Rigorous, experienced, helpful: better.
Until you’ve worked with us, it can be hard to put your finger on what makes our approach so different from others in our sector.
Here, we take you ‘under the bonnet’ of how we do things, and you can also hear from those who know us well – both clients and candidates – and find out why they keep coming back.
It’s important to every one of us that the team is rooted in shared values – and that those values have concrete meaning and visibility in the workplace. Faerfield’s values are:
- Fair – in everything we do
- Accountable – to each other and those we work with
- Enterprising – bringing new ideas, pace and energy
- Responsive– to changing needs and contexts
Our commitment to living our values is supported by our Faer Chance team – a group of colleagues who reflect the diversity of our company and identify and promote initiatives to ensure everyone we work with from candidates to suppliers are treated equally, with respect and fairness.
We work with publicly funded organisations and firmly believe that good leadership plays a crucial role in successful service delivery to communities.
Our social values also demand that we take responsibility to do what we can to support the organisations, communities and individuals that we, and our clients, work with. We do this in a number of ways:
Removing barriers
Our approach is carefully designed to help reduce unconscious bias, creating a level ‘playing field’ for all talent. We are committed to expanding and developing leadership talent by looking beyond the obvious, finding those with potential as well as experience. We are proud of our status as a Disability Confident Employer and our commitment to ensure that those we work with and for who have a disability are supported and applicants given the opportunity to discuss any reasonable adjustments needed during a recruitment process.
Pro bono programme
Our people are committed to undertake pro bono work that matches their skills and expertise with the needs of their communities, enabling us to play a direct role in making a positive difference. Faerfield are committed to providing a number of paid days a year to enable them to do so.
Thought leadership and insights
We create insights and commentary on leadership effectiveness and share these with candidates and our clients. We also invest in ground-breaking debate through our annual Faerfield Lecture, helping to explore and stimulate ideas on some of the thorniest issues facing the public sector. You can explore some recent posts below.
Social Inclusion and Community Impact
We’re committed to creating a positive footprint in our region and our local economy. Our commitment to apprenticeships has created a permanent career opportunity. We embrace young people with a range of lived experience, enriching our workforce and promoting diversity; and we have built close supplier relationships with SMEs that share our belief in social inclusion.
At the end of every assignment , we ask for views on how we performed across a range of measures. For every completed survey, we make a £25 donation to a charity of our client’s choice. All successful candidates receive a similar survey, and on completion we make a £25 donation to the National Trust – under their tree-planting scheme, this could plant up to 5 trees, or plant and protect an established orchard tree. Since the start of our charitable giving programme, we have:
- Planted the equivalent of over 300 trees through the National Trust
- Given over £3,000 in donations to charitable organisations in the UK
Here are just some of the charities who we have donated to in the past 12 months:
We have also taken part in other fundraising events for charity, such as the Public Sector Challenge in 2025, which raised money for Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation.
"Our experience with Faerfield was excellent, end to end. It felt far more personalised with serious market insight and attention to detail than we have had from other agencies of late."
Tom Stannard, CEO
Manchester City Council
(testimonial given while Tom was at Salford City Council)
"As an HR professional sitting on the ‘other side’ as a candidate, you arrive with some high expectations. It's fair to say that Faerfield exceeded mine. For me, what set them apart from other experiences was the human face, sense of humour and the brilliant insights and information they gave me, which meant I could just focus on getting the role! Sitting on the other side, that experience is replicated as a customer, which means that I see well prepared candidates who understand what joining Buckinghamshire offers."
Sarah Keyes, HR Director
Buckinghamshire Council
"Faerfield’s approach was nuanced, they were very supportive and had expert knowledge of the local context."
Carolyn Fair, Director of Children’s Services
East Sussex County Council
"The Faerfield team was a great help from start to finish, I very much appreciated their timely communication. They took time out to get to know me which enabled them to provide advice which was of great value to me. Coming from the private sector into Local Authority, they clearly explained the selection process and provided a good insight into the culture at Sheffield City Council."
Assistant Director
Sheffield City Council
"The Faerfield team were outstandingly supportive - quite honestly the best candidate experience I have ever had."
Lisa-Marie Williams, Director of Law & Governance
Buckinghamshire Council
"Excellent, high quality professional and personal service from Dawn and colleagues at Faerfield. Super-responsive at all times. Worked well alongside our own HR support to orchestrate a seamless process that took a lot of the strain out of the recruitment exercise."
Gareth Beer, Head of Economy and Place
Torfaen CB Council
"We had really positive experience, for us as the employer, and also from the candidate experience. We have received excellent feedback from candidates throughout the process."
