Technology recruitment for Wellington Water programme
-
2,222 candidates assessed
and refined to 76 high-quality shortlists -
94.7% acceptance rate
with a 33.5-day average time-to-hire -
18 permanent placements
delivered across a complex transformation programme
Their story
Wellington Water is a public sector organisation responsible for delivering essential water services across the Wellington region. As part of a large-scale technology investment programme, the organisation set out to transform how it operates through new systems and digital capabilities.
Spanning eight streams of implementation, the programme required a significant uplift in specialist talent across project delivery, engineering, and digital functions, all within a fixed-term employment model aligned to public sector value-for-money principles.
The challenge
Wellington Water needed to rapidly scale its programme team to support a complex and ambitious transformation. This meant hiring a high volume of skilled professionals across roles including Senior Business Analysts, Project Managers and Programme Leads.
However, several constraints made this particularly challenging:
- High application volumes with limited internal capacity to assess candidates
- A competitive and shifting market for technology and transformation talent
- The need to move quickly while adhering to public sector hiring processes, including minimum advertising periods
- Fixed-term roles requiring highly specific skillsets and immediate impact
Without the ability to effectively screen and assess a large number of applicants, there was a risk of slowing down the programme and placing additional pressure on internal teams.
The solution
Talent partnered closely with their team to provide a scalable, end-to-end recruitment solution designed to balance speed, quality and rigour.
Working alongside both the centralised recruitment team and individual hiring managers, we focused on:
- Conducting targeted market search and headhunting to access relevant talent pools
- Screening and qualifying candidates upfront to ensure alignment on experience, capability and team fit
- Positioning roles effectively in-market to attract high-quality applicants
- Managing the recruitment process end-to-end, including candidate engagement, negotiation and offer management
This structured approach enabled a consistent, high-quality hiring process across multiple roles while reducing the burden on internal teams.
The result
Talent successfully delivered 18 permanent placements across critical roles, including Senior Business Analysts, Systems Administrators, Project Managers, Engineers, Programme Leads and Digital Change specialists.
The impact of the partnership was significant:
- 2,222 candidates assessed and refined to 76 shortlisted candidates
- Per-role review volumes reduced from 123 applicants to 4–5 qualified candidates
- 5-day average time-to-hire, achieved despite mandatory public sector advertising periods of 14 days minimum
- 7% offer acceptance rate, reflecting strong candidate alignment and engagement
By removing the need for Wellington Water to assess large volumes of applicants, Talent enabled hiring managers to focus on a refined pool of high-quality candidates, accelerating decision-making and reducing internal workload.
As a result, Wellington Water was able to scale its programme team at pace, ensuring the right capability was in place to support a complex, multi-stream technology transformation.
