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## Penna: Executive Search, RPO, and Employer Branding Specialist

Penna is an UK-based recruitment and talent consultancy operating out of offices in London (Spitalfields) and Birmingham. The company sits under the LHH brand umbrella, which gives it access to a broader global talent network while maintaining a distinct identity focused on public sector and executive hiring. If you are a buyer evaluating outsourced recruitment or employer branding support, Penna is worth understanding clearly: this is not a generalist staffing agency, and it is not a high-volume offshore BPO. It is a specialist firm with a clear orientation toward senior, complex, and public-sector hiring.

### What Penna Actually Does

Penna's service lines span the full recruitment value chain, and that breadth is worth taking seriously. They are not just an executive search firm that bolts on a few extras.

**Executive Search and Executive Interim** are clearly core. The live roles on their site illustrate this well: an Executive Director of Resources for Oldham Council at around £150,000, a Director of Adult Social Care and Health for Kent County Council, and a Programme Director for the North London Waste Authority at £165,000 plus bonus. These are not volume roles. These are senior, high-sensitivity appointments where the cost of a wrong hire or a slow process is significant. Penna's positioning here is squarely in public sector leadership and local government.

**Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)** is listed as a core service under Candidate Sourcing and Candidate Management. RPO at this level typically means Penna takes on part or all of a client's recruitment function, managing sourcing, screening, and pipeline management end to end. For public sector and large institutional clients, this is often more appropriate than building internal capacity for hiring spikes.

**Attraction and Communications, Employer Branding, and Performance Media** round out the marketing side of the talent equation. This is where Penna shows more depth than a pure search firm. They can build and run awareness campaigns, handle digital and social recruitment marketing, and manage performance media to reach passive candidates. Their Dstl case study is a concrete example: Defence Science and Technology Laboratory needed to reach highly technical talent who did not know the organisation existed. Penna created an online game to generate awareness and ran a campaign that won multiple awards, including Best Digital Solution and Innovation in Recruitment. That is a genuine differentiator if your hiring challenge is brand invisibility in a competitive talent market.

**Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Consultancy** is listed as a standalone service, which signals that EDI is not just a checkbox here but a consulting practice in its own right. For public sector clients who face scrutiny on equitable hiring, this is relevant.

**Higher Education** is called out as a distinct vertical, which aligns with the public sector and institutional focus seen across the rest of their work.

**Data and Insight** and **Digital and Social** round out the picture, suggesting Penna can bring analytics and digital channel management into recruitment campaigns rather than relying purely on traditional sourcing.

### Who Fits Penna Best

The evidence points clearly toward UK public sector organisations: local authorities, NHS-adjacent bodies, housing bodies, and large institutional clients with complex senior hiring needs. The editorial content on their site covers Regional Care Cooperatives, housing sector leadership, and interim talent in local government. That is not accidental positioning.

For private sector buyers, Penna may be less of a natural fit unless the hiring challenge involves senior or executive search, brand-building for talent attraction, or a structured RPO engagement. A SaaS startup looking to outsource high-volume inbound support hiring is probably not the right match here.

The LHH parent connection is worth noting for buyers who need international reach or want the backing of a larger talent advisory group, but confirm what that actually means in practice for your engagement: ask whether the LHH network is genuinely integrated into your search or whether Penna operates independently on your account.

### Practical Delivery Details

Penna has two UK offices: London (Bishops Square, Spitalfields) and Birmingham (Trinity Business Park). Timezones are UK-centric, and there is no evidence of offshore delivery or nearshore operations. Languages are almost certainly English-primary given the client base and geography, though this should be confirmed for any multilingual hiring need.

Pricing model details are not published, which is typical for executive search and RPO. Executive search firms generally work on retained or contingency arrangements; RPO engagements are commonly structured as per-hire, per-seat, or monthly retainer depending on volume and scope. Expect pricing conversations to be bespoke. I would recommend asking specifically about all-in fees versus expenses, any success-fee structures layered on top of retained fees, and how they handle searches that extend beyond the agreed timeline.

### Editor's Take

Penna is a credible specialist for UK public sector executive hiring and employer branding. The Dstl case study is the strongest piece of concrete evidence in their public profile: they ran a creative, measurable campaign for a hard-to-hire technical audience and won awards for it. That tells you something real about capability.

What I would verify before engaging them: ask for case studies specifically in your sub-sector (local government versus NHS versus higher education are different buying environments), understand how the LHH relationship affects your account team and pricing, and get specifics on their candidate research methodology for executive search rather than accepting a general capability claim. For RPO specifically, find out what technology stack they use for candidate management and what reporting you receive during the process.

For any senior public sector hire where brand, EDI compliance, and quality of candidate are more important than speed and volume, Penna is worth a serious conversation. For high-volume transactional hiring or offshore back-office outsourcing, they are not the right starting point.