Delivering a targeted talent campaign for GHD's Design Engineer requirements
GHD is a global professional services company specialising in engineering, architecture, environmental, and construction solutions. With a strong focus on innovation, GHD delivers expertise across the water, energy, environment, property & buildings, and transportation sectors worldwide. Matchtech have partnered exclusively with GHD for almost four years delivering their temporary and permanent Design Engineer, Project Management, Computer Aided Design and Leadership requirements.
GHD's situation & challenges
With successful water frameworks in Australia and England, GHD sought to expand their presence within the UK market. However, in a skill-short market and with little existing presence in the UK, they struggled to source Design Engineers. To overcome this challenge, they required an exclusive partner capable of delivering a comprehensive and targeted campaign for over 30 Design Engineers. By partnering with Matchtech, we identified GHD’s challenges and areas for improvement, including:
Skill shortages: The demand for skilled Design Engineers was high due to a competitive market making it challenging to attract and secure top-tier talent. GHD required a strategic approach to access a limited pool of professionals and stand out as an employer of choice.
Limited brand presence in the UK: While GHD was well-established in Australia, their brand presence in the UK was minimal. Without a strong employer brand in the UK, attracting and retaining top talent required a dedicated effort to enhance visibility and credibility among UK-based Design Engineers.
Candidate engagement: Simply advertising roles was not enough. GHD required a tailored, proactive approach to reach and engage the right candidates. This included targeted outreach, personalised communication, and an emphasis on the unique opportunities and benefits of working with GHD.
Limited industry insight: To make informed hiring decisions, GHD required market insights on industry benchmarks, salary expectations, competitor strategies, and recruitment trends. This data would help them refine their approach and position themselves effectively in a highly competitive market.
How we helped
With over 40 years’ experience as a global STEM recruitment specialist, Matchtech have the deep candidate connections, knowledge and unique insights to directly tackle GHD’s challenges and priorities. GHD engaged Matchtech exclusively to support their 30+ specialist temporary and permanent Design Engineer requirements.
Matchtech's high-touch exclusive partnership service
We engaged our exclusive partnership service to deliver GHD’s roles through:
Appointing a dedicated, communicative Account Manager: To ensure personalised support, we appointed Callum Cox as GHD’s dedicated Account Manager, responsible for the delivery of all Design Engineer requirements. To overcome time zone challenges, we leveraged Callum’s high-touch communication model, alongside weekly review meetings with senior stakeholders across Australia and the UK. Our active participation in their day-to-day operations and close collaboration deepened our understanding of their needs and pain points, which allowed Callum to gain a thorough understanding of their specific requirements and refine our sourcing strategy.
Providing dual-branded marketing tools: We closely collaborated with GHD to not only enhance their employer value proposition (EVP), but also their brand awareness in the UK. By leveraging our industry experience, we refined their messaging and creative assets for a more attractive narrative to increase candidate engagement and reinforce GHD’s position as an employer of choice.
Increasing candidate engagement: Using our deep industry connections, we developed a targeted attraction campaign designed to attract and secure top Design Engineering talent, utilising our 1.4m-strong database of pre-screened candidates. This proactive engagement strategy was crucial in differentiating GHD in a highly competitive talent landscape.
Providing salary benchmarking & market insights: By providing data-driven insights, including competitor analysis, salary benchmarks, and trend forecasting, we enabled GHD to make strategic hiring choices. These insights played a pivotal role in shaping GHD’s recruitment strategies to ensure they remain competitive. The benchmarking process ensured that every hiring decision was backed by hard data, positioning GHD ahead of market trends and industry standards.
Performance tracking: To ensure continuous improvement and real-time responsiveness, we implemented a comprehensive performance tracking system throughout the recruitment process. This system allowed us to monitor key metrics such as applicant flow, campaign effectiveness, and conversion rates at every stage of the process. By regularly analysing the data, we were able to ensure our recruitment approach aligned with GHD’s evolving needs, resulting in a more efficient process and better quality of candidates.
The results
Through delivering a high-touch, responsive service comprising regular communication with hiring managers and our market leading access to Design Engineering talent, we successfully expanded GHD’s presence in the UK market, securing the top talent needed to drive their continued success. This was further supported by strengthening GHD’s employer brand awareness in the UK, enhancing their appeal to candidates, and fostering greater collaboration between UK and Australian teams through structured communication and strategic insights.
Below are key metrics that demonstrate the success of our support to GHD:
placements since 2021
direct fulfilment
cost savings
Find out more about our wider sector, skill and service provision on our website here.