Context

This financial services firm is wholly owned by an industry body and was established more than 50 years ago. The group have over $1bn in funds under management through their diversified financial services offerings.

The business has a unique and very strong culture that has resulted in outstanding employee engagement and very low staff turnover. While the previous superannuation executive had managed well from a retention and performance perspective, the quality of performance within the business unit had been neglected, and the business unit had been without effective leadership for some time. Previous efforts to source a suitable individual through networks and press advertising had previously failed.

Intervention

The brief was to source an executive who could navigate their way through a sector that was in a state of significant legislative and regulatory change and position the business to initially consolidate its position, swiftly followed by growth through improved quality of talent and strategy. The executive would have to lead a change program that dealt sensitively with the issue of departmental inertia without creating retention issues, in keeping with the overriding business and Hr strategies.

Chandler Macleod Executive (CME) spent some time assisting with the re-design of the previous incumbent’s role and analysing the response from the market via previous sourcing tactics before using a targeted search methodology as the preferred sourcing medium. Utilising the Best Fit recruitment approach, CME drew up a candidate pool which was rigorously appraised and assessed using temperament profiling and cognitive testing to ensure they met the selection criteria before settling on a short list of four for the Executive body to consider.

Outcome

Two candidates were selected from the shortlist to interview. Neither had superannuation experience or knowledge. The eventually successful candidate was selected because of three key elements: the ability to manage a national financial services sales team; the right behavioural make-up for that specific team and for the business overall; very high scoring cognitive results showing ability to learn new skills quickly and to develop into a strategic leader over time.