Among the services offered by Gary Hill is the much-in-demand service to source excellent workers to an ever-growing number of industries across the UK.  We have established ourselves as the go-to HR partner for many business sectors including construction, private nursing, remote work, warehousing, and retail. Read our case studies below to discover how we help SMEs find the perfect staff to fill their vacant positions.

Lovat House

The Challenge

To source an experienced careworker at short notice to join a family run care home

Maintaining a well-run care home like Lovat House that has the resident’s well-being as the very top priority, is not an easy task. Many care homes in the UK have received negative press in recent years, and it is nearly always due to staff who should not be in the business of caring for vulnerable people. The personnel in a care home need to have close contact with the people in their care, and in many cases, will be there for their charges at the end of their lives. As such, in a sector that typically has more open vacancies than job seekers, finding the right staff to fill care home positions can be a challenge.

The Solution

Rather than competing with all the other care homes looking for kind, experienced staff, we did not advertise this job using the usual vacancy channels. Instead, we promoted the position on social media, targeting our ideal candidate – a person over 40, with experience in looking after the elderly albeit without formal qualifications as a 12-week induction programme is provided, and without young children or other important responsibilities.

The Results

Just two days after we placed our ads, we knew we had found our ideal candidate. Maria H is a widow in her early 50s, who although financially solvent was keen to find a new purpose to life after the recent death of her elderly mother who she had cared for during her last years. Without any ties, Maria was available to start immediately.

Our client says: “The service we received from Gary Hill exceeded our expectations. It is very hard to find dedicated staff for a care home and having Maria as a member of our small team is such a weight off our shoulders. Our residents and their family members adore her. We will definitely use GH Consulting again in the future.”

The Search Equation

The Challenge

To find a remote worker to manage several social media accounts of  the companies’ clients

The Search Equation is a digital marketing company that offers all types of marketing services to small and medium UK businesses. While finding freelancers to help with tasks associated with a digital business is easy enough through gig sites, finding the right person to run the social media accounts of half a dozen diverse businesses, who could emulate the appropriate tone for each client is not so straightforward.

The Solution

Unsurprisingly, the best place to find a qualified social media manager is social media itself. A Google search for “social media manager” produces thousands of LinkedIn results, and this is the site where social savvy hires will hang out anyway. We also pushed the position on Twitter and redirected interested parties to the company hiring page, as again, Twitter is where those interested in social media will be anyway.

The Results

A week after we received the brief from TSE, the company had shortlisted four possible candidates and offered the job to one of them, Pamela W who had recently finished a long-term contract in a similar position.

Our client says: “This is not an easy position to fill. Although we had 100s of freelancers contacting us after we initially advertised on freelancer.com, hiring a freelancing comes with its own unique set of challenges.  Trusting someone you don’t know with confidential company information requires a lot of digging, and from past experience we know there’s a big possibility they will let you down and disappear. We simply did not have time to look for the right person and are very grateful to Gary for doing the job for us. Pamela is the ideal Social Media manager – she is excellent at both curating content and promptly dealing with customer service requests across many social media platforms.”

Javea Properties

The Challenge

To find a multi-lingual person with experience in selling real estate (who was also willing to relocate!)

Javea Properties is a Spain-based real estate agency that needed to find a bilingual person (English and Spanish) with some knowledge of German, aswell as experience in selling real estate, who either lived on the Costa Blanca or was willing to relocate.  This job had been advertised locally for two months, but the right candidate had failed to materialise. We soon found the task of finding people willing to escape the gloomy UK weather and relocate to the Costa Blanca was understandably not the most difficult aspect of this request. Finding people who also had experience selling homes wasn’t the hardest part of the job, either. However, finding someone who had experience selling homes, who had the required languages, and was willing to move to another area proved to be a little tougher.

The Solution

Unlike in the UK where most British-born citizens speak only English, Holland is a country where most adults speak between 2 and 5 languages. We advertised this job on a Dutch job board in the sales staff section.

The Results

Over the next few weeks, we shortlisted two candidates after conducting interviews over Skype. The successful candidate, Johan T, has a Spanish father and as a bonus also speaks fluent French as well as Dutch, English, and German. His sales background did not stretch to real estate as he sold advertising space for his previous company, but it was clear he had a passion for selling and could succeed in other areas.

Our client says: “Locally, we just couldn’t find the right person. Although there are plenty of people looking for a job who speak some English and Spanish, few are bilingual and even fewer can offer proven sales skills. Johan is surpassing our expectations and we are confident with his talents he’ll become one of our top-performing sales staff of 2020.”

Smoking Chili Media

The Challenge

To find an out of this world UX designer!

Smoking Chilli Media needed an e-commerce designer to join their growing team working from their Kent office. The right candidate needed to be an expert in up-to-date cutting edge design and UX. Memorable web design and creative thinking are key to the companies’ business.

The Solution

To fill this vacancy, we used Toptal, which is a talent network that prevets UX designers to make sure their skills are up to demanding UX tasks. This service is not cheap, and neither are the designers, but SCM were looking for quality rather than a cheap hire.

The Results

Within two weeks the company offered the role to Michael D, who was keen to start a fixed career and leave behind the neverending job acquisition process involved when freelancing. Michael is a hybrid designer, very experienced in both UX/UI and visual design. He has freelanced for 15 years designing the UX/UI for web and mobile apps in a range of diverse sectors, including computer games and consumer products.

Our client says: “Staff sourcing by GH Consulting is second to none. Gary understood our requirements perfectly. Our successful candidate will be starting next week, and we cant wait to see what creative ideas he brings to the table.”