Case studies
Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
Roles
Multiple roles across HR, IT systems and finance departments.
Client Profile
Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) brings together the best of Britain’s international effort and demonstrates the UK acting as a force for good in the world. It employs around 17,300 staff in its diplomatic and development offices worldwide, including in 280 overseas embassies and high commissions. FCDO’s UK-based staff work in King Charles Street, London and Abercrombie House, East Kilbride. The department also has other London offices, including in Whitehall, and staff based in Milton Keynes.
Assignment
menBeginning in early February, the consultants had a rolling assignment of batches of around 20 roles to fill every 48 hours, of which there were four batches, largely in a two-week period.
The roles were spread across several departments falling into two primary focuses of HR and IT systems positions, which included HR officers, payroll, and commercial systems managers, and finance positions, which included transactional finance accounting, business partnering, financial accounting and business analysts.
Positions were on a twelve-month contract basis across Milton Keynes, Glasgow and London. The client’s preference was for candidates who already had Security Check (SC) clearance, which became the consultants’ primary priority when sourcing candidates.
The seniority of the roles was varied, making this an interesting and dynamic project for Robertson Bell.
Considerations and challenges
The tight turnaround times of the assignment meant that it required a concerted and focussed effort from everyone involved to ensure as many roles as possible were filled, and this was time-consuming. The primary challenge for the consultants was sourcing candidates who already had SC clearance so that they would be able to be in position swiftly.
As most of the roles were not remote, there were limitations on the pools of talent available or of those willing to relocate. This resulted in the consultants facing a shortage of suitable candidates for certain locations.
Candidates without clearance had to wait up to eight weeks prior to starting for this to be finalised. Keeping them engaged and in the process was therefore a real testament to the teams’ strong communicative and relationship building acumen.
Solution
The scale and time-sensitive nature of the assignment meant that all hands were on deck to source candidates via head hunting and searching the CVs of passive candidates. It was a project for the whole team, and everyone pulled together to utilise their networks and resources to achieve the best possible outcome for the client.
Outcome
Working across multiple teams with an extremely busy client, the team was able to place multiple candidates across the varied positions and levels of seniority. On top of this, for the finance roles, the team were able to source around a third of the candidates who were already SC cleared. On the HR side, over 90 per cent of those placed had SC clearance. This was a hugely positive outcome as it was an important requirement for the client and allowed candidates to begin their positions in a timely manner.