Scotland

With our London Technology team servicing clients for over a decade, in 2017, our Scottish Business Transformation team were seeing additional demand from clients for Technology resources in this region, due to the natural crossover between the two spaces. We entered the market in response, adapting our processes to suit the tech market, and investing in specialist consultants to cover everything from software development to infrastructure. The main demand from our clients then was for permanent talent with experience in the latest technologies, as well as an urgent need for niche contractors as a flexible resource. Most agencies in Scotland either didn’t understand the local market in detail or didn’t have our excellent reputation to influence candidates.

Since then, the landscape and therefore the demand for talent have changed dramatically due to rapid advances in areas such as cloud technology and DevOps. Businesses need to evolve and harness the latest tech and flexible working practices to attract the best talent. Those that did this early have also thrived during the pivot to remote working due to the global pandemic. IR35 has changed the contract space significantly, increasing the demand for permanent talent that can be retained and developed alongside the tech.

Today, we are an established player in the Scottish market, able to dedicate large teams to individual clients and projects that require the best technology talent on the market. Our reputation is built on trust and building long-term relationships, and we are passionate in what we do, focusing on the bigger picture with talent solutions, both in terms of our clients’ needs and our candidates’ career aspirations.

Key features:

• Flexible pricing options to suit your needs: our standard rate card provides a clear and transparent pricing structure

• Access to our global community of contractors with cutting edge expertise

• On average, our contractors are onboarded in just nine days and extended seven times, with the average tenure being 22 months

• All contractors are pre-screened and vetted as requested

• An experienced account team for the project duration and a dedicated account manager to provide a single point of contact

Why you’ll love it:

• Ability to rapidly ramp up and scale down resources as required

• Cost-efficient way to run projects without compromising on quality

• Full support to resource your projects across multiple verticals and geographic locations

• Minimal overall impact to your hiring manager community and current resources

• We can onboard the best talent quickly, speeding up your delivery and return on investment

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​Key features:

• One specialist point of contact at Hydrogen

• Using innovative, customised search methods, we source and secure the market’s best talent

• Searches conducted by a consultant and dedicated research team, to ensure a thorough search and all relevant candidates in the market are spoken to

• Weekly updates on the search

• Flexible rates depending on the role requirements

Why you’ll love it:

• Save time having to manage different agencies and numerous points of contact

• More control over your brand message in the market as candidates don’t get approached multiple times for the same role

• Receive better quality candidates for the role, as we’re not simply in a race to find the best people, which is often detrimental to the thoroughness and quality of a search

• More cost effective than a non-exclusive solution

Key features:

• More cost-effective end-to-end solutions, compared to bigger consultancies, because we have direct access to the talent

• Our pool of trusted advisors, Delivery Assurance Directors (DADs), ensure every part of your project is optimised to ensure success

• Dedicated project delivery team

• On-going administration and compliance management

• Regular progress review meetings

• Project off-boarding and IP transfer

Why you’ll love it:

• Direct access to the best talent in the market, built up over 20 years

• Average savings of 36% against leading consultancies

• A completely personalised solution for your unique needs

• A scalable solution that's swift to implement, so you can ramp up and down quickly

• Guaranteed knowledge transfers to you can maintain BAU

• On-site dedicated service and programme management led by industry-leading specialists (DADs)

By taking the time to understand your unique company culture, ambitions and needs we can ensure that we can find the best talent for your business. We use innovative, customised search methods and off-grid insights, to build engaged candidate pools, establishing long-term relationships. Our approach to recruitment also helps protect and enhance your brand, as we go to market as your ambassador, promoting you as the employer of choice.

