Executive Recruitment for Castle Point Borough Council

Castle Point Borough Council is one of the largest employers in their borough. They cover the areas of Canvey Island, Benfleet, Thundersley and Hadleigh. The council has transformed itself in recent years and is now regarded as a well-run local authority. As part of their transformation iteration in 2025, they completed an executive function restructure and engaged Essex Shared Services to help them deliver.

We understand the complexities of the recruitment process at this level, and the challenges that a transformational programme can bring. Acting as a true professional partner to the HR team, we allocated a Senior Resourcing Consultant and a Talent Attraction Specialist to the recruitment. This helped us understand the restructure objectives, people specifications, their current recruitment and talent attraction processes.

We used this information to develop a bespoke executive recruitment programme and created an innovative microsite, which included:

• A landing page with council information
• Live job vacancies
• Engaging content, including videos and staff testimonials

Change management was key to our success. We wanted to ensure staff engagement was positive during the recruitment process, as team restructure can cause uncertainty. We worked with the HR team to ensure key objectives, timelines and outcomes were updated.

We recognised that during the recruitment process, there could be periods of time where crucial roles were not filled. To ensure the council’s functions ran smoothly, our Specialist Recruitment Consultant helped the client recruit interim Assistant Directors. Having a dedicated consultant provided a wrap around service to support with all talent attraction activities, candidate management and hiring manager support.

Customer satisfaction is at the heart of our service. To add a layer of confidence for hiring managers, we secured a recruitment agency at preferential rates. However, we filled all roles through efficient headhunting activities, saving the council over £150k.

We supported the council’s employees and cabinet members with all recruitment activities. This included facilitating assessment days and preparing for interviews. With up to twelve members on each interview panel, we successfully managed participants diaries, navigating shifting schedules to ensure a smooth recruitment process.

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We helped Castle Point Borough Council successfully recruit two Directors and seven Assistant Directors. Our proactive and personalised approach supported the direct fill rate, while providing excellent candidate experience.

Due to our strong performance, the council engaged us to support with all permanent recruitment activities from April 2024 through to 2025. During this period, they moved their processes in‑house but continue to use us for talent attraction, role advertising and all temporary recruitment across the whole council.

Compared to a recruitment agency, we provided 75% in cost savings.