The challenge

In early 2018 RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) moved its operational headquarters to Colmore Row, in the heart of Birmingham city centre’s business district.

As part of this move, RICS’s technology team embarked on a two-year digital transformation programme, which will elevate the digital experience for all user groups in RICS’s global community.

Under this transformation RICS is embracing technologies including Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SharePoint, to inspire the future profession and foster collaboration.

As a result, RICS needed additional skilled IT professionals. IT recruitment agency Crimson had recently supplied two excellent candidates, so it was approached to fill five additional IT jobs, including business analysts, test analysts, and project managers.

The strategy

Ian Tittley, an Account Development Consultant within Crimson’s Permanent IT recruitment team, spearheaded this campaign.

He began by meeting with Amy Jones, Project Delivery Manager at RICS, to gain a detailed understanding of the digital transformation programme, RICS’s workstreams, the experience required, the company culture, and the technologies that would be used. Taking a consultative approach remains at the heart of Crimson’s recruitment campaigns.

They decided that a ‘named’ IT recruitment campaign, which leveraged the positive PR of RICS’s office move and transformation projects, would accelerate the response from high quality candidates.

Crimson is also based in Birmingham, so Ian decided that he would tap into the IT recruitment agency’s strong network of candidates in the West Midlands, which had been developed over more than 15 years.

Once he had selected a shortlist of excellent candidates, Ian organised interviews and met with most candidates before and after these meetings. He took this approach to ensure that all the candidates felt properly prepared and understood the culture of RICS before the interview. He also wanted to gauge the candidates’ enthusiasm for the roles, and to discover how they felt their interviews had gone. He then followed-up any additional queries with the hiring team.

The ROI

Ian’s approach worked well, and he had candidates lined-up to start at RICS within a month. This meant that RICS had the skills it needed to embark on its digital transformation programme in a timely manner.

The relationship between Crimson and RICS has flourished into 2019, as they continue to discuss RICS’s on-going requirements.

The IT recruiter’s words

Ian Tittley, Consultant – Account Development at Crimson, said: “RICS is a great organisation that went about the recruitment process in the right way. The hiring team was communicative and receptive to our consultative insights into the IT jobs market. Coupled with the facts that RICS has lovely new offices and a collaborative culture; this recruitment campaign was a joy to work on.”

The candidates’ words

Sue McLean, Project Manager, said: “Ian kept me informed at all stages and was very pleasant and informative. He was a real pleasure to deal with.”

Hardeep Sidhu, Project Manager – SharePoint, said: “I have worked with a number of consultants from different agencies in the past and I can say Ian was on a different level, extremely professional and likeable. We had numerous calls which were informative and relevant throughout the process.”

Sheena Modi, Project Manager, said: “Ian has been fantastic. Even when he has been on leave, he responded to my emails and texts.”

 The client’s words

Amy Jones, Project Delivery Manager, said: “Initially we went to Crimson looking for one BA, and they sent through three excellent candidates. I interviewed the first and thought ‘this is the one’, but then the second was equally good, as was the third. All three candidates offered slightly different skills and would have brought different things to the team. In the end, we offered the original role to the first candidate and recruited the third as well.

“Then when we needed five more people (another BA, a tester, a SharePoint PM, an infrastructure lead and a general PM) in a mix of permanent and FTC roles, I got in touch with Ian again, within a couple of weeks we had interviews set up with another mix of strong professionals and easily filled all the roles in one round of interviews.

“Ian has a talent for matching people with roles and company culture. All of the recruits have fit well into our team and all have hit the ground running to deliver for us right from the start. The only problem I have with using Crimson is the candidates have been so strong I could have picked them all.”

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