Legal recruitment services – Head of Legal for Karbon Homes

Overview 

Karbon Homes is a large Housing Association covering the North East of England and Yorkshire regions. They are on a program for accelerated growth and have made recent acquisitions to support this. Sellick Partnership have provided recruitment services on a temporary and permanent basis to Karbon Homes since 2016. 

Following successful tender in September 2021 we were ranked 1st place supplier across all ten lots including Administration, Contact Centre, Trades, IT, Finance, HR, Asset Management, Housing Services, Development, Professional Services.  

About the Head of Legal vacancy

 In March 2024 we were engaged exclusively to recruit a permanent Head of Legal Services following a restructure. An extremely niche requirement, Karbon were looking for a candidate with:

• Social housing experience.
• Strategic aptitude, with the ability to provide legal advice to the board and leadership team.
• Technically sound legal skills, as the role was a standalone position with no supporting legal team.
• Wide-ranging specialist knowledge including commercial contracts, property, litigation and development.

Managing the campaign

The campaign was managed by India Langman, Senior Consultant. India specialises in legal recruitment across the public sector within the North East. She is part of a successful team of legal specialists who are market leaders in their field, as such they have an extensive network of legal candidates developed over the last 20 years. India is a trusted recruitment advisor within her market and was well-placed to source this niche requirement.

Approach

Following a comprehensive job briefing with the Executive Director of Governance and Integration, India undertook a multi-faceted sourcing strategy to generate a broad longlist of candidates for review. The sourcing strategy included:

• Adverts posted across a range of job boards including Totally Legal, Law Society Gazette and Public Law to target candidates with the relevant experience and qualifications. 
• Comprehensive searching of our existing database and talent pools.
• Proactive headhunting across our network of senior contacts, as well as market mapping local social housing providers to make direct approaches to potential candidates. 
• LinkedIn Recruiter searches and approaches to candidates open to opportunities. 
• Proactive showcasing of the opportunity across our networks asking for referrals and recommendations. 

Outcome

In just one week, India longlisted 12 candidates for interview with Sellick Partnership before reducing this to a final shortlist of 9 candidates for submittal to the hiring manager. 5 candidates progressed to final interview with Karbon followed by successful offer and acceptance. The successful candidate was generated through market mapping and direct headhunting within our existing networks.

Testimonial

‘“We engaged Sellick Partnership to support us with the appointment of a Head of Legal Services. India Langman worked with us on this assignment and was able to source, within a potentially challenging marketplace, a range of high quality and strongly motivated candidates, over a short timescale. This led to a successful appointment. India provided effective support to the candidates at all stages of the recruitment exercise. I’m therefore very happy to recommend India and Sellick Partnership.” 

Richard Fryer, Executive Director - Governance and Integration, Karbon Homes