THE CLIENT
Hazlems Fenton is a firm of Chartered Accounts based in Central London, they are an 11 Partner firm with circa 35 staff.
THE CHALLENGE
Hazlems Fenton came to us looking for someone to head up their VAT offering. They have been in business for more than 85 years but have always outsourced their VAT work and wanted to bring it in-house for the first time. We went to meet with the 3 Partners who were going to be involved in the recruitment process, it became apparent that this was a very specific requirement and not many people would be on the market. They were also flexible on level of the candidate that came into the business as long as they were happy to operate at Senior Manager Level for Hazlems Fenton.
OUR SOLUTION
After discussing all of the recruitment methods available to them, Hazlems Fenton decided to retain Pro-Tax exclusively with an upfront payment of 25%. This way we were able to not only prioritise this piece of recruitment but also put resources behind it. During the first week we reached out to all of the VAT Senior Managers, Directors and Junior Partners within the salary range that we were given, we already had established relationships with these people and identified a number of them as suitable candidates. We then mapped the market and after this exercise we had identified seven candidates altogether.
THE RESULT
Having met with each of them, we proceeded with six individuals and went through the interview process with Hazlems Fenton. It soon became apparent that one candidate stood out for Hazlems Fenton and they wanted to offer the role. We negotiated the offer, contract terms and start date, all parties were extremely happy with the result. The entire process took circa nine weeks.
FOLLOW UP
6 months on and both the client and the candidate seem very happy. The candidate who successfully got the new role as VAT Senior Manager for Hazlems Fenton was on a six month notice period, so as a Consultant of Pro-Tax we met both parties outside of work for lunch and dinner and even arranged a mutual lunch for the two of them to meet and to keep communication going in that time. We have a very happy candidate and a firm that is now using us for another three vacancies that they have.