Wickland Westcott

Director of Finance

Wickland Westcott was retained in January 2010 to recruit a new Director of Finance for the University of Manchester, the largest in the UK with 2008/9 turnover of £750m, 11,500 employees and over 35,000 students With an operating budget of £4.5m and responsibility for over 100 staff, the Director is one of the University's most senior executives and a member of the President's Executive Group.

The vacancy had arisen at a critical time: it was clear that funding available to the Further Education sector would be reduced as part of measures taken to address problems facing the UK economy generally; at the same time, Manchester was pursuing an ambitious agenda, aiming to be one of the top Universities in the world by 2015. Hence the brief entailed a clear commercial focus; someone who would lead on promoting innovation and a client-based approach as well as an ethos of professional excellence. Following detailed consultation with the Registrar and senior Board members, we produced a specification which reflected the critical positioning of the post and the particular challenges and opportunities facing the new Director.

As the successful candidates would require commercial skills allied to an appreciation of the university context, this enabled us to be creative in our approach to sourcing, targeting candidates who were fully equipped to meet the challenges of transformational change and cost reduction. We placed advertisements in national media and on-line, conducted a targeted search campaign and carried out initial interviews. Shortlisted candidates undertook psychometric assessment and two independent references were taken on each. They were also invited to meet with the Finance team and Registrar prior to final interviews and Wickland Westcott supported the Board panel in the final interview process by providing structured reports on each candidate. The job was offered to an excellent candidate with a background in manufacturing and engineering, who had served as a non-executive director in the NHS.

Karen Heaton, Director of HR, was pleased with the high quality of service provided by Wickland Westcott, commenting particularly on the feedback from candidates, who felt they had been treated with respect and genuine understanding by the consultants.