Help for Heroes

Regional Head of Recovery, North

Having used a local recruitment agency and failed to find a suitable candidate, Help for Heroes, the charity that supports wounded, injured or sick Veterans and their families, turned to Hanover Fox.

Sue Castleton, Head of HR, explains why this was such a difficult post to fill:

“The person we were replacing had conceived of, built and run our Recovery Centre in the north. That’s big shoes to fill. The role is really complex, dealing with a wide range of challenges, from getting a bathroom refitted at home, to sports challenges like scaling Everest. We needed someone with the flexibility to deal with serving military personnel, while embracing our holistic medical, mind body, sprit approach for the Veterans, and providing real leadership to the team.

“Hanover Fox spent a remarkable amount of time with us before carrying out executive search and targeted advertising. As soon as they presented us with a list of pre-vetted candidates for discussion I knew we were with the right firm. They then conducted face-to-face interviews with about a dozen potential candidates and together we whittled the list down to six.

“We then ran a pretty gruelling all day assessment process at the Centre, taking feedback from staff and managers to make our final decision.

“In almost 30 years of recruiting senior people, I have never encountered this level of detail from an executive search firm. They felt part of our team. The calibre of candidates was really high. They clearly set candidate expectations so there were no awkward negotiations at the end. They are refreshingly different, and most importantly, we are delighted with the final appointment.”

Sue Castleton – Head of HR