Key features:

• Full brief to understand your requirements

• Using our market leading CRM and search tools across multiple platforms, we tailor our packages to suit our clients and reach talent that other agencies cannot

• Experienced delivery teams and a dedicated account manager to provide a single point of contact

• Regular review meetings ensuring two-way communication

Why you’ll love it:

• We take a consulting approach to ensure we are attracting the right talent and you are not missing out to competitors

• Access to best-in-class talent – not just those who are actively looking

• One point of contact for your talent needs – no need to use different agencies for different levels or roles

• We’ll share our unique insights and market trends to shape your talent strategy

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The challenge:

Our client, a UK-based global investment company, was in a highly competitive market, however, their recruitment process was very lengthy compared to much of their competition. As a result, they struggled to get the best people available on the market into the business quick enough. They were also Investments-focused yet found it difficult to attract local talent with the specialist skillsets they were looking for. They needed a specialist recruitment partner that understood Business Change & IT. With our established networks in business change, specifically with candidates with Life & Pensions experience, Hydrogen was chosen to help support their recruitment needs.

Our solution:

We delivered contractors into their Change & IT space including full project teams - Project Managers, Business Analysts, Project SME’s and PMO support, design teams and IT specialists. Our client sold off its Life & Pensions part of the business to one of the largest L&P consolidators and we provided a team of contractors to work on the separation project and will continue to supply the resource needed on this project for the next two years.

The outcome:

• Full project team delivered on time and on budget

• The client moved to an MSP at the start of 2019 – Hydrogen are now the top supplier out of the Preferred Supplier List of 8 agencies

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The challenge:

Our client, one of the largest UK banks, needed to bring in more information security professionals to their projects team due to a higher workload in digital. On top of this, the bank had been frequently promoting its staff into higher roles and needed to backfill a number of key positions.

The bank was struggling to find an agency that had a good grasp of technology and understanding of the requirements within information security. This area needed an agency with the right expertise and good network of candidates that they can continuously re-visit.

Our solution:

We brought our technical capabilities and really listened to what the bank needed. We sent over suitable, highly recommended candidates who we met with in person to qualify they were committed and right for the positions.

We dealt with the information security projects team who typically have around 10-15 members of staff and dealt directly with the information security manager to ensure a smooth recruitment process throughout.

The outcome:

• We placed 3 information security analysts and 3 senior information security consultants into this team

• For a whole year, we had a 100% success record on all roles, despite getting the vacancies one week after their PSL

• We’ve built very strong relationships with the HR department and other hiring managers, particularly within business change and technology where we were the top suppliers of permanent staff in 2018 despite not being on the PSL

• When one of our candidates interviewed for a permanent role and they decided to take him on a contract, the business agreed to sign us up as contract suppliers and we are now in their top 5 suppliers for contract recruitment (out of 30+)

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The challenge:

Our client, a British Retail & Commercial Bank, which was going through a divestment programme and had to transform 25% of the branch network – former building society locations. As well as a major IT system change, this required training and communication to over 1,000 colleagues – designed and built in just three months with rollout in a further three months.

Our solution:

We deployed a team led by a Programme Manager, as well as five Workstream Leads, 10 Business Analysts and SMEs and three Project Management Specialists.

As part of the roll-out, branch staff needed to undertake a complex set of branch close-down and re-open procedures which they had never undertaken before. In order to achieve the timescales, 97% of this needed to be done remotely with only phone support.

Our team developed a 65-page user-centric guide to take the branch colleagues through the steps they would need to carry out, with common troubleshooting pitfalls and what to do in the event of issues. Every lesson learned was iteratively applied to the document so that issues raised were reduced to almost zero by the fifth week of the 12-week rollout.

The outcome:

• The executive team were absolutely delighted with the quality, speed, and manner of delivery

• Collective previous experience was aggregated to allow enhancement to implementation processes leading to exemplar outcomes

• Over 1,000 staff were trained on the new systems and process, plus over 400 accredited to sell current account and consumer lending products

• The overall project was delivered in six months, three months of scoping and design followed by branch rollout in just three months

• Delivered a legacy without dependency by embedding the newly developed processes into the divesting business

• The project delivered for £5.8 against an original forecast of £6m – that’s on time and under budget

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