Why getting your senior leadership team right has never mattered more in the apprenticeship and training sector
There is an old saying in recruitment that people join organisations and leave managers.
In the apprenticeship and training sector, we would take that one step further:
The right senior hire can transform a training provider. The wrong one can affect almost every part of the business.
At National Skills Agency, we recruit across the sector every day, from Tutors and Skills Coaches through to Heads of Apprenticeships, Quality Directors, Operations Directors and Commercial Directors.
And while every appointment matters, senior hires carry a very different level of risk and opportunity.
A great Skills Coach can positively influence dozens of learners.
A great senior leader can positively influence hundreds or thousands of learners, an entire workforce and the future value of the organisation.
Senior recruitment isn’t simply about replacing someone
When a senior person leaves, the natural reaction is often:
“We need another Head of Apprenticeships.”
But that shouldn’t necessarily be the first question.
The better question is:
“What does this business need from this position over the next three years?”
The person who was perfect for a £2 million training provider isn’t automatically the person you need to take it to £5 million.
Likewise, the Commercial Director who can deliver rapid growth isn’t necessarily right for an organisation that first needs to improve quality, retention and operational performance.
The job title may remain exactly the same.
The job that needs doing may have completely changed.
A Head of Apprenticeships can shape the whole organisation
A strong Head of Apprenticeships sits at the intersection of delivery, employers, learners, quality, funding and people.
They need to understand what’s happening on the ground while still being able to look six, twelve or eighteen months ahead.
The best aren’t simply managing today’s provision.
They’re asking:
Where are our risks?
Where can we grow?
Which programmes are genuinely performing?
Where are learners falling behind?
Do we have the right delivery team?
What are employers telling us?
What does our data tell us that our management meetings aren’t?
That’s why appointing someone purely because they have previously held the title can be dangerous.
You’re not recruiting a title.
You’re recruiting judgement.
Quality Directors are no longer the people who simply “get you through Ofsted”
We still occasionally hear quality discussed as if it is a department.
It isn’t.
Quality runs through everything a training provider does.
Achievement, retention, withdrawals, learner experience, employer satisfaction, teaching, compliance, safeguarding and continuous improvement all ultimately come together.
The apprenticeship accountability framework now uses a range of indicators to identify potential provider risk, including achievement, retention, withdrawals and employer and apprentice feedback.
Quality therefore cannot simply be something that receives attention when Ofsted is on the horizon.
A really good Quality Director creates a culture where the organisation is inspection-ready because it is consistently good, rather than good because an inspection is coming.
That’s a significant distinction.
Operations Directors turn strategy into reality
Almost every ambitious organisation has a strategy.
The difficult bit is delivering it.
That’s where a great Operations Director becomes invaluable.
Growth creates complexity.
More apprentices mean more Tutors and Coaches.
More staff means more management.
More programmes mean more curriculum and compliance requirements.
More employers mean more expectations.
And more revenue doesn’t necessarily mean more profit.
A good Operations Director connects all of those moving parts.
They understand capacity, productivity, caseloads, systems, people, margins and performance.
More importantly, they spot problems before they become expensive problems.
The difference between a business that grows successfully and one that simply gets bigger can often be found in its operational leadership.
Then there is the Commercial Director
This is another role that can fundamentally change the trajectory of a training provider.
But there’s an important distinction.
A great salesperson isn’t automatically a great Commercial Director.
The best Commercial Directors aren’t simply the organisation’s biggest individual biller.
They create a commercial machine.
They understand which markets to enter, which employers to target, what propositions resonate, how to structure a sales team and where growth can be achieved without compromising quality.
They also know when to say no.
Winning £2 million of business that the organisation cannot successfully deliver isn’t good sales.
It’s tomorrow’s quality problem.
The strongest commercial leaders understand that sustainable growth requires commercial, operational and quality teams to work together.
The £80,000 versus £100,000 question
Senior recruitment inevitably creates conversations about salary.
“Can we get someone for £80,000 rather than £100,000?”
Sometimes you absolutely can.
But salary shouldn’t be considered in isolation.
Imagine two Commercial Director candidates.
Candidate A costs £80,000 and maintains existing performance.
Candidate B costs £100,000 but builds a team and generates an additional £1 million of sustainable revenue.
