Manufacturing, FMCG & Pharmaceutical

Our family run Manufacturing business were seeking a Quality Manager to join their team in Essex and this was to strengthen their capabilities in terms of Quality Assurance. We managed to generate a good level of interest for this position from candidates with extensive background in manufacturing from FMCG, Electronics, Bespoke furniture, CNC Machining, Aerospace & Automotive. The candidate who was eventually successful came from a completely different industry to what our client is operating in! Main reason this candidate was successful is because she demonstrated to have all the transferable skills and more required for the job. Although there will be some time invested in terms of understanding the Industry, Products and Processes, these are elements that she would be able to pick up very quickly and in time be able to bring much more value to the position. The decision to appoint someone from another industry also presented an opportunity to bring new ways of thinking and working so fresh ideas on how they are able to manage their Quality Assurance activities. We are very pleased at the level of engagement we had with our candidate; this was a big move for her to move away from the industry in which she had built around 6 years’ experience. Our client was also extremely supportive in terms of answering all the questions we and the candidate had to ask. All the calls conducted outside of normal working hours were much appreciated! We at Techniche are strong advocates of engaging and working with client and candidates across a wide range of industries and this is the perfect example of which illustrates that the most important requirement to any job is if the candidates posses the transferable skills regardless of industry and of course a good culture fit for the business/ team.

Our manufacturing client is investing in their toolroom with new equipment, upgrading their system, process and of course people. We took on the requirement for a Toolmaker which is always challenging as our usual (electronic) way of engaging with candidates are not as effective for this skills-set. The most effective way of engaging with Toolmakers is through referrals and headhunting Toolmakers who work within local engineering firms that deal with Plastic Injection Moulding. We managed to supply our client with a shortlist of suitable Toolmakers and one of which worked at one of their suppliers, so they knew their tooling well. This chap interviewed but came a close 2nd place to another candidate, we kept the candidate informed throughout the process and informed him of the decision once rejected. Although the decision was not desired, the candidate experience was a pleasant one and was left with a good feeling about the interviewing company, us an agency and how the process was handled. A few weeks later our client approached us to add to their tooling team and asked if our candidate was still available and interested, fortunately we had concluded the process in a professional way so it was easy to engage with him again. Another meeting/ interview took place before a decision was reached to hire him! Techniche invest a lot of time building relationships with our clients and candidates alike, when situations like this occur it reaffirms to us why it’s so important that all candidates are informed of the decision following all interviews!

We were asked to support in the recruitment of a Production/Process Engineer who was experienced in small scale research or process development/production with a Chemistry/material science background. Having taken a detailed brief from the client to establish their requirements, we were able to go out to market and target a niche pool of candidates who were available locally. The successful candidate holds a PhD in Philosophy and a Masters in Chemistry – having completed 1 year in industry, he is a highly motivated development chemist who has performed new product and new process development for scale-up and commercialisation of a wide range of monomers and polymers, for use in the contact lens and lubricant industries – a great match to our clients industry.