We have been working with Dion Mills from Hays Leadership for 6 years, during that time Dion has recruited over 40 Heads and Deputies across Westminster Diocese. All of our dealings with Dion have been extremely professional and the feedback from schools has always been very positive. Dion has an excellent understanding of the complexities and challenges of recruiting in the Catholic sector. One of the reasons I recommend working with Dion is that he works alongside Governors offering advice and guidance and, unlike with many recruiters, Governors are not pressured in to making an appointment. As well as Headhunting candidates Dion also supports Governors by creating interview plans and actually being present throughout interview days. I recommend him unreservedly.

We have worked positively with Hays consultancy for several years across many of our schools for senior leadership appointments. Dion Mills has been our main point of contact and working with him has always been a positive experience. His approach has always been very sympathetic to and supportive of the distinctive needs of Catholic education. We look forward to developing further this constructive relationship with Dion and Hays.

We recently engaged the consultancy services of Dion Mills at Hay’s Leadership to assist us in recruiting a new Head Teacher for our school. It turned out to be a very positive experience and I thought you might be interested to have some specific comments from us. Dion guided us through the entire process, providing key services along the way. 1) He demonstrated a clear understanding of the Catholic dimension of our requirement. 2) The active headhunting he conducted generated a large number of individuals showing interest, more than would have resulted from advertising alone. Suitable applicants were pursued by Dion to encourage them to submit applications. As a result, we were able to short list four candidates for interview from a field of six applicants. 3) Fully qualified for safer recruiting, he ensured that we adhered to best practice at all times. 4) The support provided by Hay’s reduced our workload in respect of preparing our application pack, placing advertisements, developing a campaign website, etc... Several applicants commented on the professional quality of the materials produced. 5) The assessment programme proposed by Dion provided a comprehensive and rigorous basis for judging the candidates. All members of our appointments’ panel were satisfied that we had conducted an exhaustive process that enabled us to draw clear conclusions. As Chair of the Appointments’ Panel, I was the main contact person with Dion. I found him to be responsive, adaptable in accommodating changes (that did not undermine the integrity of the process), and able to provide sound advice where needed. It was a pleasure to work with him and I and my fellow panel members were greatly reassured by the professionalism and valuable experience he provided at all stages of the process. At a time when recruiting Head Teachers for Catholic primary schools is proving to be a considerable challenge, we believe that working with Dion Mills was central to the success of our recruitment campaign. We have made an excellent appointment for September 2013. We subsequently discovered that the person we appointed was in fact headhunted by Dion. The cost was only very slightly higher than that incurred on our own in 2012 when we failed to appoint. I can highly recommend retaining the services of Dion Mills for senior leadership recruitment.

On behalf of the Governing body of St. Mary’s Catholic School I write to express our thanks for your support and help during the recent recruitment of our new Headteacher. Your professionalism and advice was invaluable, as was the experience that you shared with us. We were impressed with the organisation and input that you provided whilst ensuring that we drove the actual decision making. You are clearly very knowledgeable in this field and we felt able to ‘tap into your expertise’. We had heard that being a Faith School, and being classed as Outstanding by OFSTED could cause the recruitment of a Headteacher to be a challenging and drawn out process. You enabled us to attract applications from some high calibre candidates. At the first attempt we were able to make a good appointment which will support the school and community in the next stage of its development. I would be happy to recommend your service to other schools within the Diocese and once again thank-you for your advice and support during this process.

As you know, we have been successful in the appointment of a Headteacher for St.George's Roman Catholic Primary School in Enfield. The finding of a replacement for our present postholder, retiring after 25 years service, has been a challenging one and successive rounds of advertising through the usual channels proved fruitless. Dion Mills was recommended to us as an alternative channel by which we might find our new Headteacher and we have been delighted by the excellence of the service which we have received. After the initial interview with Dion Mills of Hays Leadership, each stage ran extremely smoothly and the mechanics of the process were done completely by the agency. Hays Leadership organised such matters as (i)advertising, (ii)personal contact with possible applicants over a wide area of England, (iii)analysis of applications received and reference of their contents to our job and person specifications, (iv)liaison with our school to agree such matters as pre-interview visits by applicants, (v)programming of the various components of the actual interview day and (vi)a personal presence of our Hays contact person on the interview day during which he was able to both act as host for the candidates and give valuable advice to the interview panel. In essence, Hays Leadership removed virtually all aspects of organisation from the governing body enabling it concentrate on other key matters. The entire process and outcome were exactly as the governors would have wished, and for this Hays Leadership and its staff fully merit our gratitude and praise for their work on our behalf.

