Our Solutions

Solving your Talent Acquisition Challenges

Plan Talent

Talent planning is an essential component of strategic planning – without the right people in place, your future plans will likely be delayed or fail entirely. But all too often, businesses take a reactive approach to talent. They simply back-fill roles when people leave, default to outside talent when new roles emerge, and fail to invest in internal ‘stars’ with the potential to play a key role in the businesses future growth.

Our approach to strategic talent planning delivers the insights you need to avoid mistakes. We’ll help to identify your future ‘stars’, enabling you to put plans in place to develop and retain them, whilst also defining the roles you’ll need to hire in the short and medium term to deliver against your strategic plans.

What we offer

  • Lead an assessment – working with your managers, of your existing talent skills and capabilities
  • Review your strategic plans and identify talent requirements to deliver against them
  • Identify immediate and longer-term talent gaps
  • Support talent development planning to upskill high potential ‘stars’
  • Create role descriptions for newly created roles
  • Create a hiring plan including hiring sequence – taking account of extended hiring cycles for roles requiring scarce talent
  • Talent ‘pipelining’ to identify internal and external talent required to deliver against your strategic plans

The difference we made

Maths No Problem!

To help Maths no Problem expand their UK team to enable them to reach more schools, teachers and pupils with their mathematics education solution.

The Client

Maths No Problem believe that every child can master an understanding and love of maths with the right kind of teaching and support.

Their mission is to improve the standard of maths education by providing world-class textbooks, teaching resources and professional development based on the transformational teaching methods developed in Singapore.

The Challenge

Their business had expanded rapidly and a number of key skills and capabilities were needed to allow the team to reach its full potential and deliver against their growth plans.

Maths no Problem needed help to expand their team by filling a number of key roles. This would enable them to grow quickly over a short period of time. 

Solution

TG helped Maths no Problem to scope & plan their new team requirements, develop their hiring process and hire & sequence their new hires over a period of 6 months.  

Key factors taken into consideration:

  • The potential impact on the existing team of having to take too much time away from their role to deal with different stages of the recruitment process
  • Which hires would have the biggest positive impact on the business
  • The increased demand on current departments for each hire
  • The requirement to dedicate enough time and resources to onboard and embed new hires

Example hires included; Marketing, Product Management, Training, Digital Marketing, Editorial Production, E-Commerce.

What the client said

Having wasted time with both higher and lower cost alternatives, we asked the team at Talent Gateway to undertake a complex project for us to recruit a broad spectrum of talented people in a long established but fluid and fast-growing business.

The team had to work with board members to junior management, across time zones and meeting technologies, handling sometimes conflicting demands and time pressures with flexible teamwork, professionalism and integrity.

The key to good talent recruiting is of course a deep understanding of our requirements and in that respect their efforts were first class. They listened well and engaged with the team, working creatively with market insight and recommendations to help us develop a better understanding of our own needs, which meant we ended up with great results.

Overall the process was well supported, pain free, and they did what they said they would do: provided us with a great Marketing and E-commerce team, that have been central to the growth the business.

COO – Maths no Problem

Attract Talent

However great your role is, it’s just one of many options unless you can communicate why your company, and that role, could be the right move for your ideal candidate. It’s different in the early stages of growth – many founders / CEO’s make a point of meeting all candidates before offering – who better to ‘sell’ the opportunity to candidates! But as you grow, it’s essential to communicate clearly and consistently beyond the reach of your own network.

We’ll work with you and your team to create a compelling and distinctive ‘value proposition’ that engages the candidates you need to reach. We’ll create messaging which will help your opportunities to stand out – whether in job adverts or proactive approaches to ‘passive’ candidates. And we’ll build – or update – a careers site to highlight the reasons to join and show a live view of your current opportunities.

