Challenge accepted (and delivered!)

The Mission

Our client, a JSE Listed healthcare company, approached us to recruit a senior candidate for their product projects team. This role would sit within one of their most successful business units – a world leader in their sector.

They tried to find an internal candidate and tried advertising on their own, but that did not yield any results. The job title “Strategic Programme Specialist” the client used for this role was ambiguous as it could have been a Project Manager or a Strategist. This position was aimed at neither of these two; it required a combination of these two elements and product development/design experience. To add onto these requirements, the client was looking for a female candidate.

Challenge and Outcome

With TSR having worked on ambiguous assignments previously, more time had to be invested with the client to understand exactly what they were looking for in a candidate for this opportunity. The client would interview candidates and we had to go back to discuss the missing pieces. The interview process helped uncover the traits and skills that were not suitable for the position and allowed us to go back to the drawing board to reassess and remodel what we were looking for. The path twisted and turned but we stayed the course.

We profiled ten candidates, one of which made it to final rounds and was offered the job. This candidate had strong leadership skills and a good combination of product and project management experience. She had also worked on several forward-thinking projects for one of the South Africa’s top banks.

We had to strip job titles away in order to uncover this individual and had to sell the client as an employer of choice, what the visions were for the company and that the successful candidate would be an ambassador for them.