which they client approved before engagement commenced.

We developed a unique approach to find candidates with the following characteristics:

  • Professors could come from different disciplines but would need relevant research interests aligned with the new center.
    • Our approach: Extensive international candidate research to ensure they met the criteria.
  • Professors needed experience in motivating and mobilizing other researchers.
    • Our approach: All candidates were consulted on their Research Excellence Framework (REF) and coordination experience.
  • London College of Fashion has a leadership team that is open, creative and generous. This Professor would need to thrive in that culture.
    • Our approach: All candidates were consulted on their leadership style and culture preferences to ascertain their fit.

Throughout our sourcing engagement, strong, professional relationships were fostered with each candidate, ensuring they had an excellent experience whether they applied or not. Regular reports and calls occurred weekly to ensure the client was fully informed and could contribute to the direction of activity.

Results

Our comprehensive solution created results the client was delighted with:

  • 16 final applications
  • Four shortlisted for interview & assessment
  • One offer accepted

The successful candidate was a referral from another passive candidate on the target list. If we hadn’t formed this relationship, she wouldn’t have been aware of the opportunity.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: The London College of Fashion
  • ABOUT THE LONDON COLLEGE OF FASHION: The London College of Fashion offers undergraduate and postgraduate study, short courses, study-abroad courses and business training in fashion and related topics.

Fife Sports and Leisure Trust: Sourcing a Brilliant Female CEO

Fife Sports and Leisure Trust: Sourcing a Brilliant Female CEO

Leadership Search

Fife Sports and Leisure Trust: Sourcing a Brilliant Female CEO

With the CEO of Fife Sports and Leisure Trust retiring within a month, PeopleScout delivered executive search for an experienced, dynamic and strategic leader who hit the ground running.

Situation

The Fife Sports and Leisure Trust (FSLT) manages and operates 14 leisure facilities on behalf of Fife Council. They’re one of the largest employers in the town with 550 staff. Their mission is improving health and wellbeing across Fife, Scotland, offering facilities for people of all abilities.

The CEO of FSLT announced his retirement and the organization needed to recruit a leader quickly. The new CEO would need to foster good relationships with the Council and balance the social and economic purposes of the organization to develop a sustainable leisure service. This meant finding further funding and delivering a long-term vision for FSLT, after coming back from a whole industry closure during the COVID-19 in 2020.

Finding senior strategic leaders to lead FSLT through an important stage in their history meant recruiting a current Managing Director or CEO who had held profit and loss accountability for a leisure service. There are a finite number of leisure trusts in the UK, so it was vital to present this fascinating opportunity to the sector in a highly engaging manner to attract the highest-caliber candidates.

Solution

FSLT engaged PeopleScout to find this unique individual.

We took a detailed brief from the outgoing CEO, and it became very clear that FSLT needed an accomplished new leader capable of creating an immediate impact. We searched the entire UK, engaging with the CEO at Community Leisure UK, the industry association, who shared the role within her network. It’s a close-knit community and the Trust has a good reputation.

We leveraged this expertise in the sector to ensure we had a comprehensive shortlist of the most recommended professionals.

Results

We achieved:

  • 72% engagement amongst passive candidates
  • Four candidates were invited for interview (three men and one woman)
  • Two candidates were invited for second interview (one man and one woman)
  • The female candidate appointed to the role

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Fife Sports and Leisure Trust
  • ABOUT FSLT: Fife Sports and Leisure Trust was established is a non-profit organization responsible for the operational management, delivery and development of Fife Council’s sports and leisure facilities.