Young Roots Case Study

The Challenge:

Young Roots works with young refugees supporting them to improve their wellbeing and fulfil their potential, through intensive one-to-one casework, youth and sporting activities, English language mentoring, youth leadership and access to expert therapeutic and legal advice. As a small but complex charitable organisation, they created a new finance role after identifying that the team required a more senior leadership post. This Head of Finance and Internal Operations would act as the go-to person for all strategic and operational functions of finance and work closely with the Executive team on its longer-term business goals. This role would also hold responsibility over HR, IT and Premises.

The Solution:

The Charity Team at Altum Consulting offered to work as a partner with Young Roots after their direct approach had failed to yield the quality of candidates suitable for the role. Given Altum’s speciality in not-for-profit finance recruitment, we were well placed to source candidates who had relevant experience from within the sector, as well as an understanding and desire to work in a more ‘hands-on’ role. Upon engagement, Young Roots provided a full briefing enabling the team to develop a thorough understanding of the role. From this, a robust advertising campaign was delivered with transparency around the complexities of this role and consequently attracting high quality candidates who understood the requirements. The candidates were screened and interviewed before the team presented the profiles to Young Roots with CVs and a summary of the individual’s key qualities and attributes.

The Result:

The processes resulted in 2 candidates being taken forward to final stage interviews. The preferred candidate accepted the position and has been thriving in her role. Due to the strong relationships that Altum had with both Young Roots and the candidate and its understanding of and network within charity finance, they were able to match both parties’ professional and personal qualities, resulting in a strong appointment to a business-critical position.

 It was a pleasure to work with Imogen who was helpful and collaborative throughout the recruitment process. She was keen to understand Young Roots, and what we needed in this important role for us. We are delighted with our new member of the team, and Imogen has kept in touch and had a genuine interest in the development of our work.

Jo Cobley, Chief Executive, Young Roots