European Client in the Utilities Sector – Belgium

Outline: Our client, an important European company, active in the Utilities sector, having its headquarters in Brussels, was facing significant issues with the recruitment of a Sr Solution Architect. Challenges faced: When we started this engagement, our client was already searching for a Sr Solution Architect for 1 year. There is clearly a shortage of top Solution Architects in Western Europe (including Belgium).

Our client was looking for a seasoned Architect having experience in delivering complex Software solutions using specific architecture patterns such as Distributed systems, Real-time systems, Industrial control systems, ETL pipelines, Event-driven systems, … . In addition, the ideal candidate had to have experience with Scrum, DevOps, Cloud Infrastructures and with Industrial, Manufacturing, Production, Oil & Gas or Utilities sectors.

The Antal solution:

- One strong competitive advantage of our office, is our experience and our large network in the IT field - In a candidate market, (a shortage of active and available candidates so there is mainly passive candidates) we had to rely on both our capacity to “ping” the right Talents and to use our network in the IT field (Personal and Antal networks)

- After deep searching and networking, 5 candidates, corresponding to the requirements have been proposed to our client The Process: As this was a new client we proposed to work the same way as what we did for other similar Talent’ssearch engagements. We have put in place a strong “Candidates Search Project” approach including clear Statement of Work with Weekly Reporting, etc. All along the project, we have worked very closely with the Hiring Manager for that position (Head of Architecture Team). Due to the scarcity of potential candidates, we have convinced our client to consider, in addition to Employees, Freelancers who could be hired as sub-contractors for that position.

The outcome: After 4 months of hard work, we successfully managed to attract a Technical Leader / Software Architect with an impressive profile, 20 years’ experience in Software development and Architecture for various companies at international level (including the Industrial and Oil& Gas sectors). Result! Source: Case study written by our team in Belgium, May 2022 – led by Managing Partner, Pierre Dagneau