Nectar360, owned by Sainsury's, is a marketing and loyalty data business powering the Nectar loyalty programme in the UK. It serves partner brands across grocery, fuel, home & leisure, travel, and financial services, using customer purchase data to deliver targeted promotions, insights, and personalised campaigns. Through deep analytics, Nectar360 helps brands boost engagement, loyalty, and sales across multiple consumer categories.
The Brief
Having worked closely with a client at pladis who moved to Sainsbury’s, we were quickly introduced to the Sainsbury's PSL to support with marketing & insights recruitment for their Nectar business.
Having successfully filled a number of Brand, Campaign Management & Insights focused roles and becoming a trusted partner to the business, we were asked to support with the search for an eCommerce Client Director, a newly created role following the development of a new function internally.
In line with the growing trend for online shopping, the team was established to manage the relationships with key FMCG suppliers, developing their online capabilities. This was the first hire for the team ahead of recruiting for a team of Executives and Managers below, so it was critical this hire was successful in order to facilitate the development of the new function.
Following discussions with key senior stakeholders within the business, a role profile was created and key criteria was weighted in order to ensure candidates were being qualified effectively during the search and ahead of shortlisting for 1st stage interviews.
The key criteria were strong leadership skills with previous experience managing and developing a team, relevant technical experience, senior relationship/stakeholder management as well as having previously developed the online capabilities for a large B2C business.
The Process & Result
In order to identify candidates with all of the above, we agreed to keep the search broad in terms of industry to maximise the pool of candidates to consider for the role.
Working through the Allexo Process, we covered the market through headhunting, referrals, advertising and social media and introduced a shortlist of 4 candidates who we felt would be a good fit, both technically and culturally.
The business identified one candidate during 1st stage interviews as a high potential, and moved quickly through a further 2 rounds of interviews before making an offer. The successful candidate joined from Eurostar – a company outside of their original target list - who has since been promoted within the business to Group Director.
