People Profile: Robert Farace

Robert's story

I was first exposed to HR when I started on a fast-track scheme with the London Borough of Barnet and instantly loved it. I’ve now been in HR for over 20 years gaining a wealth of experience across the public sector and charity sector.

After a variety of HR roles in Barnet Council including HR policy and strategy, recruitment and generalist roles, I moved to the Children’s Society, initially as Head of Recruitment and Diversity then as HR Business Partner looking after head office functions.

I joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund to help them prepare for their merger with the Cancer Research Campaign to form Cancer Research UK, the world's leading independent organisation dedicated to cancer research. I played a key role in this major charity merger and went on to set up the resourcing function in this new organisation, introducing e-recruitment, an interactive staff reward and benefits site, cultivating the employer brand and developing its graduate training schemes.

I’ve now moved to the NHS where I recruit emerging talent through the NHS leadership programmes. I also source external talent to the NHS through its fast-track senior management programme. My portfolio includes the award-winning NHS Graduate programme and I’ve recently introduced an intern scheme. The other major programme I am responsible for seeks to recruit black and ethnic minority NHS staff to fast track into senior management roles.

I don’t think I’d even heard of HR at the start of my career but when I was exposed to it during my own fast-track experience at Barnet I instantly decided to make my career choice. Resourcing and marketing is now my specialist area but I’ve been lucky enough to have gained knowledge and experience across all areas of HR and have enjoyed them all.

Career insights and advice

I think that the key skills and attributes for a career in HR are creativity, resilience, people skills and analytic thinking. And you must be prepared to really get to understand the organisation you work for. Get onto the shop floor and understand the daily pressures – it will give you credibility. It will also help you understand how HR can help the organisation and ensure your work benefits the company and doesn’t hinder it!

In times of change HR has a key role to play in any organisation. We need to help organisations engage staff during periods of change. And when the good times come back, we need to be ready to help resource the organisation appropriately.

Career highlights

• Involvement in the merger to form Cancer Research UK. We were breaking new ground as the first major charity merger. We laid down a marker for the HR function by showing just how well we could perform and helped make the merger the huge success it was.
• Setting up new graduate schemes for the NHS and Cancer Research UK within very tight timescales. I loved the fast pace of having to get a product to market and the creativity and innovation that you need to make it work.
• Breaking new ground at the Children’s Society by involving our stakeholders - ie the children and young people - in our recruitment process so they were really engaged in the resourcing of staff that worked with them. Being at the forefront of introducing e-recruitment was also very rewarding and hugely challenging.