Sharing his passion for excellence in recruitment: meet Adrian Thomas, Green Park’s new Director of Talent & Customer Insight

He’s only been at Green Park a matter of weeks, but Adrian Thomas is already making an impact. With an exceptional background in Senior HR, Talent Acquisition and Resourcing, he’s helping the business develop a deeper understanding of clients and build an even more insightful team.

Understanding what clients want has always been a fundamental part of our business. But there’s always room for improvement – and Adrian is an expert when it comes to the client viewpoint. Having worked in-house at senior levels in multiple sectors, including central government, Adrian brings an impressive reputation and a valuable perspective.  As a recruitment leader, Adrian has long argued for the role in-house resourcing teams can play, so why would he now turn his attention to assisting the supplier side.  For Adrian, it was the chance to amplify his influence through a business that’s thinking differently.

“I’ve worked in-house my entire career, either as an HR Director or a Director/Head of Resourcing in multiple sectors, in big organisations in roles that were genuinely making a difference, but it was one company at a time. A move to actively support the supplier side was going to take something special. But talking to Green Park CEO, Raj Tulsiani, I realised that I would have the chance to make a difference to multiple organisations, by helping Green Park deliver more diverse, higher quality workforces.”

A passion for resourcing

Adrian is now focused on bringing his skills and knowledge to bear where they’ll be most effective. Over the next six months, he aims to embed the customer viewpoint within Green Park and help teams with this aspect of their training and development. Behind Adrian’s drive to improve Green Park’s customer insight is a passion for recruitment and a desire to see it take its rightful place at the corporate table.

“Done well, recruitment can create huge returns, but many organisations don’t understand the difference it can make. Having paid scant attention to hiring effectively, they end up spending a lot of time on performance management and churn, and on trying to understand why people are leaving, instead of focussing on hiring the right people.”     

Adrian feels that businesses such as Green Park have the power to act as partners to in-house recruitment teams and hiring managers, helping to recruit higher quality candidates who will stay, perform and thrive. Drawing on their specialist expertise, outsourced agencies can show their clients the difference that effective recruitment can make. Adrian sees Green Park’s focus on diversity as a particular benefit, helping businesses to leverage the power of collective difference and gain a competitive advantage.

“For me, Green Park is one of the few suppliers that invests in and lives their values and delivers on them. Raj and the team believe in the arguments for diversity in recruitment and leave no stone unturned in supporting their clients – it’s not a strap line or slogan, it's making a difference every single day.”

Looking ahead

While there are plenty of interesting projects lying ahead at Green Park, Adrian’s ultimate goal is to see recruitment recognised as more than “a subset of HR.” Some might see shifting ingrained attitudes on recruitment as an impossible feat – but Adrian has a track record of taking on difficult roles in industries and organisations and succeeding in putting recruitment centre stage.  He sees his role at Green Park combined with chairing Resourcing Leaders 100 (RL100), one of Europe's most influential recruitment leadership networks, as key in communicating the impact that recruitment - when done right - can have on an organisation's success.