How We Hired a Top Head of Marketing for a Digital Health Provider – A Case Study

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The Client

Our client is an industry leading Digital Health company that specialise in cognitive assessments and operate internationally in over 15 different global markets. As a company, they have seen close to 40% growth, year-on-year over the last 3 years and have partnered with Collingwood to ensure they lay solid foundations in their leadership teams as they prepare for future growth. The company’s strong performance has seen planned growth of close to 200% in their headcount numbers by the end of the business plan that is running until 2028.

 

The Role

In line with the planned growth, the company had decided to pivot away from a current interim resource and hire a new Head of Marketing to lead a robust internal function.

The team are performing well but the new leader will provide the individual stretch to turn them into a high performing team whilst operating strategically to ensure the marketing function drive activity to ensure the company-wide business targets are achieved

 

The Business Challenge

Although our client has a longstanding, well established brand in the UK market, they were struggling to identify the right leader to align with the goals. The main challenge with this position was to find a credible leader that had the right blend of strategic and people management experience but also could stretch with the company through this upcoming period of growth.

Collingwood’s remit was to find a proven leader that had experience across all the marketing functions so they could provide tailored leadership and stretch to each area of the inbound marketing team. Additionally, due to the complex nature of the businesses marketing needing to change in each global market they operated in, finding strategic experience of operating in those regulated environments was essential.

Through our comprehensive briefing meetings, we discussed other sectors and industries to Digital Health /Medical Technology and reached agreement with the client that we should broaden the horizon to see what other perspectives may align suitably.

Through consulting with the Managing Director, we are agreed on a broad role profile that was worth exploring which allowed us to increase the talent pool beyond the usual parameters that they would usually consider.

 

The Solution

In the end, the client had two candidates that he was content to offer that were both completely different with their tenures, career experience and industry knowledge. Ultimately, the client decided to proceed with one of our “left field” candidates that would not have been introduced if we had stayed in the original guidelines.

This process is credited to Collingwood’s detailed briefing sessions and the fact that we were able to collaborate with a Managing Director that had the willingness to listen and adapt accordingly. The successful conclusion was reached, and this shows that if you allow your recruitment partners to consult and let the industry experience drive the process, you will make key, successful hires quickly.

 

The Result

In summary, the following process highlights the research work and success of the approach, all of this was completed from initial call to candidate starting in 9 weeks (with Christmas shutdown in the middle):

Potential candidates identified following initial research undertaken

64

Number of Conversations

38

Targeted candidates interested & CVs received

16

Candidates interviewed by Chris Mayers

12 (4 rejected)

Longlist presented to the client

8 (3 'left-field' candidates)

Candidates interviewed by client

5

Candidates taken through to second & third stage

4 & 2

Final Offer

2 to pick from

 

 

 

 

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About the author
Chris Mayers
min read

Chris joined Collingwood in June 2024 as an Executive Search Delivery Consultant, helping to find talent for our clients particularly within the Technology sector.

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