They had already transformed the ways that they worked and had received a great deal of recognition for their advancements. Over the past 12 months their improvements had resulted in them winning LGC Driving Growth award and Council of Year in 2018 and LGC Entrepreneurial Council of the Year 2019, there was still more to do.
They wanted to recruit a Director of Finance to help them consolidate on the progress made and use the New Kind of Council to empower residents to live longer, healthier, happier and more independent lives. They had tried to recruit the role in a slightly different form previously through a different recruitment consultancy and had not been successful. They were keen to find a Finance Director who would embrace the entrepreneurial spirit in the Council, but be there to manage the risks. In addition, key to the campaign was ensuring we were targeting and approaching potential candidates from underrepresented groups in the Council.
We run a series of mentoring events each year looking to support people stepping up in into Director roles across Local Government. This gave us an excellent starting point for the search. We also used our network across London and the South East to approach the talented people with the commercial mind-set and the ability to support and influence elected members.
Barking and Dagenham were very happy with the shortlist and there was a high percentage of applicants from both the BAME community and women, the majority of whom we had approached rather than applied to advertising. The successful candidate was someone who we had known for a number of years and had benefited from development at our mentoring events previously. They had not been actively looking but were tempted by the opportunity to progress and develop.
