Seamlessly delivering NPL's talent needs.
National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is a Public Corporation owned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. NPL encourages innovation and translates scientific expertise into economic prosperity, skilled employment and improved quality of life by developing the metrology required to ensure timely and successful deployment of new technologies. Matchtech have been working with NPL since 2022, exclusively delivering their temporary and permanent technology requirements.
NPL's situation.
During a period of rapid growth, driven by new projects and major business transformations, NPL required our support to scale. This caused NPL's Talent Acquisition (TA) team to experience significant demand beyond their 'business as usual' requirements, stretching resources thin. Matchtech worked with NPL's TA team to identify challenges and areas of improvement.
NPL's challenges.
Due to NPL’s strong TA capability, there had historically been limited reliance on external agencies, and no formal PSL or structured process in place. As a result, when vacancy demand surged there was no established framework to effectively leverage external resources. This meant that NPL faced the following challenges:
Faced with an increased recruitment requirement, NPL recognised that their current recruitment agency set up wouldn’t be conducive in helping them reach their hiring goals. As such, they recognised the need to exclusively engage a specialist technology recruitment partner to deliver 50 roles including:
Software Engineering
Programme & Project Management
Vulnerability Research & Pen Testing
Network Engineering
Cyber Security
Cloud, Infrastructure & DevOps
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 NPL’s challenges and priorities. NPL engaged Matchtech exclusively to support their specialist temporary and permanent technology requirements, following numerous conversations with their now dedicated Account manager, Jake Tyson. Through our exclusive partnership, we fulfilled 52 vacancies within 16 months.
Matchtech's high-touch exclusive partnership service.
We engaged our exclusive partnership service to deliver NPL’s roles through:
Appointing a dedicated, communicative Account Manager: To ensure personalised support, we appointed Jake Tyson as NPL’s dedicated Account Manager, responsible for the delivery of all temporary and permanent technology requirements. By leveraging Jake’s high-touch communication model, alongside weekly review meetings, our active participation in their day-to-day operations deepened our understanding of their needs and pain points. Jake’s close collaboration with NPL allowed him to gain a thorough understanding of their specific requirements, enabling him to refine our sourcing strategy. As a result, we achieved an impressive 2:1 CV-to-placement ratio, ensuring a highly responsive service and greater candidate matches – faster.
Providing tailored delivery & retained searches: Through our active participation in NPL’s day-to-day operations, we provided tailored support to alleviate any strain applied to their TA team. Leveraging our candidate attraction channels, which gives us access to 1.4 million highly qualified candidates, our retained search services offered a proactive approach that gave NPL access to pre-vetted, highly qualified candidates who matched both their technical and cultural requirements.
We were tasked with filling a single Programme Manager role, submitted four CVs, and NPL hired three candidates, creating two additional roles for them!
Implementing a streamlined recruitment process: By acting as NPL’s sole external recruitment point of contact, we have simplified their external agency recruitment process and reduced miscommunication, minimised delays, and enhanced efficiency across all hiring activities. We took NPL from having to engage multiple external points of contact to one.
Removing exposure to compliance risks: Matchtech are part of an AIM-listed business, Gattaca Plc, meaning we proactively manage risks through a comprehensive Risk Assurance Framework aligned with our strategic priorities. By partnering with us exclusively, NPL significantly reduces their exposure to compliance threats. With the support of our dedicated Legal & Compliance team, we ensure full adherence to legal and regulatory requirements to deliver a fully compliant service.
Delivering added value: We leveraged our deep knowledge of market trends, competitors and talent pools to provide strategic recruitment advice, ensuring NPL remained competitive in attracting top talent and making informed hiring decisions. To position NPL as an employer of choice, we proposed hosting NPL-branded events, such as graduate recruitment and networking sessions. These initiatives would not only attract top talent but also enhance NPL’s reputation within the industry.
The results.
Through delivering a high-touch, responsive service comprising regular communication with hiring managers and our market leading access to technology talent, we significantly improved NPL’s processes and results and became an invaluable exclusive partner.
Below are key metrics that demonstrate the success of our support to NPL:
placements within 16 months
cost savings from retained business
cv-to-placement
Find out more about our wider sector, skill and service provision on our company website here.