Earlier this year, Resourcing Matters partnered with Allen International, an integrated strategic design consultancy. Allen International were asked to develop a radical new retail interior design strategy to revolutionise the customer concept of a major bank in Iceland. A fundamental goal of the design was to entice existing customers back to the branches whilst attracting new customers with the new brand image .

Resourcing Matters worked with Allen to evaluate the impact of the new interior design on the employee's role and what skills and behaviours they would need to adopt to be effective The new design required staff to be much more proactive and interactive with their customers. For some, however, this required a shift in mindset and development of new skills.

As a result, Resourcing Matters designed a workshop which enabled employees to experience the new environment and to try out some techniques in building rapport and recognising and using body language. The training majored on relationship building skills; focusing on the customer and helping staff to put themselves in the customers' shoes - and it also supported them to sell the benefits of the new strategy.

The workshops have been rolled out across the organisation so that all staff are now equipped to operate in the new branches. The feedback from the participants was extremely positive about what they had learned about their own and customer behaviour. They felt more confident to operate from day one and were clear about the benefits of the new design to the customer. The feedback was also positive about how the new layout would help increase business in their branches.

Since delivering this training Resourcing Matters has since run similar programmes for Allen International in Jordan, Greece and Russia. Our next project with Allen International is in the Czech Republic.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd is a global pharmaceutical company specializing in the development, production and marketing of generic and proprietary branded pharmaceuticals. Teva is among the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and among the largest generic pharmaceutical companies in the world.

As part of Teva's growth strategy and its focus on its relationship with customers, the decision was taken to build a Dispensing Doctor team - 10 Account Managers across the UK. The timescale was 10 weeks from the commencement of the campaign to the successful candidates' start date.

The key for this role was to achieve the right skill mix - a combination of clinical and commercial backgrounds. By working with the senior management team, the key competencies for the role were defined and based on this we designed a telephone interview, face to face interview and a presentation.

The Resourcing Matters team devised a plan of operation that allowed every candidate pre-screened through telephone interview to be assessed on one day - at one venue. Despite issues with flight times from Ireland and Scotland, the day ran smoothly and 9 out of the 10 positions were offered and accepted.

The key element for the Teva team was that they met with all the candidates at some part of the day - which was achieved and because all candidates had been previously telephone screened all candidates met their criteria. The feedback we received from the candidates was that, even though a tight schedule was maintained, they did not feel 'processed'. Feedback was given to those who were successful - and those who were unsuccessful.

The key to this project's success was the clear communication and definition of the competencies between Resourcing Matters and the Teva team and a thorough understanding of their business needs.

The HR Department of a major insurance company wanted to assess its existing HR team. The aim was to identify their suitability to transition to a new HR operating model.

Resourcing Matters designed an assessment day which allowed staff to demonstrate the skills required by an HR Business Partner. Each of the exercises were based on situations 'live' to the insurance company and were designed in collaboration with line managers and the HR Director. The day consisted of a competency based interview; role play; group and written exercise. This was supplemented by the completion of an OPQ32i personality questionnaire.

The outcome from Development Centre was fedback to participants in a one to one coaching session and the personality questionnaire was used to support and inform this.

Feedback from the participants was that they 'enjoyed' the day and felt that they had all learnt something about themselves - and more importantly, about the difference between their current role and future role.

An overall assessment of the team was produced for the HR Director so that she could see the strengths and the gaps that she would need to address in order for the team to make a successful transition to the new operating model.

The sensitive handling of participants together with the relevance of the exercises to the role and the business enabled each participant to perform to the best of their ability and ensured that the right people where appointed to the right roles.

Our client, Motability Operations, is a charity that runs the biggest car fleet in the UK. Motability wanted to recruit a small number of graduates - 6 in total. This was their first attempt at attracting graduates to their organisation and they knew that they were competing with big names and even bigger budgets.

Our idea was to introduce a Mentoring Programme for their new graduate intake. This would serve many purposes: supporting graduates to be effective in their role as quickly as possible and signalling that the graduate Programme was sponsored at a top level within the organisation. Working with Motability, our first step was to define the objectives and desired benefits for both the business and graduates. Amongst the many benefits, distinguishing Motability Operations as an employer of choice, in an extremely competitive graduate marketplace, was crucial.

