BUILDING A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE SEARCH TEAM

By Mr. Alfred Shum, Chairman & CEO

Mr. Shum founded Onpress 9 years ago and expanded this recruitment and pharmaceutical services business from a one-man band to 15 staff with 3 offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  He is a master’ s graduate in biochemistry and MBA from Sydney Australia, has worked for many well known multinational companies in senior management roles, and is a popular speaker and writer on China, recruitment and pharmaceutical issues in international forums.  He has recruited many senior managers and technical specialists across many industries in China and Asia.

Perhaps, let’s begin by defining our terms.

A “team” means more than one person. It can be from 2 persons in a small team to 200 persons for a big team.  The essence is that, no matter how many persons in this team, each member must be able to contribute in a way that the output of the team is more than that of the total sum of each individual.  Therefore there is synergy in the division of labor, in the cooperation between members, etc.

Executive search is in essence the recruitment assignment, i.e., we need to match the requirements of a position in an organization with an individual; the better and longer is this match, the more effective is this executive search exercise.  If the match has resulted in an enduring “marriage” with beautiful and healthy off-springs, then it has been a successful match.  If, on the other hand, the match results in an “ early divorce”, then our matching has failed! And, we have been “ineffective”!  So, cries of money back!!!

In an emerging market such as China (where most business parameters are in a flux, most social values are short-term and material things and monetary rewards are paramount), and being in the service-industry (where the clients are kings and tend to be very demanding), executive search is really not a “good” business to be in.  And building a highly effective team is a most difficult task!

Obviously, this can be done!  Based on the experience of 9 years as a recruiter, the author has tried, and continues to try, to build a highly effective team.  The purpose of this article is to share these experiences with the readers.

The Executive Search Process

This process can be conveniently divided into a number of compartments:

• Business Development
• The Research Process
• Candidate Development
• Interviewing
• Negotiations
• Follow Ups
• Client Management

Based on our experience, the skill sets and personal qualities required for Business Development and Client Management are very different from those of the other compartments.  Within our recruitment business, we have defined out client base as multinational companies in any industry and our candidate base as western expatriates, Chinese expatriates and Chinese nationals who must be graduates, English-speaking and either have worked or are working in multinational firms.

The core competencies and personality traits for this consultant, in Business Development and Client Management, would be:

• First-class communication (including both Chinese and English language skills), people, political, negotiation and social (people interaction) skills
• Business management experience (local and international), sharp, focused, understand the P&L, quick in identifying business and strategic issues
• Mature, open, compromising, can say no, able to tell it as it is, sincere and genuine, disciplined, high personal standards and integrity

The research process involves a clear understanding of the recruitment assignment, the target companies, target positions and target candidates.  Once an assignment has been signed, then we must brief the research team on what we want, the industry we’re targeting, the salary range, the age group, location, etc. At this point, we must tell the research team as much as we can about the assignment!  Then, the research team will systematically identify the industry, the target companies (via the internet, the business directories, statistical publications and talking to our previous candidates in our data base), positions and potential candidates.  The researchers must be disciplined and clever enough to make excuses for procuring telephone numbers (including the mobile numbers), persons’ names and positions, etc.  Then, the job is assigned to an Associate Consultant, who would contact the target candidate, try to gain his/her confidence and in general conduct a telephone interview with this candidate. This is known as Candidate Development.  Once this candidate is considered suitable for the assignment, the Associate Consultant would try to procure a CV, either via e-mail or fax.  And on further proof that this candidate is worth pursuing, then we’ll follow through with this candidate on interviews by ourselves, negotiations and validation of data, report writing, interviews with the client and negotiations on the terms of appointment.

We normally recommend at least 5 candidates, each of whom would meet most of the position requirements, for the client; and we expect the client to select at least 2 out this short-list.  After helping the client with the selection process, we conduct reference checks on the selected candidate.  This concludes our assignment.

In order to meet the demands of this process, we’ve appointed a number of persons for the tasks:

• Central Research Team: -      Research Manager
                                      -      Researchers
                                      -      Part-time Researchers

• Associate Consultant/Consultant:  -      Candidate development
                                                     -      Candidate interviews
                                                     -      Report writing
                                                     -      Client interviews
                                                     -      Negotiations
                                                     -      Reference checks
                                                     -      Follow ups

    •  Managing Consultant:       -      Manages the consultants and research team

Skill set requirements

• Graduates
• Intelligent
• Excellent communication, language (English) and people skills
• High personal standards and integrity
• Interested in people, with a give-and-take attitude

Rewards

• An open, democratic, easy-going (but high-pressure), genuine/sincere and exciting environment
• Low base salary, with potentially high rewards (including equity of the company)
• A clear, simple incentive plan with a high earning potential based on one’s contributions
• Career development, learning potential

The key to building an effective team is to gather the people who share similar aspirations and life goals, provide them with the right tools, training, career opportunities and rewards in an open, genuine and democratic manner.