The Client

A global distributor of wire, cable, and associated products. Providing first class products from leading brands to OEM’s and End users in a diverse range of markets. An employee-owned organisation, with a real focus on achieving sustainable international growth. 

The Role

With an impending significant change in the EMEA business, with two shareholders and the original founders of an acquisition exiting the business, Collingwood were retained to recruit a new Managing Director.

Reporting directly to the COO in the USA, the new Managing Director would be a transformational leader, capable of leading the EMEA business to reflect the culture and direction of the global business, whilst targeting significant growth in EMEA through increased sales and operational efficiencies.

As a new leader of an established business, it was clear that this individual needed to bring strong industry experience, credibility, and subsequent reassurance to the workforce. It was important that this individual could drive change in the short term, whilst also demonstrating the runway drive long term growth. 

The Solution

This position was a critical hire for our client, with the successful candidate being the individual responsible for creating followership and driving a significant change in the EMEA business. It was identified during a thorough briefing call, both the core experience that this individual should possess, in addition to the personality and leadership style.

Following a thorough search, utilising public databases such as LinkedIn, and our networks – looking at known candidates as well as referrals, we identified a talent pool of over 80 candidates. We approached each of the candidates with a focused and personalised message, demonstrating why this opportunity was relevant and clearly explaining the opportunity it presented them with. The approaches followed a very structured route, ensuring we approached all candidates on various platforms to maximise response rates.

We ensured that we stayed in constant contact with our client, sharing all search intelligence in a transparent manner. This interaction allowed us to keep the search on track, sharing example profiles as we progressed and utilising the intelligence to ensure our client made the right decisions. 

The Result

Having identified over 80 candidates we progressed 9 interested candidates through our robust internal process. Interviewing against the key competencies and skills required for the role, we narrowed the 9 candidates to a shortlist of the 5 best.  

We assisted our client to ensure they utilised all of our intelligence gained both from the search and our interviews to progress the shortlist through a thorough a very robust interview process, including online assessments, psychometric testing and formal role play interviews. This resulted in a clear favourite candidate, who was offered and accepted the position. He has been in role for nearly 12 months, and his having the predicted impact in driving growth.