About Procurement Heads

Who are Procurement Heads?

Procurement Heads was founded in 2012, in response to what I felt was a gap in the market at the time, and that was all about genuine consultancy within the sector that offered its network genuine thought leadership.

Every organisation talks about relationships and I wanted to think about relationships in a different way.

A relationship is ultimately about two parties giving each other something that they didn’t have before and so much of what I had seen was just about recruiters wanting to work with clients to fill jobs.

And that is really the antithesis of everything we wanted to create at Procurement Heads. We wanted to create a genuine consultancy, our motto now is ‘Recruitment as a professional service’ and that is very much trying to think like a professional service consulting organisation, offering rich content to our clients, adding value to their searches and making a real difference in their lives.

What are the advantages of using a Procurement recruitment agency?

The advantages of using a recruitment agency, specifically one that is specialist and focused on Procurement, are considerable.

But first and foremost, just to use a recruitment agency, we can take a lot of the heavy lifting off your hands.

That might be CV shortlisting, it might be advertising, it might be using our considerable network of candidates at your disposal.

Our network, we have been going now for 10 years at Procurement Heads, so if you are looking for people who have specialist skills in this area, it is likely that we will know them, or we will know people that know them.

But, more importantly, we will deploy a methodology that is tried and tested in attracting the very best talent in the market.

Could you tell us a bit about how the team is made up and where you work geographically?

The pandemic gave us a great opportunity to consider what to do with the business and, to use a much over-used phrase at the time, to pivot our model.

Digital technology came to the forefront and really enabled organisations like Procurement Heads to grow at pace.

Essentially what we have done is created a practice model within the business.

Essentially that is 5 practices with a number of sectors within them essentially. So, we have created a Financial and Professional Services practice headed by James Dobbin.

We have created a Consumer practice headed by Sagar Bhardwaj, we have our Interim Practice which is led by Jack Birch and David Hazeldine, we have an Industrial practice led by Dan Goodson and also we cover both the public sector and pharmaceutical and life sciences areas.

So the benefit to our customers that is not only do we have this developed network but we also now have specialisms within various sectors and sub-sectors of the market to deploy.

What is the suite of products that you offer?

So, we will offer all of the traditional recruitment services you would expect from a recruiter., both contingent recruitment through to retained search essentially.

Whether that is looking at our 7,500-strong database, or our wider network on LinkedIn of nearly 60,000 followers, through to some of the products that we have now been deploying to clients for well over two years, which are our Head to Head podcast, our Big Interview series, our CPO spotlight and our Future Heads series.

All of which we use for the advantage of our customers to open networks and talent pools that wouldn’t normally be available to them.

What does the future of Procurement look like, and what are some of the challenges?

I spend a huge amount of my time with procurement leaders and I think the three things that I hear time and time again are; 1. Sustainability, 2. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and 3.

The rush to digitalise.

We spend an awful lot of time cultivating both content but also running events that focus on these subjects, we want to really champion those.

One of the things that is key to procurement and one of its internal pillars is diversity in particular.

We have signed up to things like, Change the Race Ratio; something that we believe really passionately in.

We work with local CIPS branches to help school leavers and people in higher education to understand whether the Procurement profession is for them and what might be available to them by way of future career paths. All of that out into the melting pot that is recruitment gives our clients a competitive advantage.

What advice would you give somebody looking to recruit a specialist recruitment role?

My advice when looking to recruit a specialist procurement role would be that you partner with someone to do that.

That you partner with a specialist procurement recruitment organisation but more importantly that you do something different.

The market is very saturated in the UK, there are lots of people selling broadly the same thing, what you want is for your voice to be heard.

When you are thinking about selecting a partner, you want to ask about their network, case studies and other organisations that they might have supported and the outcomes of those situations.

That is really critical.

At Procurement Heads, we have a suite of products that we believe are not only unique but market-leading and help the organisations that we support gain significant traction and competitive advantage.

If people want to get in touch, how can they do that?

If you are looking to recruit your next Procurement role please contact either me or send us an email info@procurementheads.com or reach out to any of the heads of practice who will be delighted to have a no-obligation conversation with you about that. We very much believe in advice without obligation.

If you are a job seeker or candidate and are wanted to approach the market, please reach out to us, send us your CV or call our number 01962 869838.