The challenge 

Supporting a research and development (R&D) organisation who are set to open a new site in early 2023, Search by SRG led a specialist recruitment project to find a suitably qualified global project engineer. The successful candidate needed to have the adequate experience and capability to manage the transfer of equipment and processes to the new site, oversee ongoing facilities management, health and safety, and building maintenance, with the future prospect of being involved with product design and development.

The complexity of the role and its recruitment arose from the project engineer holding two reporting lines – one to the US Site Lead, and one to the UK based CEO. The successful candidate needed to be open to travelling to the US, as well as regularly travel between the two UK based sites.
As the first position undertaken by the UK Engineering team, the role was critical to the ongoing success of the team build. As such, expectations of the ideal candidate were open to change over time. 

Meanwhile, the recruitment process had to adhere to a set time frame, to ensure that final interviews were achieved as the US team visited the UK.

The solution

As our client specialises in a niche area of diagnostics, we undertook a deep search to optimise candidate attraction for the specific skills required, across the UK.

By harnessing our established candidate network in the Engineering market, we were able to include candidates who we already knew were actively open to new roles.

We confirmed timelines with both the UK and US teams to ensure that our initial list of candidates was thoroughly considered before moving to a shortlist of 3 candidates for the final stage interviews with the US team. 

The result

We achieved a 100% fill rate, helped them to retain business continuity, all within a 4 week turnaround from role brief to offer acceptance.

Having met with 3 strong candidates for final stage interviews, our client was confident in their choice of candidate. Our client was so impressed with the final shortlist, that they suggested an additional role for one of our candidates to consider across the later stages of their expansion.