Vanessa Strong, Company Director, founded BAA in 2009, having worked in Commercial and Recruitment senior management positions within a range of sectors.
Vanessa identified the need for a bespoke recruitment process in Nairobi that offered genuine understanding of both the client’s and candidates needs to ensure that personalities and skill sets matched perfectly her personal touch and in-depth knowledge of clients and candidates is maintained.
Vanessa is third generation born in Kenya, schooled in the UK and has worked in Kenya for the last 30 years giving her in-depth knowledge of the East African market and its trends.
Vanessa Strong
Email: ness@byappointmentafrica.com
Mobile: +254(0)722570740
Launched in 2009 with a boutique mindset to niche into our market and create a value added recruitment consultancy service with a focus on quality service delivery.
Retained search focusing on mid to C suite placements.
When starting work with a new client, there is a lot of groundwork that happens at inception, details that are crucial to get right at this stage and requires a very strong collaboration and partnership with the you.
The culture fit of the candidates we search for is as important as the technical fit. The first step therefore is to hold a deep exploratory meeting with you, preferably in your offices and if not by video call, to meet the key personnel who will be working with the incumbent. During this meeting we ask a host of questions not only about the position, but about your company’s history, mission, purpose, culture and vision.
Together, we fill out a confidential employer form, which is not for public circulation. It is our ‘go to’ document which we use to market map our search. The more detail we have, the more laser focused our search is.
We then create a full search strategy, role definition and candidate profile that will be agreed by both parties and signed off by yourselves. In preparing this we would speak with all key participants as advised to us by you that you feel to be appropriate as part of this process.
Dedicated research and resourcing to identify primary and secondary target companies and individuals within those who we would then approach and speak with to establish interest through our own website promotion and other forums such as Linked In and targeted networks to attract potential ‘industry’ candidates not already known to us (unless confidentiality is required, in which case, an executive search would be conducted).
We have an extensive, very strong talent pipeline in mid to C suite management on our database across a wide variety of sectors, built up since 2009. We have built strong relationships with our candidates, as we believe that the candidate experience is as important as the client experience.
We invest substantial funds into an international testing system which is a bespoke model tailored to the role. We send the role profile to our testing company based in the USA and explain the details of the role as well as the type of culture fit that we are looking for. Our candidates will be put through assessments, which are always different for every role.
Common assessments for all candidates are the CCAT test (cognitive ability in line with the role) and EPP (Employee Personality Profile) which measures working traits, strengths, weaknesses and of course, leadership.
The assessments must be taken prior to physical interview with ourselves as we use the results to ask deeper questions. Together with our CBI scoring, and our deep multi staged process, our placement success rate stands at 100%.
There would be a phase of preliminary face to face interviews conducted by ourselves (in person or video as necessary)
Qualified candidates would be invited to prepare key Competency Summary information and this would be used by ourselves and submitted as part of our shortlist submission information.
Presentation of a final ‘shortlist’ of selected candidates, which will ideally include three of four maximum.
We would look to present the shortlist at between 15-21 days from your confirmed instruction to commence the assignment, although if we identify strong candidates sooner, we will notify you and potentially look at ‘benchmarking’ candidates earlier in the process.
We will present the candidates to you with a full report and our summary of recommendation. Once you have made your selection, we will arrange physical interviews with yourselves.
We are able to assist with formal referencing also, and we have our own process for this, although you may prefer to use your own in-house process. In addition, we will submit the results of all Cognitive and EPP tests in relation to the position at no extra cost to you.
We are on hand to assist with contract negotiation should you require this service and will keep in touch with you and the successful candidate for the guarantee period of 6 months to monitor progress.
You will find our detailed process map for your review. It is important to note that we work together in partnership with you, our client, to ensure all details are covered and timelines are adhered to.
Our recruitment process is flexible but our methods are thorough and robust.
We work on an exclusive basis.