Once expectations were clear, we worked to get senior management backing. Mike Betts, CEO, agreed to be our champion, increasing the credibility and reputation of the programme within the organisation. The Board of Directors agreed to participate as mentors, which clearly signalled top level commitment to the Graduate Mentoring Programme.

It was also important that all participants were prepared for their role so we designed workshops for mentors and mentees; line managers were briefed regarding their participation. Tailored training at the outset was important. It provided opportunities for peer interaction, sharing of experiences and a means of managing expectations among the mentor and mentee groups. It also ensured that clear boundaries were set around the mentoring relationship including practical issues such as time allocation, programme length, roles and responsibilities. Agreement about the relationship, confidentiality, methods of communication and feedback was also covered.

At the mentee/graduate workshop we worked closely to support the new recruits to develop career, experience and skill goals. Some of the goals included building credible reputations, developing a comprehensive network and building self-confidence. Incorporating a clear goal achievement process provided an effective way of maintaining motivation and measuring outcomes.

Cambridge Regulatory Services (CRS) is a niche consultancy supporting pharmaceutical companies worldwide to gain approval for their medicines in a timely and cost-effective manner. The work is highly technical and CRS need to recruit candidates with the highest quality technical skills and unique attitude to work successfully in a close knit entrepreneurial business.

Resourcing Matters designed an interview process which identified the candidates' technical abilities but perhaps more importantly also explored their values and beliefs. This process allowed the candidates to learn much more about CRS and what was important to make working at CRS a success. The candidates could also demonstrate how their skills and attitudes would make a direct contribution to the business.

Many candidates had the right technical skills but were looking for a corporate, big pharma environment, where a more structured approach was appropriate. CRS were looking for a more entrepreneurial approach where the ability to influence decisions was welcomed.

By making the selection process more informal and by demonstrating how the candidate could get involved in the business overall - persuaded a number of these scarce skill group candidates to make the right decision and to accept an offer from CRS.

Many companies, due to growth or a changing market need to recruitment a large number of staff at one time. Non Stop Recruitment was in this position - having enjoyed rapid growth over a prolonged period it now needed to recruit some new staff to support their expansion plans. Experts in recruitment, the team at Non Stop had run a number of assessment centres before but found that the process took up too much of their time. They also felt that their exercises could be updated and refocused to pinpoint specific behaviours which they wanted to see in their new staff.

Resourcing Matters were engaged to:

• Establish a competency framework upon which all the exercises would be based
• Design an online application form
• Design and conduct a competency based telephone interview to screen the applicants - as a large number was anticipated - and was received
• Design the schedule for the assessment day to ensure the maximum number of candidates could be seen by the Non Stop management team
• Design the exercises which would best demonstrate the skills Non Stop wanted to identify, which were:

• A case study which involved writing an advertisement for a new role placed with Non Stop - this was to test written skills and ability to complete a task
• A presentation which the candidates were asked to prepare beforehand to demonstrate how they build rapport; their tenacity and desire to learn
• A group exercise to show how they communicate; build rapport; demonstrate an ethical approach and drive to complete the tasks
• A role play - with the scenario where the candidate has the task to persuade a client to interview a particular candidate

All the exercises were based on real life scenarios facing any member of staff working at Non Stop Recruitment. In this way, the candidate has the opportunity to experience what it is like to be a Recruitment Consultant and Non Stop has the chance to see the candidate performing the role they could be doing if successful.

The key to making the assessment centre work well is meticulous planning. Resourcing Matters supplied each candidate with a comprehensive Candidate Support Pack to ensure that all were aware of what would be required of them on the day. Resourcing Matters also ensured that all members of Non Stop taking part in the assessment were familiar with the materials and that scoring was consistent.

The assessment centres were a success with offers being made on the day. After taking an initial brief, the design and production of theexercises was down to Resourcing Matters. The benefit to Non Stop was that although they took part in the process they did not need to be involved in the design or mechanics of the day - which meant they could carry on with their business whilst recruiting.