A UK-based SME specialising in infection prevention and medical consumables needed to replace a key commercial team member quickly after an unexpected departure.
Results at a glance
49 days from initial briefing to the successful candidate formally accepting the role.
3 weeks from initial job intake to the joint shortlisting meeting
2 candidates considered appointable
About the client
The client is a UK-based SME with 25 employees operating in infection prevention and medical consumables, with a focus on helping reduce healthcare-associated infections.
Its commercial team is deliberately lean, making each appointment particularly important to the company’s ability to manage growth and maintain momentum in a competitive, fast-moving market.
The challenge: replacing a key commercial hire without losing commercial momentum
The business needed to recruit a Territory Manager following the unexpected departure of the previous postholder for personal reasons.
Speed mattered for the client. The business had important deals in progress and, in her view, leaving the role vacant for too long could have put some of those opportunities at risk.
But moving quickly could not come at the expense of quality.
The company had traditionally looked for a specific combination of education, experience and personal characteristics. Previous searches for similar positions hadn’t resulted in someone the team felt confident appointing, and the niche nature of its market further restricted the available candidate pool.
The challenge was therefore clear: find someone who met a demanding brief, was right for a small and fast-moving business, and ensure the recruitment process moved swiftly.
The client’s initial hesitation: why pay upfront when other recruiters do not ask you to?
Before starting the search, the client had reservations about Advance’s Committed recruitment model, particularly the requirement for an upfront financial commitment.
For a small business, it was a reasonable question.
As the Chief Commercial Officer explained:
“As a small company, I think we always have to be on the ball with what return are we going to get at the other end of the process.”
The business had previously worked with recruiters on a contingent basis, where no fee was committed at the beginning. That could feel lower risk financially, but the client’s experience was that much more of the recruitment workload remained with the hiring manager.
The Chief Commercial Officer recalled recruiters sending a collection of CVs and then having relatively little involvement until much later in the process. Screening, interpreting suitability and making sense of different candidates was largely left to the internal team.
Other options, such as running job adverts or proactively searching LinkedIn, avoided an upfront recruitment commitment too, but demanded another resource the business could not easily spare, which was time.
“Yes, you haven’t got that financial commitment, but you’re wasting one of the other biggest resources in a small company, which is time.”
That became central to the decision.
What was the client investing with the Committed search process?
The difference was not simply when the recruitment fee was paid. For this client, it was the difference between receiving candidates and having a recruitment partner actively involved in reaching, assessing and narrowing the market with them.
Under previous contingent recruitment experiences, the client described receiving CVs and doing much of the evaluation themselves.
With the Committed service, Advance were able to commit the resources needed to ensure a successful search from the outset and worked collaboratively with the hiring manager throughout it.
That meant the client was investing in:
- A proactive search rather than waiting for applications, including a wider market-mapping exercise that ultimately identified 170 potential candidates.
- Assessment before the hiring manager’s time was used, with Advance screening candidates against the agreed brief before discussing them with the client.
- A joint shortlisting meeting rather than a stack of CVs, allowing the hiring stakeholders to question recommendations and understand the strengths and potential reservations around each candidate.
- Better-informed candidates, supported by a candidate information pack and conversations about the business and opportunity before formal interview.
- Recruitment-market guidance during the decision, including insight around salaries, expectations and candidate fit.
- Ongoing visibility and support, with regular check-ins rather than the client having to chase for information or work through decisions alone.
This distinction was what ultimately gave the leadership team confidence to proceed.
For the Chief Commercial Officer, the value was also in being able to see the work being carried out rather than simply waiting for CVs to arrive.
She later described it as getting “return on your financial commitment from day one”.
Building a brief the market could respond to
Advance began by working with the client to turn a relatively instinctive picture of their ideal candidate into a clearer recruitment brief.
The hiring manager knew the type of person she wanted but found it harder to put that into words. The hiring intake meeting helped the hiring stakeholders clarify the combination of experience, education and personal qualities needed to succeed in the role.
