FMCG Recruitment Agency

Case Study

The Client

The Sigma Recruitment team was approached by a manufacturing business with facilities across North America, Europe and the UK.

The Vacancy

General Manager / Branch Manager

The Challenges

This client faced some very serious challenges from the start, which combined to make the vacancy very unattractive to the market.

• The previous manager had left the company in a bad way. Sales were down, orders were not being completed on time, the team were demotivated, and the warehouse was out of control. The US-based parent company had lost faith in UK operations.
• The line manager for the position was not based in the UK and had little experience with recruiting in the UK or the culture of the local area.
• The position included extensive responsibilities, from manufacturing to supply chain and finance.
• The company’s ERP system was not fit for its purpose and was not being used, leading to a loss of visibility and thus control.
• The client was unaware of how to “sell” the job to the market and needed a recruitment partner who could do most of the work for them.
• Previous recruitment processes had been long-winded and resulted in a large number of candidates dropping out of interviews.

The Solution

For this client, the Sigma Elite Recruitment System was the only choice.

• We worked with the client’s directors to identify what had gone wrong with the previous recruitment processes and why.
• We identified that the previous manager had come from a larger company, and was not used to the range of responsibilities needed.
• We isolated these responsibilities and identified the key areas that needed to be fixed to return success to the company: leadership, order fulfilment processes, inventory management, ERP system knowledge, customer satisfaction, supplier development and health & safety.
• Sigma provided a market mapped insight into the local candidate market and identified candidates who would likely be available within budget. We also mapped out the opportunities that existed for a candidate who came in and performed well.
• We drafted a recruitment process and timescales guide to map out our approach and to enable the client to identify candidates that could help resolve their issues.
• Our experts helped the client create a scenario-based test for the second interview, which involved running through some of the problems that the previous manager had faced and asked the candidate to present how they would have approached these issues.
• We created and SEO optimised, well-designed advert and placed it on a large number of local and national job boards, as well as social and business media for maximum possible talent attraction.
• A recruitment front sheet with a client-approved list of questions was generated, designed to determine if candidates had the right level of experience.
• We built a recruitment process and crafted a candidate “job information pack” to send to candidates following the Sigma screening call. This two-step approach ensures more buy-in from candidates before their details are presented to clients.
• Sigma built out a detailed sourcing plan across our internal database, LinkedIn, and wider-reaching job boards to identify a large talent pool.
• Once the talent pool was built, Sigma created a multi-faceted marketing campaign to attract and screen interested candidates. This involved a four-stage automated text message campaign, a two-step email campaign, phone calls/voice messages and messaging via LinkedIn. The whole campaign was managed and tracked by Sigma’s market-leading CRM recruitment package.

The Results

Five candidates were selected for a first interview, two candidates were invited back for a second interview, and an offer was made and accepted. The candidate has since started, and the business has seen improvements in key areas, which has led to them being able to hire further staff to support the new general manager.

Other Sigma assignments in FMCG have included buyers, supply chain managers, engineering managers, maintenance managers, plant managers, technical directors and procurement managers.

About Sigma Recruitment – FMCG recruitment

Since Sigma Recruitment opened in 2005, we’ve developed an enviable reputation as one of the leading independent manufacturing and engineering recruitment agencies. We’ve recruited for a wide variety of companies, from Fortune 500 firms with sales in the hundreds of billions to niche high-tech start-ups and everything in between; we can recruit across the United Kingdom, including locations such as Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Cambridge, Gloucester, Leeds, Manchester, Oxford, Reading and Swindon.

If you’re looking to recruit candidates with engineering or technical skills in the FMCG sector, then Sigma Recruitment is ideally placed to help you find the elusive high-calibre talent your business needs. If you’re looking for an FMCG manufacturing recruiter, then please book a call with our founding director today! And we will show you why we are one of the leading engineering recruitment agencies.