“As HR Leader, I was responsible for organisational development. It was a unique role, which posed several challenges, as I was responsible for overall growth of the business. Finding the right people was critical for an ambitious expansion.
We were in a niche area of tech and held the dominant position in law enforcement, intelligence and national security. As such, we were looking for specific skills, not just straightforward engineers and product managers. I needed CSS developers with real personality who believed in the journey and could roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty. To find these people, we needed more than a recruiter; we needed a partner who would become the fabric of our business.
Stuart came in at the point where we were taking the software to a new level. I needed someone who could initially find me 40 highly skilled people who could live and breathe what we were doing. Stuart delivered that and more.
From there, he really understood about the importance of relationships and teams in our business. He became excellent at knowing if the chemistry and dynamics were right between people in different teams.
We set Provide some really tough challenges. We moved from CSS to Java development and Stuart had to bring in evangelists to build loyal teams and retrain our existing people. He supported us as we moved in new directions and took us through each phase as we built more project teams in the UK and other continents, which wasn’t easy. We failed at duplicating our recruitment model in Arizona but Stuart helped us to pilot a different approach with much greater success, which helped us gain huge growth.
In 2011, we sold to IBM. Stuart has been instrumental in getting us to that point.
Stuart and his team are in it for the journey. They put their people in the business, on site, to get under the skin of the business. They roll with the peaks and troughs. We went from aggressive headcount targets to quiet times; they stayed with us through it all.
Stuart has strong business acumen and understood my vision for the business, helping me future-proof the company. He managed other recruiters, which takes some doing in such a cutthroat world. Stuart wasn’t afraid to speak out if something wasn’t right, which created great trust between us. It was a true partnership. Working with Provide is not a customer-supplier relationship – Stuart is a trusted advisor to the business and to me personally.”
Roma Marlin
Acquisitions and Integration
IBM