Chris O'Connor
Operations Director
My background in recruitment
Over 18 successful and enjoyable years within the RTC Group, initially with ATA Recruitment and now Ganymede, my experience has seen my team and I spend considerable time delivering workforce and talent solutions to public and private sector organisations responsible for the design, development, construction, operation and maintenance of our transport, infrastructure, energy and utilities assets across the UK.
The support we offer focusses upon workforce engagement (including recruitment process design and delivery from entry level through to strategic leadership with associated attraction and assessment tools), competency and safety management and payroll services.
We have partnered with organisations to deliver some of the highest profile industry projects over that time period, be that railway infrastructure improvements, major highway construction schemes or new fleet introductions for modern, comfortable and reliable rolling stock, all underpinned with a diverse workforce, safely managed through the full project lifecycle.
I can help you with
Industry continues to evolve and the way all businesses work today is remarkably different to when I first entered the world of work after university and the customary ‘jolly’ around the world.
Strangely though, many organisations remain bound to antiquated talent strategies that are reactive rather than planned and over dependent on unreliable methodologies for selection and assessment. Exacerbating this is the rapidly developing legislative landscape for employment law, EDI and workplace health and safety to keep up with and an ongoing skills gap, which leaves organisations challenged and stretched with resource availability – everyone appears to be running hard just to keep up.
Ganymede’s team are experts in their field – we can offer guidance and advice so that organisations capture and retain the best talent to build winning teams. This takes many forms including, but not limited to;
- Recruitment process review and change
- Recruitment process management
- Assessment tools and systems
- Workforce planning
- Workforce management
- Cost planning, salary / rate benchmarking
- Employer branding
- Candidate Experience
- Supplier management
- Payroll and billing solutions
- Competency Management
- Training and apprenticeships
- Call off labour services
- Minor works
We proudly collaborate with industry partners to promote the sectors where we operate to under-represented groups, taking proactive steps to promote equality, diversity and inclusion in our sectors. We embrace the opportunity to help our clients achieve greater diversity in their workforce and steer their people strategies to provide access to all.
The best part of my job
My role provides 2 key sources of great satisfaction;
1. The pride that comes from our team working with some of the key protagonists in UK industry and the genuine collaboration that occurs in developing highly effective, inclusive and intelligent workforce strategies.
2. Seeing the success of the great people in our team; their innovation and ingenuity to deal with the inherent challenges within a skills short industry and their passion to ensure that they do not let others down. We have incredibly high standards that are led by the team, meaning our clients are always well looked after.
What I do when I'm not in the office
It’s a cliché, but my kids come first! My son and daughter are both into their sport so I live vicariously through them at the weekend.
I’ve become a barbecue geek as well – even the Christmas Turkey is cooked outside – so I am often found in the garden, beer in hand, cooking an obscene amount of meat on my hot smoker
All the eating motivates quite a bit of running (when injury is not holding me back). The last few years I have reignited my love for it and I enjoy the occasional 10k race and I’ve also learned the half marathon is not all that bad! Is the marathon on the cards? We shall see!
Testimonial
"It has been a pleasure working with Chris over the last few years: Chris is very experienced in his field and truly spends the time to understand the business requirements as well as the types of candidates we require, which is imperative for the engineering and technical sector.
In addition his collaborative, hassle-free working style is refreshing as we know this is not always the case when working with recruiters!
Lastly, I have also been impressed with the progressive work you have been doing in the D&I space striving for the sector to do better and share best practice."
Alexandra Bown-Opoku, HR Business Partner at Cluttons