Advance also provided market and salary insight to help position the opportunity appropriately without abandoning the company’s core requirements.
A candidate information pack was then created to give prospective candidates a fuller understanding of the organisation and the role before interview.
The Chief Commercial Officer felt that this created stronger early engagement:
“The candidate pack that you guys pulled together, gives candidates that foundation of knowing that they want to move into that process before actually moving into it.”
From 170 potential candidates to a focused interview group
Advance identified 170 potential candidates during the search.
Rather than passing that volume to the hiring manager, Advance progressively assessed and narrowed the market:
170 candidates identified 15 screened by Advance 10 discussed with the client at the joint shortlisting stage 7 invited to first interview 4 progressed to second interview 2 considered appointable 1 successful candidate accepted the role, who had not been actively in the job market.
The joint shortlisting meeting with Advance and the hiring manager took place within three weeks of the initial job intake session.
For the hiring manager, that meeting demonstrated particularly clearly what was different about the approach.
Rather than reviewing CVs alone, she was able to discuss the candidates with a highly experienced search consultant who had already spoken to and assessed them.
“I thought, ‘It’s just so different.’ I’m not just being sent a CV and making my own mind up on how they are as people.”
That conversation allowed questions or reservations to be explored in real time and gave the client more context behind each recommendation.
The client described the overall approach as “so much more thorough” than previous recruitment processes.
More support without shifting more work onto the client
The Committed process meant less time spent on recruitment, and in her view, the time she did spend on it felt productive.
“Every single minute that was spent on it was worthwhile.”
Regular check-ins also gave her somewhere to test decisions and discuss questions as they arose. She described Advance as a “sounding board” during the search and particularly valued not having to chase for updates.
This mattered in a small business where recruitment was only one of many competing responsibilities for the senior leadership team.
The quality of the shortlist created a very different final-stage problem from some of the client’s previous recruitment processes: choosing between credible candidates. Of the seven candidates interviewed at first stage, four progressed to second interview.
That was important because the client was not choosing between one strong candidate and several weaker alternatives. There were several people they could genuinely see working in the business.
The Chief Commercial Officer commented during the process:
“It’s really hard to choose, they’re all so good.”
In fact, by the end of the process, there were two candidates the client would have been happy to appoint with one eventually being offered and accepting the role.
The successful candidate was not actively looking for a new job.
What caught her attention was the opportunity to progress.
The new role offered something she could not currently see in her existing position, which gave her a genuine reason to consider a move.
That mattered because it showed the value of searching beyond people who were already applying for jobs.
For a company that had begun the process uncertain about making an upfront commitment, the completed search changed the CCO’s view of the model, and for any hiring manager considering the committed service her recommendation was to
“Just go for it, it’s so worth it.”
She added:
“It may seem like a big commitment, or it may seem odd for some people to ask for part of the fee upfront because others don’t, but I think the level of service is just worlds apart.”
And reflecting on the relationship as a whole:
“It’s not just like a supplier; you genuinely have been like a partner to us.”
The outcome
The company began the process with:
- An unexpected and commercially important vacancy
- A niche candidate market
- A demanding candidate profile
- Concerns about how quickly the role could be filled
- Previous experiences of recruitment processes that had not always delivered
- Reservations about paying a portion of the fee at the start of the process.
And the results achieved were
- A strong shortlist presented within three weeks
- Several candidates the client genuinely rated
- Better-prepared candidates
- Greater confidence at interview
- Professional support throughout the decision-making process
- Less time spent on lower-value recruitment activity
- Clear visibility over the work being done
- A successful appointment
- Significantly greater confidence in the eventual hire
- A completely different view of committed recruitment
If you have a specialist vacancy and want to understand what our Committed Search Process entails before deciding whether it is right for your business, Book a Hiring Review Call with Advance Recruitment.