Which was more expensive?
Or consider two Quality Directors.
One costs £65,000.
Another costs £80,000 but improves achievement, reduces withdrawals, strengthens management and helps protect a multimillion-pound apprenticeship contract.
Again, which was more expensive?
The same principle applies to Heads of Apprenticeships and Operations Directors.
The cheapest senior appointment can become the most expensive hire an organisation ever makes.
The hidden cost of getting it wrong
The recruitment fee is rarely the biggest cost of a failed senior appointment.
Consider everything around it.
Six months of salary.
Management time.
Recruitment time.
Lost momentum.
Team disruption.
Good employees leaving.
Employer relationships deteriorating.
Missed growth opportunities.
Poor decisions.
And then having to start the recruitment process again.
At senior level, a bad hire can easily cost an organisation many multiples of the person’s salary.
And some of the damage is impossible to put on a spreadsheet.
Don’t underestimate cultural impact
One of the biggest differences between recruiting at senior and junior levels is the influence that person has on everybody else.
Senior leaders set the tone.
A brilliant leader can make good people want to stay.
They can develop managers beneath them.
They can create accountability without creating fear.
They can challenge a CEO or owner when something isn’t working.
They can bring departments together that previously operated in silos.
And importantly, great people often attract other great people.
Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.
One poor senior appointment can result in several excellent employees quietly deciding to look elsewhere.
That’s why cultural fit should never be treated as the “soft” part of senior recruitment.
It’s commercially important.
Don’t just recruit from your immediate competitors
This is another area where we think organisations can be more adventurous.
When recruiting senior people, it’s tempting to produce a shortlist containing executives doing exactly the same job for five competing training providers.
Sometimes that’s absolutely the right approach.
But sometimes the best person might come from:
- another part of FE or skills
- an awarding organisation or EPAO
- EdTech
- professional education
- a large employer apprenticeship programme
- membership or professional bodies
- a complementary commercial sector
Sector knowledge matters.
But so do leadership, judgement, commercial awareness and the ability to build great teams.
The perfect candidate isn’t always sitting in exactly the same chair somewhere else.
And the best senior candidates aren’t always looking
This is perhaps the biggest difference with senior recruitment.
The person you really want may never see your job advert.
They’re probably already employed.
They’re probably doing well.
Their employer probably doesn’t want to lose them.
And they may not have updated their CV for five years.
They aren’t spending Monday mornings searching job boards.
They need to be identified, approached and given a compelling reason to have a conversation.
That’s where specialist recruitment becomes particularly valuable.
Take your time – but move quickly
That might sound contradictory.
It isn’t.
Take your time deciding who you need.
Define the outcomes.
Challenge the job description.
Understand the personality and leadership style required.
Agree what success looks like after 12 months.
Then, when you meet someone exceptional:
move.
One of the biggest mistakes we see is organisations spending six weeks arranging second, third and fourth interviews with a candidate they knew they liked after the first meeting.
Good senior candidates have options.
The recruitment process itself also tells them something about how your organisation makes decisions.
Our advice?
When you’re making a senior appointment, don’t start with:
“Who can we find?”
Start with:
“What could the right person change?”
Could they improve achievement?
Could they build a stronger culture?
Could they unlock a new market?
Could they increase revenue?
Could they improve margins?
Could they prepare the organisation for its next Ofsted inspection?
Could they professionalise operations?
Could they build the management team beneath them?
Could they help turn a £3 million organisation into a £10 million organisation?
If the answer to several of those questions is yes, you’re not simply filling a vacancy.
You’re making an investment in the future of the organisation.
Finding the people who can make the difference
National Skills Agency specialises exclusively in the Apprenticeship, Training, FE, Awarding, EPAO and wider Skills sectors.
We recruit senior appointments including Heads and Directors of Apprenticeships, Quality Directors, Operations Directors, Commercial Directors, Managing Directors and CEOs.
Our approach isn’t simply to advertise a vacancy and wait.
We use our sector knowledge, networks and relationships to identify people who can genuinely make a difference – including those who aren’t actively looking for their next move.
If you’re considering a senior appointment, even if you’re not ready to recruit yet, talk to NSA.
A conversation about the person you really need is often much more valuable than starting with a job description.