Overview

Since 2010, Enterprise has been working with one of Australia’s leading research and teaching universities. Our role is to support them with their talent management and capability sourcing activities.

When the IT function within one of the faculties was restructured in 2013, a new IT Manager was required. Sourcing this leadership role was key to driving a new IT strategy realigning the service portfolio around the faculties’ research growth agenda.

Due in part to the bespoke nature of its IT service portfolio and the ad-hoc nature of research funding, hiring for this particular faculty is challenging. They require highly technical people; often with capabilities in legacy platforms, who love working with customers and have an excellent customer service ethic.

Enterprise was asked to lead recruitment for this essential role due to our deep understanding of the university as a whole, the faculty issues and strategy and our responsiveness in seeking the most suitable candidates for a given IT role.

Solution

Upon receiving this request from the university, we:

• Selected an internal team to drive the selection/hiring process
• Conducted discussions with a large panel of key senior stakeholders to fully understand the role, business and engagement requirements
• Developed a hiring strategy
• Crafted a detailed job description
• Executed in-depth search through:
• Shortlisted and set up phone interviews for potential candidates. Screening interviews were vital for this role as it required a high level of strategic thinking; a soft skill that is difficult to identify in written form
• Carried out five face to face interviews
• Shortlisted three candidates
• Internal database
• Advertising across seven appropriate job boards
• Bespoke searches on social media platforms such as LinkedIn
• Communications with partners and professional forums

After selection of the final candidate, we:

• Drew up contracts and finalised OH&S paperwork
• Conducted onboarding of our contractor
• Carried out ongoing processing of timesheets, time capture, payroll and invoicing

Outcome

The client selected a candidate who was well known to Enterprise and who had been shortlisted from its own networks. They joined the University as the new IT Manager in November 2013 and have been working at the faculty ever since. Identifying the right person for this key role has resulted in consistency of leadership and the ability of the faculty to develop strategically, execute its IT projects effectively and operate smoothly.