Case Study: 79 cleared ICT specialists sourced and submitted in 16 business days

Client: Commonwealth agency

Project: Managed workforce for a digital identity programme

How Profectus identified, profiled and submitted a full 79-person managed workforce for a Commonwealth digital identity programme, on its own paper, with no teaming.

Client and context

A large Commonwealth agency went to market for a managed workforce to build and run its digital identity products. The requirement was substantial: 79 named ICT specialists, every one minimum Baseline cleared, weighted heavily toward software delivery. Developers, DevOps engineers, systems analysts, scrum masters, test and release leads, security, UX, solution architecture and product ownership, spanning SFIA levels 3 through 6.

The requirement was also national in footprint. These specialists had to be on the ground across major cities on Australia’s eastern seaboard, spanning Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, rather than concentrated in a single centre.

The engagement

The conditions left no room to share the load. No consortia. No joint ventures. No subcontracting. No offshore. Named CVs for every proposed resource, with no proposed costs against them. A response that partially met the requirement would not be considered. It had to be 79 cleared specialists, delivered on Profectus’ own paper. The window was 16 business days, and the Easter long weekend sat inside it.

The challenge

A requirement like this exposes whoever cannot move at pace. Four constraints compounded:

  • Scale without leverage: sourcing 79 cleared, named, suitably skilled people from a standing start is not a recruitment task that scales by adding effort. It scales by having the system already built before the opportunity arrives.
  • Geographic dispersion: the people had to be sourced and cleared not in one market but across several capital cities at once, each with its own thin pool of available cleared talent.
  • An all-or-nothing compliance floor: a partial response would not be considered, so every one of the 79 roles had to be filled, named and documented to the same standard, with no scope to submit what was easy and explain the rest.
  • A fixed, compressed window: 16 business days with the Easter long weekend sitting inside it, leaving no capacity to recover lost time late in the response.

That is the distinction Profectus is structured around. We are not gamblers, we are engineers. We do not rely on timing or volume to get there. We build the machine in advance, so that when the market moves we are already in position.

Our approach

The response ran off the systems we maintain every day, not a scramble assembled for the occasion.

Warm cleared CRM first

We started from a warm, cleared CRM of more than 3,000 candidates, segmented by clearance, skill and role readiness, and ran a structured pre-filter against the 79 role profiles to surface fits in hours rather than days.

Compliant submissions at pace

Our profile and CV frameworks turned raw candidate material into compliant, role-aligned submissions at pace and at a consistent standard, so that scale did not cost quality. Clearance and suitability were verified against role requirements before anyone went into the response, which kept rework out of the final days of the window.

One governed cadence

The whole effort ran to a single governed cadence, with the pricing workbook, named CVs and compliance schedules tracked to one deadline. A response of this size fails on coordination as readily as on sourcing, so commercial, technical and compliance workstreams ran to the same clock.

Escalation, not stall

A warm CRM answers most of a requirement like this, not all of it. Where a role had no ready match, the search did not stall, it escalated. We moved to LinkedIn Recruiter and SEEK and ran active sourcing against the specific role profiles. That one campaign brought in 636 qualified candidates in April, close to double our average monthly intake of around 360, and achieved under deadline pressure.

Targeting and continuous message testing

What makes that escalation work is not reach. Anyone can post a role or send messages. It is the method behind who we approach and what we say to them. We target precisely, against clearance, skill and role fit, so outreach reaches people who actually match the requirement rather than a wide, low-relevance net, and relevance is the single biggest lever on whether someone replies. We then run A/B split tests on our outreach, measure what lands, double down on the variants pulling the highest response, and roll the winners out across the campaign. The message is never static. The outcome is an outreach response rate of 40 per cent and above, twice the industry benchmark of around 20 per cent.

What we delivered

  • 79 named specialists: every proposed resource named, minimum Baseline cleared and matched to its role profile across SFIA levels 3 to 6.
  • Full compliance documentation: named CVs, compliance schedules and the pricing workbook, tracked to a single submission deadline.
  • National coverage: specialists on the ground across Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra rather than concentrated in a single centre.
  • Sole-provider delivery: the response submitted on Profectus’ own paper, with no consortium, joint venture, subcontracting or offshore arrangement behind it.
  • A sourcing campaign at surge volume: 636 qualified candidates brought in during April, close to double the average monthly intake of around 360.

Systems and methods

Warm cleared CRM (3,000+ segmented candidates) · Structured role-profile pre-filter · Profile and CV compliance frameworks · LinkedIn Recruiter · SEEK · A/B tested outreach · SFIA levels 3 to 6 · Baseline clearance minimum

The result

79 named, Baseline-cleared, role-aligned specialists, fully documented and submitted compliantly, inside the allotted time, on our own paper.

  • Requirement met in full: all 79 roles named and submitted, against a threshold where a partial response would not have been considered.
  • Delivered inside the window: 16 business days, with the Easter long weekend falling inside it.
  • Sourcing performance under pressure: 636 qualified candidates in April at an outreach response rate of 40 per cent and above, twice the industry benchmark of around 20 per cent.
  • No external dependency: zero partners or subcontractors relied on at any point in the response.

Impact and relevance

Cleared capability is scarce and in sustained demand, and the agencies that need it are increasingly sensitive to whether a provider can actually deliver at scale and at speed. This is the gap Profectus is built to close. Capability identified, verified and mobilised quickly, drawn from a warm cleared CRM where it exists and surfaced through a tested sourcing method where it does not, with the discipline to do it again the next time, and the time after that.

That is not a one-off, it is the machine working as designed. The engagement evidences sole-provider delivery at scale without teaming, cleared sourcing across multiple capital city markets simultaneously, compliant named-CV submission against a hard all-or-nothing deadline, and a measurable, repeatable sourcing method that outperforms the market benchmark.