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 for recruitment 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 our Legal Public Sector recruitment team, who specialise in temporary, interim and locum legal appointments across public sector organisations in the East of England. The team are recognised as market leaders in their field and are supported by an extensive network of legal professionals built over the last 20 years. As trusted recruitment advisors within the public sector legal market, they were well-placed to successfully deliver this specialist requirement. The team is led by Sara Robinson, who has eight years’ experience in public sector legal recruitment. 

Approach

Following a comprehensive job briefing with the Executive Director of Governance and Integration, the team 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, the team 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. The team 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. They have provided effective support to the candidates at all stages of the recruitment exercise. I’m therefore very happy to recommend the team and Sellick Partnership.” 

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