Maxwell Stephens and Stewart Investors
Background
Maxwell Stephens were approached by Stewart Investors to support the recruitment of a Property Manager to be based in their Edinburgh Head Office.
Stewart Investors is a division of First State Investments which forms part of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Group. Formerly known as First State Stewart, Stewart Investors manages assets on behalf of institutional clients and individual investors in Asia Pacific, Emerging Markets, Worldwide and Sustainable strategies.
The Position
The overall purpose of this position was to create and maintain a pleasant work environment, with a focus on ensuring high levels of organisational effectiveness, communication and safety.
The successful candidate would be the point of contact for Team Assistants with Office Management responsibilities in the London, Singapore and Sydney satellite offices. The postholder would have to ensure that each location operated in line with Commonwealth Bank of Australia Standards of best practice and were compliant with all local Health and Safety, Government and corporate regulations.
This varied and extensive role incorporated a wide range of duties and responsibilities which included but were not limited to:
– Managing and maintaining physical building security
– Managing building and premises lease negotiations
– Working closely with IT infrastructure teams to co-ordinate office desk moves and refurbishment
– Management of planned maintenance of all mechanical and electrical assets
– Providing data, reporting and analysis related to the office environments
– Managing department budget, cost and budget analysis, expenses and authorizing invoices/payments.
The Candidate
There were a variety of key attributes that Stewart Investors were looking for in their ideal candidate. A fundamental requirement was finding someone who was a self-starter and could take ownership of the role from the outset. Having the ability to thrive in the flat management structure, Stewart Investors needed someone who could take the initiative and work independently to fulfil the requirements of the organisation.
Other important characteristics of their ideal candidate included the ability to communicate in an effective and friendly manner to everyone they dealt with. With proven project management abilities, they would be required to apply their exceptional organisational skills to work simultaneously on a range of varied projects. Being able to effectively manage teams and individuals was also a vital aspect of the position. Due to the dynamic nature of the organisation, being adaptable was a necessity for the ideal candidate. They would need to be comfortable taking a flexible approach to changing workload and working hours to suit the needs of the organisation.
The Results
Following the initial approach from Stewart Investors, we arranged to meet the key stakeholders and tour the main office in order to gain a thorough understanding of the organisation, it’s ethos and the corporate culture.
Preliminary phone interviews and meetings were carried out with suitable candidates. resulting in a shortlist of six people being submitted to the client, all of which were invited for first round interviews.
Of these six, three candidates were invited for a further second round of interviews. One final informal meeting was then arrange with one of the candidates which resulted in them filling the position.
Exceptionally helpful throughout the whole process…
We needed to replace our Office Manager of 17 years recently and found the team at Maxwell Stephens exceptionally helpful throughout the whole process. We were novices in conducting this sort of search so the team at Maxwell Stephens spent a good period of time with us before looking for candidates to ensure that they had fully captured our requirements and, most importantly, the particular culture of our organisation. The shortlist of candidates that were presented to us were excellent and we actually struggled to narrow down those we wished to interview. I would not hesitate to recommend them in this specialist area.
