Prewave secures senior leadership, fast
In conversation with Katy Hanton, Director of People, Culture & Talent at Prewave, on a retained executive search for a VP Marketing appointment during a period of rapid scaling.
What was your recruitment challenge?
“We were looking for a VP Marketing but didn’t have the talent in-house at that stage. We’d invested heavily in redeveloping and growing the team, and reached a point where we needed to look outside the business, the organisation needed senior leaders to bring in a new level of expertise and guide us into the next phase.
Although I have over 25 years of experience in recruitment and executive search, I didn’t have the bandwidth to handle multiple hires – at the time we were hiring for three senior roles – at the scale we needed. We needed a partner to help us hire the right senior candidate, quickly.”
Why did you use Intelligent People for your executive search?
“As we were recruiting for multiple roles during an especially busy period, I knew we needed specialist support in product management and marketing executive search. I reached out to my network, and Intelligent People came highly recommended by multiple contacts.
I had a few other people in mind, but after speaking with them I wasn’t confident any could significantly accelerate our pipeline in the short term. When I spoke with Chris it was immediately clear he could meet our challenge effectively and, more importantly, quickly. As a specialist search agency, he already had a pool of warm leads and candidates with the right experience ready to go.”
How does Intelligent People compare to other executive search agencies you've worked with?
“Having worked in executive search myself, what I appreciated about Chris was his no-nonsense approach. He kept comms to a minimum, providing only the key updates I needed. There are a lot of stakeholders to manage here, all needing in-depth information delivered as economically as possible – not buried in loquacious language like some other London search firms.
Chris gave honest feedback, told us when he had concerns about the job spec or candidates, was very efficient, and guided us when we didn’t have the bandwidth to get into the detail. Most importantly, he listened to what our needs were, which is quite a rarity.”
Would you work with Intelligent People again?
“Yes, absolutely. If we have the right search, I’d work with them again and would happily recommend them to my network. Intelligent People acted quickly, with great accuracy and directness – it was clear Chris and the team knew the executive search space extremely well.”
Hiring senior leaders? Need an executive search agency? Let’s talk.
