Creating
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As our CEO, Helen has led Hodes integration with the Omnicom network; a decision which has seen us become one of the UK’s leading talent and brand specialists. As well as sitting on the Hodes’ Global Network Executive Board, she is our principal HR/Brand Strategy Consultant on talent, branding, engagement and communications projects, working at board level on engaging and educating leaders on the power and importance of employer reputation.

Since studying for her master’s degree, it’s been her belief that the people dimension and cultural dynamics are the key to an organisation’s success. And it’s here that Hodes’s distinctive approach to employer branding has its origins. Developed and refined during more than ten years’ practice with blue-chip clients, including GSK, Philips and Nokia, Anglo American, ABB, Cargill, GSK and HMRC, the Hodes’s model examines the unwritten deal between employers and employees.

Today, Helen speaks and writes about these issues all over the world – an activity that culminated in the publication in 2009 of an agency book on the employer brand deal.

With over 18 years’ experience in the people communications space, Kate has tackled a rich array of talent challenges. She has provided strategic, creative and tactical support to some of the UK’s most exciting brands, helping Virgin Atlantic, Carphone Warehouse, KPMG, Sainsbury’s and Barclays attract and retain their employees of choice. Equally she has worked with leading organizations including FSA and PepsiCo to articulate their employer brand proposition to internal and external audiences.

And, as the evolution towards direct sourcing has gathered speed, she has developed and delivered strategies that have driven lasting efficiencies and ensured real value for Carlsberg and EC Harris amongst others. A helicopter perspective on talent matters has been cemented by an invaluable period client-side advising leading organisations on how to manage their agency relationships.

She draws together all this expertise as our Director of Client Development. A member of the Leadership Team since joining Hodes 2 years ago, Kate’s focus is on ensuring clients benefit from our ideas, innovation, expertise and creative approach. Working with all areas of the agency – talent acquisition, employer brand and engagement - Kate is customer-led and strategic, bringing infectious enthusiasm to every client.

An engagement strategy and employer brand specialist, Annette leads our employee engagement offer and she draws on over 18 years’ experience in talent, branding, communications and sales. A firm believer in the value of stakeholder management, involvement and cross-discipline collaboration, she thinks involving and engaging local players throughout the process is the key determining factor of a successful global branding or engagement project. Simply put: if solutions are presented as surprises, they will never succeed.

Recently, Annette contributed a chapter on Employee Engagement to the Bernard Hodes book ‘The Employer brand – keeping faith with the deal’. She has also published reports and toolkits on what happens to engagement and the employer brand deal when companies complete merger and acquisitions, produced practical internal communications tools for HR and written a white paper on how to manage your alumni.

A raft of leading organisations have called on Annette’s engagement and branding expertise in rolling out a new strategy and values, managing change, developing global recognition schemes and creating brand advocates, to just name a few. Clients include Nestle, Anglo American, Barclays, Barclaycard, Elsevier, Westfield, HSBC, Aviva, BNY Mellon, Carphone Warehouse and Genzyme.

A graduate in Communication Studies, Cathy began her career in employer branding and recruitment marketing 17 years ago. During her 11 years with the Bernard Hodes Group, she has worked in partnership with some of the UK’s top employers, as well as several global companies, leading the relationship and helping to set and implement their resourcing strategies. Cathy’s experience includes working with clients such as KPMG, Novartis, Nokia, Hertfordshire Constabulary and ABB.

Cathy has in-depth graduate attraction and recruitment experience and leads the Bernard Hodes Future Talent proposition, working with clients to consult on, and implement, major integrated campaigns. She is a member of the Association of Graduate Recruiters, a business adviser to the Cambridge University Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team, and is a regular judge and facilitator at the SIFE National Competition and other industry awards. She also helped define the Graduate Employer of the Year award during a 7 year relationship with TargetJobs.

Since going into graduate recruitment 20 years ago, Linda's passion in understanding the graduate market led her to win a number of awards (with the help of Hodes) when she was the Graduate & Business Placement Programme Manager for Marks & Spencer. She also ran a successful A' Level campaign attracting students worldwide. But it hasn't stopped there, she has also worked for Teach First, a charity organisation recruiting high calibre graduates to work in challenging schools and also the Association of Graduate Recruiters.

She is passionate about preparing youngsters for the workplace and as Chair of Governors at a Secondary school in St. Albans, she provides support and guidance on career opportunties to the students.

Simon has over 15 years’ of experience in the employee communications space, working with brands including Orange, Aviva, National Express, Costa Coffee and Debenhams. As well as strategically driving these accounts he has delivered a number of attraction campaigns covering everything from managers to contact centre staff and head-office to Directors.

