Security Education and Awareness Consultant for Global Insurance Group

Opportunity

The client contacted us with 2 urgent requirements for Security Education & Awareness consultants on a contract basis to lead the development and delivery of an organisation wide training and awareness programme to enhance the business’ security culture. These were niche requirements in a highly specialised market which was short of contractors with the required skills and experience.

Approach

We met with the stakeholders to understand exactly what their objectives were, and the type of candidate that would be able to deliver this work for them. Based on these discussions we advised on a realistic budget, the terms of the engagement and clarified the person specification.

The process of generating the appropriate candidates for this opportunity included searching our database, advertising it on our website, specialist job boards and promoting the opportunity to our networks on LinkedIn. We contacted our wider network of known professionals within this sub specialism to ascertain their availability and to network through them to broaden the search. Security education and awareness is a close community in the UK, with forums and communication circles dedicated to the profession, and we worked with community members to help promote these opportunities.

Outcome

Through this intense activity we managed to find the first candidate very quickly. The search continued but the second candidate proved difficult to find; the market was extremely busy at the time and security education and awareness candidates are scarce in a normal market. Having exhausted all our searching methods using our data base, job boards, LinkedIn and asking many contacts for recommendations we were struggling to deliver by the deadline. In these situations, it is importance that we take ownership of the challenge. Persistence was key, constantly promoting the position and scanning the market daily for newly available candidates. It took slightly longer than expected but both candidates were delivered to the client, who was delighted with and people and the delivery of the project.