Office Depot & Arras

“Thanks very much for your excellent service. (The candidate) is proving himself already”.

Office Depot were not a new client to us but this was a first request from a new contact within the business. Our experience to date showed a company that was developing its project maturity and as such were looking for solid project management expertise.

The initial enquiry from Office Depot came at perhaps the busiest times of year and in the last week before the Christmas holiday. The hiring manager was looking for a resource early in 2010 with an initial focus on driving a challenging 10% reduction in the non-trade expenditure supporting a newly appointed departmental head.

Strong Individuals

The basis of potential candidates was a “strong individual who has both technical project management skills as well as the natural drive, ambition and maturity to engage quickly at all levels of management and ‘hit the ground running’ on some key projects”

Ho, Ho, Ho-liday Delivery

Although a busy time of the year from a client perspective, previous experience suggested that candidates were not as active preferring perhaps to wind down for the holidays. The economic climate contributed to a better than expected response but this was still half of the numbers seen only a few weeks before. More importantly from the client perspective was that the candidates who had applied were of a high standard and three candidates (as agreed with the client) were forwarded for review after being interviewed by Arras. Submitting the candidates prior to the holiday enabled the client to select candidates for interviews which were conducted in the first week of 2010.

A more formal second interview (including a presentation) identified a preferred candidate who was then invited to meet with the divisional director. Coordinating diaries with busy people is always difficult and success often comes from seeing opportunity where others see obstacles. In this instance flexibility on behalf of the candidate and client enabled attendance at a conference to provide the location for the final meeting.

Arras Recognises the Candidate That Best Benefits the Client

The successful candidate came with a strong project management background (including Prince 2 Practitioner) in a continuous improvement environment (Six Sigma Black Belt). With projects covering a range of operational improvements, IT infrastructure, WMS, and the building of a new office block within a warehouse the candidate quickly applied this to the needs of the client.

Commencing before the end of the year the candidate was quickly able to add value. After less than a month in the role, the hiring Manager responded: “Thanks very much for your excellent service. (He) is proving himself already”.

Arras People's busiest time of the week is Friday! We understand that for some organisations recruitment can be the last thing on the list - after all you're busy carrying out the work that really you need a new hire to do but only if you had the time to spend on recruitment to being that person in! The classic catch 22 situation. That's why Arras People work to take the pain out of the recruitment of project management professionals - we work quickly, don't send mountains of CVs, all candidates are screened and vetted. Just leaving you with the task of reviewing a carefully selected shortlist and interviewing a handful of candidates.

Don't leave your recruitment until Friday - start on Monday and you could be interviewing by Friday.