Case Studies
Take a look through our range of case studies showcasing the great work we have completed for companies across several different industries.
Bupa
A leading international healthcare group, who run care homes, health centres, dental centres and hospitals, offer personal and company health insurance. They also provide workplace health services, health assessments and chronic disease management services including health coaching.
The Recruitment Project
Bupa went through a significant spike in recruitment specifically, within their technology operation. This covered, IT Support, Architecture, PMO, Project Manager, IT Development across the UK. Bupa’s internal recruitment team is very capable but was overloaded with new vacancies and needed immediate support.
- Provide a cost-effective Talent Acquisition solution, that would reduce recruitment agency spend.
- Get quick results
- Managing multiple roles simultaneous covering a broad area of IT - salaries ranging from £30k to £100k +
- Educate the hiring community on skill shortages and hiring challenges providing a pragmatic solution for challenging hires
- Initiate the project, set up a Bupa e-mail address and get access to the internal recruitment systems
- Immediately engage with the hiring managers, setting up face to face meetings
- Map out clear timescales, process and approach to shortlist candidates
- Highlight any challenges for examples, location, salary skills shortage and management expectation clearly
- Use executive search techniques to provide shortlists for highly challenging vacancies
- Provide regular communication to the hiring managers
- Provide support and advice to the existing Internal recruitment team
- Hired over 40 staff into the technology operation
- Successfully recruited challenging roles that had been open for over 6 months
- Implemented an executive search approach to highly challenging recruitment assignments
- Provided costs savings in comparison to agencies fees of £323,000
Recruitment Senior Delivery Manager
“I would not hesitate to recommend Lee! He is a talented recruiter who manages to juggle multiple challenging vacancies with ease and challenging stakeholders demands without issues. All of this while keeping candidate experience positive throughout. He is a fantastic individual who I very much hope to work with again soon“
Head of Digital UKIT
“Lee is one of those rare individuals who is incredibly tenacious and displays passion and commitment in what he believes in, and doing what's right for the customer - in this case, me.
As a diligent and highly motivated individual, with a passion and flare for recruitment - Lee is a recruiter who really works to understand you, your requirements. your business culture and standards expected.
Working with Lee at Bupa, he demonstrated great tenacity to find the right people under challenging and demanding circumstances and tight timescales, Lee's communication skills were excellent. He regularly kept me abreast of the progress being made with my vacancies, but also was proactive in advising me of changes and feeding back suggestions that he would recommend to help attract the right calibre of candidate.
Lee was thorough in his due diligence, and never walked away from the hard assignments which I continually pushed to him. A thoroughly enjoyable experience working with Lee, and wouldn't hesitate to work with him again should an opportunity arise in the future.”
TELEFóNICA O2
O2 is a mobile network operator and the principal commercial brand of Telefónica UK Limited, which is part of the global telecommunications group Telefónica S.A, headquartered in Spain and operating in Europe, and North, Central and South America.
O2 has around 6,700 employees and over 450 retail stores, and sponsors the England Rugby, The O2 and 19 O2 Academy music venues across the UK.
The Recruitment Project
Telefónica O2 required additional support specifically focussed on the Senior appointments or more challenging roles across IT, Operations, Regulation, Finance and Marketing.
Typically, these would be positions that needed further investigation as the target candidates would could not be attracted via traditional recruitment methods.
The vacancies although lower in volume required a detailed executive search approach, with a need to tap into the passive candidate community.
- Grab the attention of some of the highest performers in the market and attract them to the opportunities in Telefónica O2
- Create an extension the recruitment team to focus on executive search and niche appointments
- Reduce the workload on the internal recruitment team for labour intensive roles
- Senior Stakeholder management within Telefónica, involving a detailed client briefing, MI reports, regular recruitment updates and education on candidate market conditions
- Thorough candidate research, long listing and talent pool development
- Create a digital market campaign to pitch the opportunities, developing interest with candidates not actively on the job market
- Face to face meetings with prospective candidates
- Extensive candidate management
- Development of relationships with the passive candidate community
- The placement of 45 candidates into challenging roles over 2.5 Years
- Created candidate pools for niche and senior appointments for key operations across Telefónica O2.
- Generated cost savings of £350,000 in comparison to search recruitment fees
Client Perspective - Reference, Senior Director – O2 Telefonica
“Kona Associates Talent Acquisition on Demand provided me with first class service. We were recruiting for a Senior position within IT operations and Lee was able to provide a high-quality shortlist, he managed the process professionally and ensured the smooth onboarding of the executive. Lee was able to provide valuable advice about the market coupled with regular updates throughout the process. It was an enjoyable experience from start to finish! I would highly recommend working with Lee if you are trying to find high quality candidates for those hard to fill positions.“
Candidate Perspective – Senior Marketing Director
“As I recently changed jobs I came across many recruiters. Lee stood out for his openness and honesty, his proactive communication. This was in stark contrast with many others. I felt he had a genuine interest in doing the right thing by me. He is a total credit.“
CME Group
CME Group is the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, handling 3 billion contracts worth approximately $1 quadrillion annually.
The assignment:
2 x Board level positions across Operations and Technology
Reference
Cliff Moyce Chief Operating Officer for CME:
“Lee has run two senior executive level campaigns for our company, as well as overseeing other recruitment for us run by consultants under his control. He is highly personable and professional, and works hard to understand the true needs of his clients. Lee always goes out to find the right person for the role, rather than just forwarding the people he has on his books at that moment. Highly recommended.”
Barclays
With over 300 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays operates in over 50 countries and employs over 145,000 people. Barclays moves, lends, invests and protects money for customers and clients worldwide.
The assignment:
The recruitment of 20 x Programme Managers across the Barclays operation
Reference
Derrick Harris – Head of Recruitment
"Lee quickly grasps customer needs and then sets about identifying suitable candidates with minimum fuss. Lee sourced some amazing talent for me and many of these hires have subsequently gone on to fill more senior posts within the same organisation. Lee comes highly recommended because absolutely no-one got anywhere near his success rate for these campaigns.”
Candidate
Candidate Case Studies
Programme Director at Project One
Lee has been material to my success during the recruitment process at Project One, providing insight into the culture of the organisation, advice and guidance. Lee was supportive and not pushy in any way. In my view, he is a great asset to the extended recruitment function of Project One.
Business Development Manager at Klarna
Lee is the only recruiter I have met who had a strong interest in ensuring any opportunity he presented to me was aligned with my best interests - cliché to say, but he genuinely cares! What stood out for me the most was that he checked in at every stage in the recruitment process to see how I felt about the opportunity and I never felt pressured once to commit.
He is a genuine guy who tells it as it is, and will endeavour to ensure things work out in your favour – most importantly he is a professional of high integrity and has a detailed understanding of the companies and roles he is recruiting for.