Rovers have advertised for a new head of recruitment following the departure of Gus Williams.

The club are searching for their fourth head of recruitment in two years, with Williams departing only seven months after arriving, as he returns to the Wales Football Association set-up.

Williams was appointed in July, replacing John Park who had only one year in the role having been the successor to Stuart Harvey who left for Sunderland in March 2021.

Director of football Gregg Broughton, whose role oversees the recruitment department, said that Williams would ‘leave a legacy’ upon his exit from the club.

Broughton is now leading the search for his replacement, with the deadline for applications being Friday, March 17.

The role is understood to have already attracted many applicants, with Rovers working towards a swift appointment to prepare for the summer transfer window and beyond.

The advert states: “Reporting to the board of directors and director of football, the main responsibility of the head of recruitment is to develop and oversee the process that enables BRFC to identify and recruit emerging and undervalued players faster and more effectively than other clubs.

“The head of recruitment will manage a team of established scouts in both the first team and academy departments who are already working across target demographics and geographies.

“They will align the department’s work to the club’s vision in order to increase the depth and scope of work and help develop an effective international recruitment structure and strategy.

“The head of recruitment will embrace the importance of both the traditional form of scouting along with the use of data and analytics to complement and target which players are watched and how this information is managed and visualised.

“They will develop both talent identification and player recruitment within the department to ensure that the focus is not only on finding the best players but also convincing them that Blackburn Rovers is the right place for them to fulfil their potential.

“The relationship with the club’s academy will be the starting point for all recruitment, and the head of recruitment will work collaboratively with the academy staff in order to synchronise succession planning and therefore identify the requirements of the first team over and above academy supply.”

Rovers have bolstered their recruitment department since Broughton’s arrival, with a new head of UK scouting, European scouting and data scouting all appointed over the course of the last year.

The incoming candidate is required to have ‘a proven track record of working within elite performance recruitment and scouting of players’, an ‘excellence in creating structure and running processes,’ ‘outstanding people skills and a high level of communication and presentation skills’ and must be ‘open-minded towards using new and developing ideas that can improve current recruitment and talent identification practices’.

The incoming candidate will be based at the club’s Senior Training Centre at Brockhall, but ‘will involve a significant amount of travelling both domestically and internationally’.