CASE STUDY: Chief Commercial officer - Beauty brand

CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER - BEAUTY BRAND

• A search for a challenging position that required extensive experience of selling, through distributions into a specific international market. This was known by the client to be a niche and small pool of candidates
• This hire would be a key C-suite leader, supporting the CEO as he strives to take this £50 million turnover into global growth and aim to double sales figures but driving distribution and new relationships.
• The key challenge was that this search had been carried out previously by a retained search firm that had been unsuccessful in 6 months.
• We focused the search around truly understanding the push-pull factors of the CEO, who was the key determiner and decision maker and had a strong and specific idea of the perfect candidate.
• Through deep discussion we identified 4 top criteria for the business: experience in a lead commercial or sales role in a £50million+ turnover business/experience selling into a far-east country, through distributors / experience of the beauty industry / relevant leadership style and personality fit
• We ran a dual search looking at 3 candidate streams; first being the perfect fit which was likely to fall outside of the budget. Additionally, we looked at candidates who matched all criteria other than size and thirdly candidates that matched all the crieta bar sector, but had strong sector similarities such as fashion.
• We presented candidates in small groups so fair comparisons could be made while highlight individual strengths and experiences
• We prioritised interviews for candidates that were top ticks for the client while encouraging meet-and-greet conversations with candidates that had potential.
• After identifying the top 3 candidates the interview became more detailed and in-depth giving and after 3 interviews the hired candidate was identified.
• They had 3 further interview stages to confirm this was the right fit for all parties.
• The search took 3 months and the candidate started within 8 weeks of the offer.