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Enfield Council Case Study

Enfield Council

Enfield Council is a North London local authority, representing and servicing the needs of a large, diverse population of 334,000. They're also the largest employer in the borough employing over 8,000 people. The Council was undergoing an exciting multi-million pound IT transformation journey into the Cloud and approached us to tender after receiving a recommendation from one of our clients. At the time, they needed to fill 15 critical positions spanning several IT functions and needed support from experts in the field to source this talent quickly.

Enfield Council, a major North London local authority serving a population of 334,000, embarked on a multi-million pound IT transformation into the Cloud. They faced the challenge of swiftly hiring 15 critical IT positions while dealing with limited internal resources. In this case study, we explore how their partnership with Understanding Recruitment NFP addressed these challenges.

Client Overview

Enfield Council is a North London local authority, representing and servicing the needs of a large, diverse population of 334,000. They're also the largest employer in the borough employing over 8,000 people.

The Council was undergoing an exciting multi-million pound IT transformation journey into the Cloud and approached us to tender after receiving a recommendation from one of our clients. At the time,

they needed to fill 15 critical positions spanning several IT functions and needed support from experts in the field to source this talent quickly.


The Challenges

During our consultation process, it became clear that the main challenge was the time-consuming

hiring process. Enfield Council simply did not have the bandwidth to review applications, give individual feedback, shortlist, telephone screen, and arrange interviews with Line Managers for such a large number of applicants.

In addition to the lack of time, they also faced the huge cost of employing a lot of expensive specialist contractors.

Not finding the right recruitment partner would have led to a huge delay in securing the new

talent for this crucial project. Enfield Council would have also been forced to spend more on hiring temporary contractors and ultimately the whole project would have been jeopardised.


The Solution

After not seeing any success filling these roles internally, Enfield Council chose to partner exclusively with Understanding Recruitment NFP.

Our custom solution included our specialist team taking control of the whole hiring process, working closely with both HR and Line Managers and creating a bespoke co-branded marketing campaign targeting relevant talent pools.

We met with the Council every week and dug deep to find out what their vision for the project was and what was keeping them up at night. During these catch-ups, we also discussed, addressed and solved any issues throughout the project.

To help Enfield Council fulfil their objective of having a diverse workforce we provided them with diversity reports for both the Council and the broader sector. Additionally, we implemented a blind recruitment solution, which entailed the removal of any identifying information from candidates' CVs and applications, helping the hiring team to assess individuals based solely on their skills and experience, thereby mitigating the influence of factors that may otherwise introduce bias into the decision-making process.

By shortlisting seven candidates per vacancy and carrying out the 1st and 2nd stage video interviews we freed up time for HR and the Hiring Managers. We then put forward the top three candidates for each role for the Hiring Managers at Enfield Council to interview in 45-minute face-to-face interviews before they choose the most suitable candidate. We also took on all the admin, phoned references and dealt with all the paperwork, meaning the Council's HR team only had to send out offer letters and contracts.


Results

We're proud to say that the project has been delivered with a 100% success rate and that Enfield Council plans to strengthen the partnership with Understanding Recruitment NFP over the coming years.

To date, we've successfully placed over 50 professionals within data, digital and tech including positions such as Business Analysts, Network Engineers & Managers, Infrastructure Engineers, Information Governance, SharePoint Developers, IT Security Managers, Solutions Architects, System Admins, IT Contract & Project Managers, as well as Test Analysts.

 

Conclusion

Enfield Council's collaboration with Understanding Recruitment NFP resulted in a 100% success rate in filling vital IT positions, ensuring the timely delivery of their transformative IT project. With over 50 professionals placed, the partnership is set to thrive, exemplifying successful public sector IT transformation.

UR is quite unique in how they’ve stepped in to address challenging recruitment situations we faced within Enfield Council during a pivotal technology transformation, the biggest in our history. They worked closely with myself and the rest of the Enfield leadership team meeting at first to address the key requirements of the project, reviewing the job descriptions, agreeing timescales and priorities of the roles along with joint commitments that would enable the recruitment process to track on time. Throughout the process not only have they sourced high quality CVs matching our requirements, they have handled the entire recruitment and selection process swiftly and efficiently meaning that we’ve been able to reduce the time and hassle that recruitment used to take. This has provided huge peace of mind to myself and the rest of the Enfield Council leadership team on a critical project and subsequently a number of quality candidates have joined and we’re really pleased with their contribution.
Patrick Enenmoh ICT Manager
Tom from Understanding Recruitment has been a valuable recruitment partner of Enfield Council's DDaT team. He has an excellent people centric approach that goes beyond just matching skills and experience to a job spec. Tom has an excellent understanding of the market and the technical sector. Before the recruitment campaign, Tom worked with us to produce a plant that fully catered for Enfield’s needs. Tom ensured that he put the best match candidates for the job and only forwarded those who were likely to be a good fit. Some of the skills we needed to recruit were hard to come by but Tom kept on proactively hunting for suitable candidates. Tom fully supported us and kept us informed throughout the whole process. Working with Tom and the team has been an absolute pleasure.
Farooq Shah Head of Information Management & Technology
The team at Understanding Recruitment took a highly professional approach in helping Enfield Council to fill a number of ICT roles. As a specialist technology and software recruitment company, their extensive knowledge of the market helped to refine our requirements and they formed effective working relationships with the service leads to deliver fully briefed and qualified candidates for interviews. By providing a high level quality service of candidate management, Understanding Recruitment were able to represent Enfield Council, promoting our values and key behaviours. Consistently responsive in their approach, Tom and his team successfully delivered a large number of quality appointments and would certainly recommend their services to others.
Melissa Keating Business Partner Resourcing
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