What we offer

  • Employer value proposition (EVP) development
  • Employee benefits benchmarking and development
  • Careers site creation, including live jobs functionality
  • Develop a strategy across additional social channels

The difference we made

Kia

Kia Motors UK needed to enhance the existing skill set within their dealer network in order to achieve their ambition to move from selling 1 in 10 Eco Cars, electric, hybrid plug in cars to 3 in 10.

The Client

Kia UK Limited employs more than 160 people at its UK headquarters, located at Walton-On-Thames, Surrey, where it manages the business and the network of 191 UK-based dealerships and 11 Authorised Repairers.

By transforming from Kia Motors (UK) Limited to Kia UK Limited in May 2021, the company’s new corporate name underlines its commitment to the long-term ‘Plan S’ business strategy that was unveiled in January 2020 and aims to establish Kia’s leadership position in the future sustainable mobility space.

The Challenge

Kia UK were launching their Kia Genius project which would allow any dealer within their network to sign up to the project.  The aim was to source them Kia Geniuses which were individuals who were not sales people but tech savvy, customer focused individuals who could spend time with customers, support & guide them through the technology and answer queries before handing them over to a salesperson.  The challenge for Kia UK was dealers all have different hiring processes, policies and cultures and how could they recruit on their behalf. 

Solution

TG designed, implemented and managed the end to end hiring process , to ensure that those dealers who wished to be part of the Kia UK Genius project would have complete support in hiring their Genius.  This included, scoping the role requirements, advertising, screening, interviewing, designing and implementing a careers microsite to communicate the Genius proposition to candidates.

What the client said

I was struck by their enthusiasm, their expertise and can do attitude.

The process was seamless and really well managed, with all the heavy lifting done for us.

They implicitly understood the brief and were able to absolutely deliver.


Kate McLaren – General Manager  – Kia UK

Hire Talent

We all know the disruption and cost that comes from a ‘failed hire’ yet many businesses leave their hiring process to chance. Each hiring manager is left to ‘go it alone’, in their own way, without support, and with predictably mixed results. Getting hiring right is not rocket-science, but it does require planning and preparation.

We’ll work with you to improve – or create – your hiring processes. We start by looking at how you create new roles, capturing the ‘must have’ capabilities, and then crafting interview questions and assessments to evaluate candidates strengths in these areas. We believe that collaboration and consistency are key pillars of success, so we’ll implement a hiring platform which makes this easy. And we’ll provide operational support for as long as you need it, leaving you with your own platform and processes in place when you’re ready to go it alone.

What we offer

  • Hiring process design and creation
  • Training for hiring managers
  • Support with role creation including job descriptions
  • Implementation and management of your own applicant tracking system (including a live jobs page for your careers site)
  • Operational support on a project or ongoing basis
  • Hiring your talent for you

The difference we made

Newsflare

Newsflare are a MediaTech video licensing platform where members of the public can go to license their video content to commercial media companies. The platform provides all the necessary rights clearance to provide a seamless experience.

The Client

Newsflare are a MediaTech platform with two market offerings. Newsflare Marketplace which is a B2B video licensing platform which enables members of the public and semi-professional videographers to upload their video content to the platform. This content is then license cleared and ready for purchase by commercial media companies, editorial publishers and news agencies, brands and advertising agencies and TV production companies. They also have Newsflare studios which is a B2C Social publishing capability.

They had recently secured £5m Series A funding to further develop their product, platform & expand their teams both in UK and US (LA & NY).

The Challenge

Newsflare had 35 employees and the need to hire an additional 20 people into key roles across UK (London), US (New York) and US (LA). It was important to hire these at pace to deliver against their business plan which they had secured investment against.

Solution

TG designed, implemented and managed the end to end hiring process , to ensure that those dealers who wished to be part of the Kia UK Genius project would have complete support in hiring their Genius.  This included, scoping the role requirements, advertising, screening, interviewing, designing and implementing a careers microsite to communicate the Genius proposition to candidates.

TG worked with the leadership team to understand the business plan and key milestones. We then worked together to agree a schedule for roles to be hired across the business.

