M Group are an infrastructure contracting business that deliver services across water, energy, transport, and telecommunications in the UK & Ireland. Their water services business has a turnover of c£440m and employs over 2,700 people.
M Group are an infrastructure contracting business that deliver services across water, energy, transport, and telecommunications in the UK & Ireland. Their water services business has aturnover of c£440m and employs over 2,700 people.
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M Group had a very specific brief for the Managing Director Water. The role had full P&L responsibility for the water division. One of the key objectives was to drive the growth of the business to c£700m.
The ideal candidate needed to have significant experience running a business of comparable scope. M Group wanted to start with an initial talent mapping exercise to gauge a feel for the market and identify how many suitable candidates there were with experience in the water sector.
Talent mapping is a great way of understanding your options before committing to a full executive search. It also provides a lot of data to the company on how realistic their brief is and if things may need to be flexed.
A talent map process follows the same stringent research process as a regular executive search. Our team used target water contracting companies as a basis to uncover current water business leaders and leaders who have since moved into other industries or types of businesses.
Using a combination of online research, telephone research, networking, and industry events we compiled a detailed longlist report with a short description of each candidate’s experience.
The information provided allowed the client to make an informed decision and they asked us to approach a handful of select candidates. With such a narrow target list, the main challenge was ensuring that we were able to connect with everyone on thephone. Even if candidates replied that they were not interested via email, it was important to reach out to them and sell the opportunity verbally to ensure they had really considered the move.
It was a great opportunity to join a private equity backed company with impressive growth plans. Garnering interest amongst target candidates was easy once we were able to connect and we quickly developed a shortlist of four strong contenders.
The successful candidate joins M Group from a contractor where they have been leading a sizeable infrastructure function. They also have considerable water experience earlier in their career.
