The Learning & Skills Network provides services to policy-makers, to organisations that fund, manage and provide education, and to individual providers and practitioners across education and training. Now in its fourth year of operation the LSN faces a wide variety of challenges which include:
- Increasing competition from the private sector, in particular the major consultancy firms
- The credit crunch and prospects for pubic sector funding in the medium term
- The increasing prospect of political and policy change
- The replacement of the QIA with LSIS and its transition to a sector body
Against this background the plans have been drawn up to:
- Restate and strengthen the LSN commitment to it’s core charitable purpose, adding value to partners and stakeholders by making learning work
- Enhancing and extending the LSN reputation for thought leadership in learning giving greater prominence the contribution of expert staff to the learning community and investing in the LSN Think Tank.
- To widen the scope of the LSN operation, increasing the pace of diversification through developing and delivering strategies in four priority sectors.
- Reorganising and strengthening the LSN capacity for growth, development and delivery
- Improve the effectiveness of LSN communications with those who may benefit, directly or indirectly from the services they are able to provide.
As part of this plan the LSN wished to recruit thirteen new members of staff to help to maintain or grow its business and to seek to gain control of its own destiny by building on its strengths. This means defining its own brand reputation, defining its markets, diversifying into new areas, investing in new products/solutions and taking them to market in a consistent, joined-up manner.
LSN needed to position itself better, invent better, communicate better and sell better. LSN’s proposition must inspire customers, partners and colleagues to think and act differently.
Veredus were hired to ensure the thirteen places were filled through a combination of advertising and headhunting but also to provide central support for the concurrent recruitment exercise. Recruiting thirteen new posts ranging from Commercial Director, Marketing Director, Sector Heads and Sales Managers, at the same time, presented some unique challenges. However through close co-operation all thirteen positions were successfully filled within the required timescales providing exceptional candidates at great value for money.