Simon has also managed a number of large projects, including global onboarding portals, Senior, Exec onboarding programmes, ATS integrations, assessment & selection toolkits and a number of complex website design and builds. He had an internal role as Resourcing Manager within Aegis Media Group where he devised, developed and demonstrated the merits of a direct sourcing model including their careers website creation and ATS development and integration.

Over and above driving down CPH, Simon has gained a unique insight to clients’ challenges and priorities.

Hodes’ Creative and Digital Director, Andy has spent over a decade in interactive, working with some of the largest and most successful brands in the world to deliver effective, engaging and award-winning campaigns.
Unusually, he has worked both client and agency-side, for Lloyds TSB, leading digital agencies MRM Worldwide and AKQA . Andy has acted as an industry advisor on the issues that digital channels have brought about and has spoken at and written for several publications and key industry bodies.

A strong advocate of “good quality data” and user-centric design, Andy is responsible for ensuring that our digital solutions are appropriate, engaging and effective, partnering with clients to help them get the best use out of interactive media. 
His client partnerships span all sectors and include Barclays, Staples, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and ABB. A father of three, he can often be found braving the waters of the South Coast - even in winter.

Dan has been with Hodes a year and within the industry for over a decade. He is responsible for driving innovation in the digital design space and overseeing all digital creative work going through Hodes. Dan has worked with a number of leading brands including Carphone Warehouse, Guinness and British Airways. Before joining Hodes Dan worked at Barkers as Head of Digital Creative and a little over a year later was promoted to Digital Creative Director. At Hodes as our Head of Digital Design he ensures that our web design standards are maintained and that creativity is constantly pushed to new levels across all online and digital platforms.

As our Creative Consultant, Cara leads both our creative output and our content strategy offering. Bringing with her almost 15 years experience across almost every discipline within the branding and advertising space, from direct mail and press advertising to radio and online, she has been a digital specialist for over 10 years and has held a number of senior creative leadership roles and consulting positions at many of the top digital agencies in London.

Cara is an award-winning creative and has extensive digital expertise and client partnership experience, having worked on a number of large scale branding and website build projects directly with clients including Royal Mail, British Gas, Toyota and Barclays.

A keen evangelist of content strategy and tone of voice, Cara’s particular strengths and passions lie in: helping brands find their personality, developing relevant, distinct tones of voice, big ideas and media neutral engagement campaigns and working directly with clients to help them understand and develop effective, measurable content strategies.

Two years with Hodes and over 15 years’ experience, Dylan cut his teeth in the financial sector, with HSBC and Merrill Lynch, before moving into advertising and pure play digital. Having worked on a large number of complex and sensitive projects with a variety of blue-chip clients like Barclays, Bupa, Esso, Pepsico, Virgin Media and VW; Dylan has delivered large websites, campaign micro-sites, online banners and ECRM programs; through managing various size teams, both onsite and offshore.

Whilst they process-driven project manager, Dylan maintains flexibility, combining proven methodology with an innovative approach, to deliver on scope, on time and on budget. He is responsible for overseeing the complete project delivery lifecycle for all digital and non-digital projects moving through Hodes.

Rebecca is a senior researcher with more than 10 years’ experience and looks after the day to day running of our research team. Since joining Hodes in 2011, she has led research programmes to develop and test employer brands for Boots, Cargill and Elsevier, an internal communications audit for Santander UK, as well as smaller pieces of research that inform our client’s attraction strategies. Rebecca has expertise in using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, managing global research programmes and developing innovative research solutions to deliver the insight that our clients need.

Before joining Hodes, she was an Associate Director within Ipsos MORI’s Social Research Institute and Experian’s Strategy, Research and Economics team where her focus was helping the government understand employment and skills issues. During this time, she was involved in running a number of key government labour market studies, and worked with the CBI to deliver a UK-wide business survey to measure economic trends.

An employee engagement and internal communications specialist, Joe joined our consulting team in 2011. A former journalist and Head of Content at Engage Group, his expertise covers social media and content strategy, community management, copywriting and tone of voice. Highlights include launching channels for O2, Tesco and the Foreign Office, developing a global website for a magic-circle law firm and devising a brand engagement campaign for AXA. Joe has a particular interest in the impact of social media on employer branding, engagement and communication strategies, and its potential to transform organisational cultures.

Lindsey's career started out in digital marketing where she worked as a Senior Project Manager for clients including Texaco, Remmington and Computer Weekly. She has 15 years' experience in marcoms, research and strategic planning and is a full member of the CIM. Lindsey first joined Hodes in 2004 as part of the business development team. Now, in the role of Marketing Manager, she works with the Practice Leads to share expertise and relevant content to HR professionals through regular blogs and thought pieces. She also engages and involves clients actively via channels such as debates on Twitter.

She is our first point of contact for new business and works with the team to organise networking events so clients and industry experts can get together to share ideas about best practice.