The school had been using Hays for a while re staff recruitment, and recently our headteacher was successful in applying for a new position at another school. Recruiting for a headteacher is something which should not be treated lightly, especially in these difficult times, and recruiting a practising catholic is a pre requisite which narrows the field significantly. The days are long gone when placing an advert in the TES, Diocese and LA would have produced candidates for interview. We wanted to produce a comprehensive and robust pack of information to “sell “ our school and set out our objectives for the right candidate. We also had access to the Schools Commission guidance pack which needed to be adhered to. Therefore we engaged Hays to manage the process for us, with us supplying the key information. Hays understood our requirements, the processes that had to be followed to ensure compliance and in addition provided the administrative support for the process. This also included discussing with potential candidates the role beforehand, and assistance through references, shortlisting and the interview process. Hays produced a guidance pack which covered the timetable sequence and panel questions which we readily agreed to follow. The outcome was that we had a number of candidates who expressed interest and submitted applications, which ultimately led to a successful appointment. I have no hesitation in recommending Hays who provided a thorough and professional service throughout.

Faced with the need to find a new head teacher when my present head resigned after 9 years in post and achieving the highest accolades for our school, I looked for help in the challenging task of recruiting a catholic head teacher to lead our school in leafy South Kensington. I searched the web and considered all offerings. Only Hays Leadership provided me with a proposal that was appropriate to the challenge, clear and cost effective and gave me the confidence to decide to use their expertise in addressing the need to secure our school’s future. In the event Dion Mills was the epitome of professionalism and reassurance while also recognising the very real challenge of the task that I was facing. He supported me and my governing body team throughout the exercise and ensured that we had really credible candidates for our final interview from which we have selected our new head teacher. I cannot praise Dion and his team enough for their calm, professional and supportive approach which has led to a successful outcome. Hays Leadership certainly did us proud.

Recruitment of a substantive Headteacher for Sion-Manning Catholic Girls’ School While being an experienced Chairman over many years for the Local Authority, I was new to the Catholic Education Service and found advice from and knowledge relating to recruiting to Catholic schools of Dion Mills at Hays Leadership very useful in preparing the school’s recruitment materials. Despite the paucity of good candidates generally, we found ourselves in the very fortunate position of having ten candidates (most of whom came to us through the headhunting service) who met our exacting criteria and we shortlisted three strong contenders. We have been delighted by our appointment whom we consider to be exactly the person that governors were looking for to take the school forward.

I would like to thank you for the professional way you conducted our recent Head Teacher recruitment project. Throughout I admired your attention to detail, the quality of all your communications and materials and that no matter how many changes we made, you were patient and supportive. I regard the service you provided as excellent and highly professional. I have also appreciated your advice regarding the process, the quality of the candidates and the general wealth of experience and wisdom you bring to the process. I do not believe any Board relishes the idea of appointing a new head, particularly if the current head is doing such a good job; it is an important decision. You and Hays undertook all the administrative and preparatory work, leaving us to concentrate on the selection. This has been invaluable and I would say to any Board when embarking on Head Teacher recruitment, do yourself a favour and talk to Hays. My reasons for saying so are: The service is bespoke and adapted for our requirements. You attend to all the details, even raising issues we might need to or wish to consider. The management of the paperwork and the interviews was excellent. There are so many regulations to consider, having an experienced person on the team is invaluable. We were able to discuss in confidence, the candidates, the performance of the candidates and benefit from your experience and knowledge in coming to a decision. The Hays' fee structure is fair and reasonable. On a personal note, I enjoyed working with you very much and should we find ourselves needing to recruit a Head again, you will be the first person I call. I would be very pleased to speak to any governor considering your service and you are welcome to pass on my contact details. I wish you every success for the future.

I am the Chair of the Governing Body for The Rosary Catholic School, Heston. Dion has recently been appointed by the Governing Body to assist with the appointment of a head teacher for our school. We have now successfully appointed a head teacher. I have found Dion to be extremely professional, personable and very easy to work with. I know that the other governors of the Rosary share this view. When you are a volunteer not specialising in education the appointment of a head teacher is an extremely daunting task. Dion has made the whole process very straightforward, taking control and advising of what needs to be done at each step. The interview day was completely organised by Dion who liaised with the school and myself to organise a smooth running of the day. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Dion and if there should be a need to appoint someone on the Senior Leadership Team in our school in the future then I would certainly be recommending appointing Dion to assist us again. I was very impressed by Dion’s experience, knowledge and expertise. I found Dion extremely easy to work with, he answered any questions I or the other governors had and always did so in a polite and personable manner.