Case Study
Establishing a long-term talent acquisition partnership with a leading technology consultancy to support their multiple stages of growth
Hires
Month Projects
1 Account Director
1-5 Talent Partners
Engineering, UCD, Product, Architecture, Agile Delivery, BA, Data
The Situation
Founded in 2012, Opencast is an independent, B Corp-certified technology consultancy specialising in delivering complex, high-impact public sector engagements. The business prides itself on its values-led, people-centric culture and maintains exceptionally high standards across its core practice areas, which includes Engineering, Product Delivery, User-Centred Design (UCD), Architecture and Data.
Across two separate phases of hyper-growth (2022-2023 and 2025-2026 respectively), Opencast needed to scale rapidly to meet significant increases in client demand and build a bench capability that would enable consultants to be deployed at short notice. To achieve this, they engaged SyncD to partner with their internal Talent Engagement team and provide the additional resource and expertise required to realise these ambitious growth plans.
Having recently secured several long-term programmes of work, Opencast needed to scale at a rate that their previous recruitment capability couldn’t support, doubling in size over a 12 month period. They engaged SyncD to partner with their internal recruitment capability to realise this growth.
Our goals were to:
- Recruit exceptional permanent talent across all of Opencast’s practice areas.
- Successfully meet tight client SLAs and delivery timescales in line with project commencement dates.
- Optimise recruitment processes in partnership with Opencast’s internal team.
- Grow and manage a PSL of external recruitment agencies to ensure a continuous flow of contractor hires.
- Identify and access suitable talent hubs across the UK.
- Provide deep market insights to inform hiring strategies.
Our Approach
SyncD initially deployed an Account Director and two Talent Partners within Opencast to focus on User-Centred Design and Engineering hiring. However, the team scaled flexibly over the course of two separate 12-month engagements in line with business demand. At its peak, the team comprised five Talent Partners, each owning a specific area of Opencast’s workforce plan while also managing additional ad hoc hiring requirements.
SyncD consultants embedded within Opencast’s existing Talent Engagement team and built strong relationships with internal stakeholders to understand hiring requirements, identify pain points and gain deeper insight into the business, enabling them to deliver tailored recruitment solutions.
Successful delivery was achieved through:
- Providing a flexible plug-and-play talent partnership solution that could scale up and down in line with hiring demand.
- Working closely with Opencast’s Head of Planning and Insight to manage delivery against client demand, assess the need for permanent or contract hires, and engage and manage third-party suppliers where required to ensure delivery deadlines were met.
- Undertaking detailed market mapping to identify the best sources of talent capable of meeting Opencast’s challenging requirements, including Security Clearance (SC) eligibility and willingness to travel.
- Proactively headhunting high-calibre passive and active candidates.
- Managing inbound applicants, employee referrals and external recruitment agencies to ensure a consistent candidate and hiring manager experience regardless of source.
- Managing end-to-end recruitment processes, from initial outreach through to final interview, offer management and candidate aftercare.
- Contributing to recruitment process optimisation, salary benchmarking and recruitment marketing strategy.
- Supporting hiring managers with job requirement definition and role scoping.
- Effectively managing Opencast’s applicant tracking system, Lever.
- Supporting and mentoring new members of the internal recruitment team.
Our Results
- Filled 205 vacancies (131 permanent and 74 contract) across a broad range of disciplines, including Software Development, Quality Assurance, Technical Architecture, Data Engineering, Business Analysis, Agile Delivery Management, Service Design, Content Design, Product Management and DevOps.
- Played a key role in supporting Opencast’s overall headcount growth from 250 to 750 employees across two separate 12-month engagements.
- Equipped Opencast with the permanent and contingent talent pipelines required to meet demanding client SLAs, win new business and rapidly staff new projects.
- The blended Opencast and SyncD Talent Engagement team won the Excellence in Resourcing and Reward category at the CIPD North East of England Awards.
Lorna Madden
Head of Talent Engagement
“On the back of a significant hyper growth at Opencast and our plans to double the headcount over 2022, we decided to explore an RPO arrangement with SyncD. We were initially assigned an Account Manager and two Talent Partners to support the programme of work, and to act as extension of our internal Talent Engagement team.
Throughout the programme, this type of approach has given us experienced Talent Acquisition Partners, access to talent, increased knowledge of the market and a clear understanding of any challenges we may be faced with.
Despite this being an exceptionally talent-short and competitive market, we’ve worked collaboratively in an open and trusted way to achieve successful delivery. Above all the team are absolutely dedicated and have taken the time to understand our culture and values, we simply work as one team and it shows.”
Chris Chapman
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