Wolseley is the world’s largest distribution company of plumbing and heating supplies. With 39,000 people in around 2,900 global locations, huge clients and UK revenue alone of £1.7bn, the business thrives due to its reputation of delivering the right products, at the right price, at the right time, on every occasion.

Wolsley supplies over 1 million customers with products sourced from 50,000 trade vendors. It has won accolades such as Supply House of the Year, Distributor of the Year and Merchant of the Year, to name just a few.

The company is beggining to place greater emphasis on accelerating profitability and growth, in order to become the world’s best local contributor of plumbing, heating and building materials products.

Wolseley came to Uniting Ambition with a unique request: the business wanted to create its first proactive team to be based out of the Ripon office. Previously, inbound sales and customer service had been the priority for Wolseley.

With a newly sharpened focus on profitable growth, they focussed on creating further revenue streams with existing and previous customers. To build this proactive team, the roles required were:

As part of a bespoke, end to end process, Uniting Ambition were chosen as a single partner for sourcing compatible talent. A tailored screening process ensured that each person selected was an ambassador of Wolseleys company values.

On-site assessments were held at Wolseley premises, providing the opportunity for hiring managers to see the potential candidates in a number of contact centre settings. This tactic allowed recruitment choices to be based on personality and drive, not just experience alone. Once the team had been successfully placed, Uniting Ambition could then identify the type of team manager necessary to lead the recent placements. With the aim of upskilling these new team members, the manager would play an integral role in increasing profit within the branch network.

Since Uniting Ambition had previously taken the time to understand the business and the people within the Ripon office, an exceptional calibre of candidates was delivered. Due to the high standard of candidates selected for interview, it was difficult to choose just a single candidate for the role. As testament to this, one of the unsuccessful management candidates had an inbound sales role created specifically to match their skills.