High-quality Directors and Associate Directors in the engineering sector are a highly valuable commodity. We understand just how difficult it can be when advertising senior jobs in engineering to find senior managers and directors with the right knowledge, experience, and skill set for your business.
At Executive Headhunters EMA Partners, we are experienced in sourcing these individuals for our clients. We have experience working with many businesses within the engineering sector and finding them talent suited to their needs, saving our clients huge amounts of time and effort, as well as providing them with quality candidates that simply can’t be sourced through in-house recruitment. We also have extensive experience executive headhunting in a range of sectors for Director and Associate Director jobs.
Here we will outline our experience with civil engineering firm Fluid Structures, who tasked us with finding two quality Associate Directors for their business.
Introduction to Fluid Structures
Fluid Structures is an award winning engineering practice that was set up to work closely with architects and designers. Formed in 1999, the business has been a provider of engineering input for projects ranging from as £50k domestic extensions all the way up to £100 million commercial projects.
The business itself is split into several small teams of 5 to 6 people, each compromising of experienced engineers and designers. Fluid Structures have extensive experience working with outstanding designers and architects to complete projects across the UK in a wide range of different sectors including but not limited to high-end hotels, luxury residential, and interior store design.
The Ideal Candidate
Fluid Structures had a strong commitment to advancing the professional status and skill sets of all their employees. Their business environment was very dynamic and social within the office, with the company regularly providing excursions and trips as incentives for their workers. Because of this environment, it was vital that we found candidates who not only had the experience Fluid Structures required, but also had the right outgoing personality that would allow them to fit into the business culture, and the motivation to repay the investment that the company puts into its staff.
As Fluid Structures were a growing business, they were looking to the future, and set themselves a clear aim; to recruit two new Associate Directors before the end of 2018.
This was a very attractive opportunity, as individuals in this role would have a clear route to equity dictatorship as well as being eligible to advance to become an Equity Director within two to three years.
At the beginning of the project, the business wanted us to find the first of two Associate Directors. This individual would have to be high-calibre, with the ability to manage groups of senior engineers and CAD technicians in order to produce the required project information. The right candidate would also need a strong engineering background in addition to a genuine passion for working as part of a senior management team and taking the business to the next level.
The ideal candidate for Fluid Structures would have to have strong communication and people skills, and be of a client-facing nature with a solid structural engineering background. They would have to be either an existing Chartered Engineer, or close to achieving Chartership.
Candidates were also required to have strong experience in providing accurate structural engineering solutions that are bespoke and appropriate to the stage and type of project being worked on. It was also necessary that they could inspire others to do the same. The most important requirement for this role was that the candidate must have proven experience in leading specialised teams of architects and senior engineers to achieve results that succeed expectations.
The Search Process
When conducting the executive search process, we decided to focus our efforts on identifying and approaching the top performing engineers and the most senior engineers around London, which was the area in which the role was based. This was because candidate would have to commute for the role, and London is a good area for identifying talent. We focused particular attention on companies that had a structural engineering division in their business. To conduct this search, we took advantage of our strong existing networks of contacts, as well as our talented research team and extensive resources. Through this, we managed to find the perfect candidate for our client.
Achieving Results
As a result of our executive search, we found a group of talented individuals to present to our client. One candidate that we found had over 20 years’ experience in the analysis and design of a wide range of structures. This candidate had worked all over the world and across a variety of sectors and positions including Project Engineer and Associate Director.
The candidate had experience managing projects with large budgets from start to finish, leading teams of up to 10 architects and engineers, achieving notable success in the middle-east. Fluid Structures were very impressed with the candidates we provided, particularly their expanding professional network and their client centred approach to business development.
This experience is a great example of our abilities as a headhunting agency. We worked with our client to form a detailed understanding of exactly what they wanted and needed as a business, and set out to provide them with that.
We conducted an extensive talent search in the targeted area and found high-quality candidates who were ideal for Fluid Structures and their position.
What We Can Do For You
This is one of the many highly-successful executive searches we have performed for clients in the Engineering and Manufacturing sector, and one of the many Directors / Associate Directors we have placed. Our team is experienced and reliable, having conducted bespoke executive searches across all sectors and industries, for a variety of role and positions. We're the best headhunters for engineering jobs.
