Our Client, a software engineering company, had just won a big contract with HMRC to make their portal more user friendly for the UK public. They initially opted to use contract resource, however, margins quickly began to suffer, partly due to the lack of data engineers with this narrow skill set for this specific tech stack. Most people out there were contractors, but the sensitive nature of the work meant that a team of permanent hires was required.
Aware of the time and resource that had been wasted, we immediately went about displacing the contract resource. We advised our client to relax the spec slightly and increase the salary. It was also clear to us that our client’s two stage process was too slow. They would need to produce offers in two days because of the speed of the market.
We engaged the senior stakeholders to ensure that we truly understood the requirements and then set about hiring fifteen data engineers in three months (and all had to be security cleared). We then worked with the recruitment team to streamline the process and guided the business to manage expectations with regard to a highly challenging tech stack. In the end we secured 25 permanent hires in three months, reducing the time to hire to an average of 3-5 days (previously 12 days) We also developed a succession plan to allow our client to transition out their contract resource. The stats were as follows: 50 CV’s, 36 Interviews, 25 hires, 3 countered, 8 rejected.
The great news was that our client delivered the project to HMRC, on time and at cost as a dedicated team were put on the job at lower cost to the client. Fortice added even more value to the client in that;
- Significant MI shared in what was a new market for our client
- As a result of their proof of delivery, HMRC awarded a larger works package
- Significant improvement in margins
- Strong GTM message delivered to the community about their presence in the public sector
