James Wood, Managing Director – Optimised

"In the past six months, Mallory Partners have handled the search for two key c-suite roles for Optimised – Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. While the parameters for the CFO role were pretty tight, we were looking for something particular in our new COO and so the brief was less well defined. It took some back and forth to refine the brief and it wasn’t really until we started seeing candidates that we really solidified what we were looking for, which was a learning experience on both sides.

Mallory Partners put a lot of work into delivering a well-structured, proactive shortlist, identifying the right potential candidates for us to meet with. They're pretty robust when you give them feedback and they bounce back quickly with a refined approach, which means we don't have to do a lot of the legwork we might otherwise need to do. That’s why we work with them; we value their determination to understand and interpret the brief in order to be able to put good people in front of us, which is ultimately what we’re looking for.

“Towards the latter stages we had direct dialogue with the top two shortlisted candidates, rather than discussions always going through Mallory Partners. They're not overly protective over the relationship with candidates, which I think speaks to the trust built between us. We appreciate the relationship we have with Martin and Jeremy and will always want them involved for any senior appointment."