Sika

Sika is a Swiss-headquartered global specialty chemicals company with a major UK operation spanning multiple construction product divisions. Its product range includes concrete admixtures and repair systems, roofing membranes and coatings, sealants and adhesives (through the Everbuild brand), flooring solutions and structural waterproofing. In the UK, Sika sells through a combination of specification channels — targeting structural engineers, architects and M&E consultants — and merchant distribution routes, with different business units operating largely independently with their own sales teams and hiring managers. Sales Recruit UK developed relationships across several of these business units, providing recruitment support to multiple hiring managers simultaneously.

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Sales Recruit UK worked with Sika across a sustained period covering multiple business units, filling Area Sales Manager roles at various levels across the UK. Briefs ranged from specification-focused roles targeting structural engineers and architects with concrete repair and waterproofing products, to merchant-facing roles managing builder's merchant accounts for the Everbuild sealants and adhesives division. Each business unit had distinct requirements, routes to market and candidate profiles — requiring Sales Recruit UK to tailor the approach and candidate criteria for each specific brief rather than applying a one-size-fits-all methodology.

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Construction industry sales recruitment has a persistent challenge — the volume of candidates who claim relevant experience is high, but the proportion who can demonstrate genuine commercial impact at field sales level is low. Sika's multiple business units each required different but specific candidate profiles: specification salespeople with technical credibility in construction chemistry, merchant account managers with established relationships across the builders' merchant trade, and roofing product specialists with contractor and flat roof contractor contacts. Sourcing across these different profiles simultaneously, while maintaining quality standards across all of them, required consistent discipline in brief-taking and candidate assessment.

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Sales Recruit UK developed relationships with multiple hiring managers across Sika's UK business units, understanding each division's product range, route to market and commercial culture. This depth of understanding allowed each search to be properly scoped rather than run as a generic job filling exercise. The SRUK Fit Score process was applied consistently across all searches, assessing candidates against the specific route-to-market requirements of each business unit — specification versus merchant, product-specialist versus generalist — rather than against a common template.

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