Case Studies

Capability Jane supports Wealth Management Firm Towry Law’s Return to Work Programme

The field of financial services is particularly male-dominated and has fallen behind the times of business generally where women are significant players in management and client-facing roles.

In conjunction with Capability Jane, Towry Law launched their Return to Work initiative which aims to attract individuals from the large and relatively untapped market of mature, predominantly female, professionals who have taken a career break or wish to change career path.  This initiative represents a clear break in favour of professional advisers and away from the traditional financial adviser mould of transaction-based selling. The Return to Work initiative seeks to recruit and fast-track train a number of bright, motivated and personable individuals, with little or no direct experience in personal financial advice, to add breadth and freshness to their body of advisers. 

Working with Capability Jane Towry law opened the programme up to professionals from a wide range of previous backgrounds, for example those who have taken a career break to bring up children and are now looking to return to a serious and rewarding vocation or those who are looking for a career change. Capability Jane worked with Towry Law to take on six ‘Return to Work’ candidates at a time and put them on a structure training programme to become wealth advisors. The 6 month training programme runs 3 days per week and incorporates classroom teaching, leading to 5 modules of examinations, in addition to practical work alongside established advisers. This programme has been a huge success and deemed a leading practice initiative in the world of recruitment and diversity.

Case Study: Capability Jane supports Ernst & Young’s Back to Practice Programme

As part of its Gender Strategy, Ernst & Young want to ensure that it is recognised as leading the way in supporting and encouraging women back into professional services. Through this initiative E&Y aims to support women when returning to work after a career break. They will do this through creating a channel of communication which gives women access to roles that will acknowledge and value their previous skills and experience, helping them to achieve their potential. Capability Jane supported Ernst & Young with the launch of their first event. This event enabled  women to network, hear about changes affecting professional services and discuss the practical implications of returning to work. This event was aimed at women who: have been on a career break for at least three years; have gained a minimum of five years experience in the professional services industry before taking a break; are interested in exploring opportunities to return to professional services.

Case Study: Capability Jane support Citizens Advice’s IT Senior Business Analyst Recruitment

The Citizens Advice service helps people resolve their legal, financial and other problems by providing free, independent, confidential and impartial advice to members of the public on their rights and responsibilities. The Head of IT Development was seeking to attract a new team of Senior Business Analysts to work on a 12 month UK wide change project. The organisation had previously been unsuccessful recruiting the right calibre of individual using traditional recruitment methods so they approached Capability Jane and developed flexible working options available for potential new recruits. Capability Jane conducted an outreach to their membership network of senior professional women. From this, and following an intensive interviewing and shortlisting process, a total of 11 highly experienced candidates were forwarded for client interview.The candidates presented all had strong business analysis skills and were experienced in managing change projects and influencing stakeholders.  Most had taken career breaks of between one and ten years, some simply wanted flexible work to fit around other commitments. The client was delighted with the professional standard of individuals presented. The initial brief was for 4 people, but created 2 new roles in other areas of the business as they were so impressed with the calibre of Capability Jane candidates. All six individuals were taken on a variety of contracts, varying from 3 to 5 days a week, all home-based.Given how well the recruitment project went and how the standard of candidates went beyond their expectations, the CAB are now considering this format of recruitment across the whole of the Citizen's Advice with a strong recommendation to use Capability Jane for future senior hires and diversity programmes.

What our Clients Say:

“[Capability Jane's] contribution was invaluable [to our dievrsity recruitment strategy]. Highly knowledgeable, providing relevant market data and input which helped facilitate a highly productive session.” Sarah Fisher, HR Director, Microsoft

"Sara and her team at Capability Jane provided us with some tremendous and highly valuable insights into how to attract more professional women back into the workplace with some very sound and well rounded steps for action. We are now working hard to see if policy will eventually be shaped on these recommendations!"

Neil Sherlock, Partner, Public Affairs, KPMG and a member of the Fair Access to the Professions Panel

Other Programmes we are currently working on:

• Positive Action Recruitment

• Women into Sales/Management

• Women into IT

• Diversity Recruitment Workshops

• Talent Pooling

• “A Woman on Every Shortlist”

• "Women into" Conferences and Workshops

Example Clients:

If you need this information in the meantime please do get in touch on 0845 604 1916 or info@capabilityjane.com.