With her 30-year background in recruitment, including her previous role as a partner and local government specialist with Gatenby Sanderson, Marshall was offered the opportunity to launch Tile Hill's healthcare division in February 2024. 

‘We are the market leader in local government recruitment,' Marshall explains. ‘We recognised there is a natural synergy that comes with extending our services into ICBs and the broader health sector to be able to support the local systems.'

Marshall says its internal ‘collaborative approach' makes Tile Hill different. With Tile Hill's cross-sector expertise, she is able to share knowledge and resources by working closely with her colleagues in local government, housing, not for profit and central government. 

‘We are working together to grow our business but are also learning from one another to get a better understanding of all areas of the system and how they work in collaboration rather than having a silo approach to each part,' Marshall says. 

‘That makes us very different from our competitors.'

Marshall believes there is a huge opportunity to tackle some of the recruitment challenges in healthcare by bringing in expertise from other sectors, especially for the increasingly big and demanding roles in HR, finance, digital and transformation. 

‘If we are fishing in the NHS talent pool alone and people are reluctant to take these big jobs, we have to look outside the NHS for candidates who are used to working in a group or multi-disciplinary environment because these roles are still new to the system and the model,' Marshall says. 

The associate director says it's her mission to break down the barriers that prevent healthcare benefiting from the fresh perspective and new ideas brought in by people from outside the sector. 

‘We are passionate about working with organisations to understand where potential talent could exist and then to work with tenacity to uncover that and run processes that remove barriers to say you don't have to have NHS experience as an absolute essential when looking at certain roles,' she explains. 

‘The NHS needs to embrace new people coming in and help with the onboarding to understand their unique culture.'

Having won the Tiara Award for Best Candidate Experience in 2024, Tile Hill is recognised in the market for supporting people's careers. 

‘We are passionate about ensuring we don't limit the opportunities that are available by keeping people to their sector-specific boxes,' Marshall says. 

As well as accessing a broader talent pool, including top talent within the private sector, Tile Hill is fully aligned with the NHS's commitment to promoting leadership diversity. 

‘We are affiliating ourselves with different BAME organisations and looking at how we can promote upwards as much as possible by sourcing candidates from the aspirant market and exploring how we can support people of colour who are aspiring to get into the top jobs,' Marshall explains. 

Tile Hill plans to roll-out its ‘Different' local government initiative in healthcare which offers a 12-month training programme for aspirant corporate directors from the global majority. 

‘We look at every which way we can to try and support diversity,' Marshall says. 

She adds she is aware of the need to be competitively priced when working with healthcare providers, given the current challenging financial climate. 

‘We recognise we need to respond to the health market in a way that is acceptable commercially,' she explains. ‘During these challenging times of austerity the NHS is facing, we want to support our clients commercially to achieve their recruitment budget. 

‘We want to be seen as the organisation that provides and delivers the best service, has the best candidates, is trustworthy, honest and is someone that you would recommend to your neighbouring trusts, other partners in the system and also your colleagues to work with.'

With Tile Hall having achieved strong growth in healthcare since its launch, Marshall has big ambitions for the business going forward.

‘We want to mirror what we have done in local government,' she says. ‘We want to become the market leader and a renowned name within health recruitment. We want to be the go-to people within interim and executive search.' 

Watch this space.

Get in touch with, Helen Marshall and let's explore the potential of interim leadership in healthcare.