The funding is approved, the steering committee has met twice and the seat that holds the whole thing together is empty. The program director you were counting on has been kept where they are, or the one you had has gone, and the sponsor wants a name before the next board paper. Every week that seat stays open, the integrator sets the pace and decisions the business should be making for itself get made for it.
That is the point at which most of our program briefs arrive. The market you are hiring from is small, the good people are working, and a job advert reaches the ones between contracts rather than the ones you want.
Altura is a program and project recruitment agency and search firm headquartered in Sydney and working nationally. Our project services desk recruits program directors, project managers, PMO leads, agile delivery leads and change leads for permanent and contract roles, including the transformation programs that need them most.
The difference between a search and an advert is where the people come from and how they are assessed. The directors who have carried a large program through to benefits are mostly employed, mostly not looking and known to one another. Close to 20 years in that network means most of the people we introduce were not applying to anything when we rang. Each is then assessed against your brief by the search partner who took it, not matched on a title.
What we recruit
Permanent and contract, for enterprise, mid-market, private equity-backed and high-growth businesses:
- Chief transformation officers and transformation directors
- Program directors and project directors
- PMO leads and portfolio leads
- Agile delivery leads
- Change leads and change managers
The programs sit across technology, ERP and enterprise platforms, operating model and regulatory change, in financial services, superannuation, wealth, capital markets, professional services, technology and the public sector.
How we tell a director from a title
Every program director we put forward has answered the same question: walk us through the first 72 hours of the hardest program you have run. People who have carried a program answer with who they rang, which decisions they took on day one and which they deliberately left alone. People who have sat near a program describe a methodology. We then ask for the decision they got wrong and what it cost, and we take references from the sponsor they reported to, not only from the people who reported to them.
The brief gets the same scrutiny. If the package will not reach the people you are describing, or the title and the remit do not match, you hear it in the first week and we decide together what to move.
Permanent, contract or retained
Contract and interim. For a program director, PMO lead or change lead who needs to start within weeks, we draw on a bench of people we have worked with before. You see the first assessed people within a day or two of the brief, with a view on how each performed under pressure last time, not only what the CV says.
Retained search. For the permanent leadership seats and anything the business cannot afford to get wrong. Three to six weeks from brief to accepted offer: a comp verdict in week one, an assessed shortlist in weeks three to four, then offer management through to acceptance. The fee is staged in thirds, the search is exclusive and the appointment carries a twelve-week replacement guarantee.
Permanent, exclusive. For permanent roles below the leadership seats, the same assessment on an exclusive, success-fee basis.
Whichever path you take, we check in with you and the person at 30, 60 and 90 days after the start.
Why clients come back
Altura was founded and is led by Mark King after close to 20 years in technology, delivery and transformation search and more than 400 searches across his career. More than 90 per cent of Altura clients return for another search. Not because of scale. Because the person who took the brief runs the search, tells you early if it is not going to work and stays through the offer and the first 90 days.
For a view on what a program director hire costs and how long it takes, read Pricing and timing a program director hire. More on how we think in program, project and change, on the retained search process, and on how we work with employers.
Questions clients ask
Decide by what the business must own at the end, not by what is quickest this month. If the program ends and the capability goes with it, a contract director with a defined exit is the honest answer, and the market for them moves faster. If the program is the first of several, or the role becomes a standing portfolio or transformation office, hire permanent and accept the longer search. Many clients run a contract director to stabilise while the permanent search runs; that works when both people know the arrangement from day one.
On contract, you see the first assessed people within a day or two of the brief, drawn from people we have worked with before. On a retained search for a permanent director, plan on three to six weeks from brief to accepted offer, with an assessed shortlist in weeks three to four. Notice periods are the variable we cannot compress, so if a start date is fixed, say so at the brief and we will tell you in week one whether it is realistic.
A generalist advertises and screens whoever responds. A specialist knows the people who are not responding to anything: the directors who have taken a program through to benefits and are known to one another. We also assess the thing that matters, which is whether someone has run the program rather than been near it, and we can tell you in week one whether the brief and the package will reach that group. A generalist usually finds that out when the shortlist comes back thin.
Yes. Change leads, change managers, PMO leads and agile delivery leads, permanent and contract, often as part of standing up or rebuilding a program team around a director we have already helped appoint. The assessment is the same: evidence of a program they carried through to adoption, not a certification list.
Reading on program delivery
Program DeliveryReading a program before you join it: the questions that tell you whether it will be funded next year
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Program DeliveryFunded, and the leader is not in the building: pricing and timing a program director hire
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