Exciting New Role Within Ambitious Retail Business – Case Study

As an established and market leading clothing brand with stores across all corners of the UK, our client was keen to capitalise their current trajectory for growth.

Following the completion of our previous project with this business, where we successfully explored the outlook of the international market to support their future international expansion plans, they recognised a range of roles within the organisation of which they would be looking to begin recruiting for. One of these would be a Chief Information Officer (CIO) – representing a new role for the business.

For our client, it was understandably quite a daunting task to proceed with any recruitment plans without any background knowledge of the talent pool and therefore they engaged with Cogito, who would support them in understanding the needs of these professionals to ensure that their proposition was an enticing one. This process would also go some way in helping our client benchmark this role to support future recruitment.

Research Process

Our research started with a comprehensive search of the professionals who had the profile which was closely aligned to the required skillset for this role.

At the conclusion of these searches, we were able to identify a total of 391 individuals who we recognised to have the necessary experience to be potentially suitable for consideration for this opportunity. We approached each of these candidates, conducting in-depth telephone interviews with each to gain information on their current working situation, skills and expectations if they were to consider a new role. Something that our client was particularly interested in was understanding what the experience these professionals have in sitting upon management boards, and if this responsibility was important for these professionals in a future position – our telephone interviews were able to investigate this.

It was also key for our client to understand what responsibilities were involved in their role. Of course, professionals of this level are likely to have different levels of expertise, however it was important for our client to understand the standard responsibilities and skills that are involved with this position. This would go some way in enabling the business to establish some form of benchmark, thus allowing them to be transparent in their future salary and benefits offerings.

As this CIO position would be a new role for the business, it was also important for our client to have a snapshot of the organisational structure of other businesses who hire these professionals in order to understand where these professionals typically sit within their organisation. For this reason, our research also found who these professionals typically report into, as well as how many reports they usually have.

In addition, our client was interested in understanding the remuneration structure of CIO professionals within their respective organisations, our research was able to establish:

• Average Actual/Desired Salary
• Typical Pay Structure
• Distribution of Salaries for CIO professionals
• Company benefits
• Average annual bonus
• Average car allowance
• Type of health cover received

Results

At the conclusion of our extensive telephone interview process, we were able to present our findings to our client via our sophisticated data insights platform. This was then utilised in a presentation to senior stakeholders within the business, tailoring our content accordingly to their needs. We were also able to present 19 clients who we recognised as suitable for immediate consideration.

Our research has provided our client with insights into the requirements of CIO professionals within the UK, helping the business recognise what they would need to offer in order to attract the desired level of professionals. This project has been a fundamental stage in our client’s initial recruitment phase and allows them to proceed with further recruitment with the confidence that they understand the CIO talent pool.