Catherine Hignett-Jones, Resourcing & Talent Lead
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority
Supporting local government reorganisation with pace and precision
The Challenge
Somerset Council is a new unitary council, formed from one County Council and four District Councils and effective from 01 April 2023. As part of the LGR process, Faerfield were engaged to begin the search for the vitally important first role, that of the new Chief Executive, whose responsibility it would be to design and develop a new team, built from the staff of five councils, to deliver the ambitious unitary objectives. As a strategic recruitment partner, we then needed to co create a phased recruitment campaign to build further leadership capacity in the new structure.
The Solution
We took the initial brief from an enthusiastic and unified group of elected members representing all five councils and working with them and HR colleagues from the continuing authority, Somerset County Council, Faerfield crafted a bespoke recruitment campaign. This included a Preliminary Interview stage involving an independent technical expert who had experience of the unitary process and a rigorous Assessment Centre that ran from an independent location (not a Council office) over a couple of days. Candidates met with and, in some instances presented to, a range of stakeholders including partners, staff and elected members, had 1:1 sessions with the Leader and Deputy Leader, undertook executive profiling and all of this culminating in a thorough formal interview with elected members who made up the Appointments Committee. The successful candidate, a serving Chief Executive from a unitary authority in the South-East of England, brought both the leadership expertise and insight needed to take the authority forward.
Building Capacity
The next phase, in January 2023, involved recruiting four Executive Directors, which started with a salary evaluation exercise, a subsequent role matching process and led to a refresh of the campaign approach, since no matches were found. Internal candidates were asked to apply, with their application documents required to address the person specification essential, and ideally desirable, criteria. There was no technical interview stage as candidates’ skill sets were known. A shortlist meeting to discuss applications, led to a thorough Assessment Centre conducted over two days. All roles were successfully appointed to.
The third and in some ways the most complex phase was the recruitment of sixteen (16) Service Directors across various disciplines. The role matching process was successful for a couple of roles however, fourteen (14) vacancies remained. Internal candidates were asked to apply, with their application documents required to address the person specification essential, and ideally desirable, criteria. There was no technical interview stage as candidates’ skill sets were known. A shortlist meeting to discuss applications, led to a thorough Assessment Centre conducted over two days, this time at Council Offices. Appointments were made to all roles.
Added Value
As a trusted recruitment partner able to provide a wide range of expertise and flexible approach Faerfield also assisted with the co-ordination of the interviews for the matched roles and a subsequent vacancy for a Children’s Services position that emerged from the recruitment activity.
Bringing Diverse Leadership
The Challenge
Children’s services in Coventry have been classified as ‘Good’, but the City Council had ambitions to be ‘Outstanding’ and wanted an outstanding individual to lead the service and take it to that next level. Coventry had a strong political commitment to children’s services across the whole council and significant investment had been made as a result. Good partnership arrangements had led to effective joint working relationships, with key stakeholders internally and externally and this needed to be continued and enhanced. Critically, it was important that the new leadership of the service would be committed to ensuring the voice of the child was heard at every level and this included meaningful participation in developing future policies affecting children.
The Solution
Faerfield co-created an imaginative and eye-catching recruitment campaign supported by a rigorous search utilising our extensive networks in this space. This enabled us to identify and access candidates with either a social work or education background, an extensive and nuanced knowledge across both disciplines, with a track record of delivery, an inspiring leadership style, strong professional credibility and networks.
The outcome
A total of 18 candidates were generated for the role of whom:
- 6 were serving Directors of local authorities, 4 were Assistant Directors and 1 was a serving Head of Service
- 12 were women
- 5 brought additional leadership diversity.
A highly diverse shortlist of 3 candidates were shortlisted. The successful candidate, a serving Director from a large county council, had previously worked in two London boroughs in leadership positions and brought a rich and diverse understanding of operating in different demographic settings.
Added Value
In addition to an excellent appointment the breadth of the search and the candidate response brought a high level of awareness of the successes of the City Council and its ambitions for Children’s services enhancing the organisation's brand.
“This was a phenomenal response to our vacancy – quite unexpected. The process ran very smoothly and we were guided every step of the way. I had lots of opportunity to engage with candidates throughout which helped the process. Some tricky issues with candidate diaries however, with Faerfield’s advice and guidance, our stakeholders and members were flexible in their approach to ensure we kept as many candidates in the process to final interview. It was triumph! Thanks Faerfield.”
Julie Nugent
Chief Executive, Coventry City Council
The critical importance of finding the right leadership model to fit the context
The Challenge
Faerfield had the privilege of supporting Liverpool City Council to appoint a new Chief Executive. We were commissioned because of our 20-year combined experience supporting local authorities hire chief executives in a diverse range of organisational settings from new start up unitary authorities to supporting established local authorities to deliver transformational change. We were engaged at a challenging time for the city. Commissioners had been appointed by the Government and the council had decided to move away from the directly elected mayor model to Leader and cabinet.
