Recruiting Talent for Emerging Markets

As companies have become truly global in their operations (i.e. having operations in many countries rather than just selling internationally from a home base) companies have needed to develop an international cadre of management both for their overseas operations and at home base.

Operating in countries like China and India has highlighted the need for additional competencies relating to multi-cultural management and interfacing with host governments.

Many company succession plans have revealed that they do not have an adequate pipeline of management talent for their future business needs both at home and overseas.

The reasons for this are:

• Global operations in Emerging Markets have only been as established during the last 10 years
• The economic problems and recessions over the last 15 years have seen major cuts in training and development resources which have not been re-instated when economic recovery took place.

The larger multinational companies have started to set up new functions for talent acquisition and talent management. Priorities have been to

• Develop rigorous succession plans
• Ensure the development of management talent
• Build talent pools for mission critical positions

Succession Planning

The planning process has identified many gaps in the organization chart. One major corporation we visited in the USA said they had a need to recruit 100 VPs over 12 months As a result they wanted to establish an external talent pool drawn from their major competitors which would enable them to

• Have an “external” succession plan
• Benchmark their internal talents

Mission Critical Positions

Key positions where companies have a constant need to recruit and where delay can cause considerable business disruption

Examples:

• Chemical Industry – Commissioning Managers (with Asian experience)
• Automotive – Program Managers
• Pharms – Medical Doctors to work in the Pharma industry
• Banking – High Net Worth Private Bankers

These companies have engaged us to create Talent Pools to provide them with a readily available pool of potential recruits. This approach is faster and more cost effective than executive search as the companies can then make direct approaches themselves to candidates from the Talent Pool.

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