  • The senior leadership team and hiring managers received interview training to ensure compliance, consistency and to build confidence.
  • A clear value proposition and careers site were designed and implemented.
  • Interview questions were provided where necessary to support in the process.
  • An Applicant Tracking system was implemented to ensure collaboration, consistency and to deliver a high-quality candidate experience.
  • 17 hires across UK, US(LA) & US (NY) within 7 months
  • Examples of roles hired included, Head of People, Head of Brand licensing, Head of B2B Marketing, Head of B2C Marketing, Head of Data Analytics, and more mid and junior level roles across all teams.

What the client said

They are very diligent and have high EQ.

We’ve had good feedback from people we’ve hired which is important because this is about a positive candidate experience and ultimately, they’re representing our brand.

Last time I did a similar project was about 4.5 years ago after another round of funding and we weren’t as successful and ended up shedding a lot of those new hires within about 9 months of making them.

Talent Gateway are adamant that we need to make the right hire and will keep going until we have the right person. It’s not about hiring just anyone.

Newsflare

Embed Talent

You’ll recognise the excitement and motivation of your candidates as they accept your offer but often that energy is lost in the weeks before, and immediately after your new starter come aboard. It’s easily done – after investing time in the hiring process it’s natural for managers to refocus on other priorities. Most candidates have work to complete during their notice period, and growing businesses rarely have a formal ‘onboarding’ process.

We’ll share our experience and best practice to ensure a great experience from offer through onboarding. This reduces the risk of your candidate pulling out – whether they accept another offer or a counter-offer from their current company – and also ensures that they’re fired up and ready to deliver from day 1.

What we offer

  • Pre-boarding process creation, including bespoke steps to build the relationship between the new hire and their new colleagues
  • Onboarding process creation, using our experience to shape a programme of activities which will equip your new hire to make an impact from the start

The difference we made

Stef & Philips

Steph and Philips provide temporary, emergency and move-on accommodation as well as vital related services to local authorities, housing association and charities – all funded by investors who care.

The Client

Steph and Philips are a Social Housing provider who provide temporary, emergency and move-on accommodation as well as vital related services to local authorities. They started as a family run business and had grown rapidly, expanding their solutions and support in this vital sector.

They had 120 employees across various functions, predominantly based out of their North London office. In order to support the growing needs of their clients, they continually needed to expand their teams whilst maintaining their values and culture.

The Challenge

The business had grown rapidly over a short period of time which had meant that the focus had been on hiring people at pace without any time to build processes.

There were a number of key challenges highlighted by the COO including; poor staff retention, onboarding issues, lack of a consistent recruitment processes, onboarding, no way to monitor recruitment and lack of Manager training. As a business with further high growth opportunity, it was essential to address these issues, to enable Stef & Philips to hire and onboard a high volume of individuals who shared their values.

Solution

TG built the end to end hiring process for S&P. This included;

  • A clear role sign off process
  • Consistent JD/Person specifications
  • Clarity about the value proposition to candidates
  • Develop and implement a careers site
  • Implement an Applicant tracking system
  • Train all Managers on how to hire successfully
  • Develop and implement clear interview questions for every role
  • Develop and implement a clear pre and on-boarding process
  • Manage ongoing recruitment including management of specialist agencies

What the client said

I wasn’t really sure what the results would be because we needed support in so many different areas of the process but the TG team have done a great job.

Small things have also made a big difference like the use of video in our pre and onboarding process.

Whether you are a large or small business this is needed, the structure & processes mean that your teams can be confident and it frees up their time. After all your staff are the most important part of your business.

Having someone we could trust to make this happen has been great.

Because of this work, we have staff that are happy which sets us apart.

Everything they have done from start to finish has just been great.


COO – Stef & Philips

Let’s Talk

Having a challenge with your talent acquisition? Whether you need help now, or just some advice to find the root cause of the issue, why not get in touch for an initial chat?