We had to help craft a proposition and recruitment strategy that was respectful of the outgoing mayor and helped to position the new (but yet to be elected) incoming Leader as spearheading the renaissance of the organisation after a turbulent period.
The Solution
We created a rigorous and transparent recruitment process with an appealing creative advertising campaign that could be used by the Council for future recruitment campaigns ensuring consistency of messaging and positioning. There was significant public interest and scrutiny, and we needed to keep both Commissioners and Councillors appraised of progress, alongside the council’s HR team.
We used our experience and expertise to create a credible field, that understood and were excited by the challenge ensuring our conversations with potential candidates were balanced, nuanced and appropriately persuasive.
The Outcome
The result was a short list of two outstanding, serving chief executives and the members (and indeed officers and wider city stakeholders) have been delighted with the work that the appointed candidate has done since then.
Added Value
In delivering the recruitment campaign for the CEO we were able to utilise the insight and relationship gained working with Commissioners and members to design and deliver subsequent recruitment strategies for other executive team members.
Successfully transitioning private sector leadership expertise into the public sector
The Challenge
Liverpool City region in line with the other mature strategic authorities was looking to continue its objective to create a world class integrated transport system having received further devolution of powers and £1billion from Government to invest in the regions transport and infrastructure.
Because of its track record in successfully transitioning private sector expertise into the public sector Faerfield’s Enterprise team was commissioned to support a specialist recruitment campaign designed to bring in a team of private sector leaders to expedite progress in developing the regions transport network.
The campaign coincided with the start of a new Mayoral term, and a new Corporate Plan where the Combined Authority and its partners had set ambitious objectives for the next four years, across five priority areas: Economy, People, Place, Transport, and Digital Infrastructure. There was therefore a pressing need to operate with rigour and pace to deliver the new team.
The Solution
The Faerfield team worked closely with the client to develop a flexible recruitment campaign designed to bring candidates forward for consideration at the earliest opportunity whilst still maintaining the rigour and transparency of a traditional public sector process. They added value in helping define the roles based on their experience of supporting other Combined Authorities and government agencies looking for a similar range of skills and utilised a transport industry expert to contribute to the mapping of potential candidates for the roles.
Critical to success was developing an attractive campaign and proposition, positioning the four leadership roles in franchising, network development, network performance and sponsorship and growth as opportunities to create a real legacy, operate at scale and within a commercial as well public sector context. We also tested the motivation of candidates and provided transition support which enabled us to attract candidates who otherwise may not have considered the roles primarily because of salary constraints.
The Outcome
The recruitment campaign delivered a diverse field of candidates for each of the four roles. Their backgrounds in terms of domain knowledge, sector experience, lived experience and gender gave the client the balance and capability they were looking for in the new team.
Added Value
With so many interdependencies between the roles we utilised our experience and expertise to support the client in deciding the best team fit in terms of the emerging candidate options and to support candidates from outside the sector to navigate recruitment processes they were unfamiliar with. This resulted in a strong and diverse team who fully understood how they could add value to the organisation and their colleagues.
Bringing private sector expertise onto the Board
The Challenge
The Cornwall FLOW Commission (CFC) is a newly established independent expert body, supported by Celtic Sea Power Ltd and Cornwall County Council. The purpose of the new organisation is to support the region in contributing to the delivery of the UK’s targets for renewable generation by examining options to streamline and accelerate the development processes, minimise Floating Offshore Wind’s (FLOW) cumulative marine ecological impact, and maximise the regional economic development and jobs creation.
Faerfield was commissioned to support the recruitment of a Chair for the Commission who would have the industry expertise, board level experience and convening skills that would enable them to broker consensus among a complex range of stakeholders and investors. They would also need the insight and presence to make telling interventions and unblock obstacles to progress in realising the potential of offshore wind in the English Celtic Waters.
The Solution
The Faerfield team was led by a senior partner with significant Board level recruitment experience and private sector networks. They supported the client in developing a role profile and proposition that would attract high calibre individuals from the energy and infrastructure sectors who had the experience and relationship management capability to lead a diverse Board. We used our considerable networks to source and target individuals who met the requirements of the brief. A key consideration was to bring greater diversity to the Board and to design a recruitment process that was both rigorous and expedient enabling the successful candidate to attend the inaugural meeting of the Board within weeks of being appointed.
The Outcome
A highly focussed search brought three outstanding female candidates who were interviewed and vetted prior to being interviewed by and appointments panel. Each candidate brought deep industry expertise and board level experience with a track record of convening industry and public sector interests. All three were considered appointable with the successful candidate bringing a wealth of experience as a Chair of national agencies.
Added Value
As a result of the calibre of the two unsuccessful candidates the Commission subsequently appointed them as Commissioners.