This is increasingly important: searches cannot be limited to the closed sphere of a specialty or department. The ability to adapt to a company’s culture carries as much weight as someone’s professional career and experience. There are many companies that appreciate this essential point and they are the same ones that hire executives most successfully.
The project was to look for a person who fits the culture of a markedly multinational company, with a very strong focus on teamwork, multiculturalism, and in a highly regulated sector.
An atypical search was launched, with emphasis on analysing adaptation to the corporate culture as well as to the job. The position was covered with a high degree of satisfaction for three years.
Executive recruiting is often accompanied by a mandate specifying the technical requirements of a job for which only a small group of professionals is eligible. Aside from preparation and experience, sectors tend to be endogamous and feed off their own talent, especially those that are regulated.
Up to this point, we are talking about a classic talent search. But there are companies that go farther and think beyond a professional’s theoretical knowledge, looking at much more demanding values: they need a person who fits their corporate culture well. This now becomes something more than a traditional search—it is a project that demands evaluation of the candidates’ capacity for cultural adaptation as one of the client’s core requirements.
In this case we presented a complex, atypical search in the multinational sphere. Along with the candidate’s technical requirements, the company gave a lot of importance to attitude.
The classical part of the requirements was limited to:
The company’s own structure added another element of complexity:
And, moreover, the organisation put forward several requirements that complicated the choice of profile further:
The key to the search was extending it to include professionals from other sectors completely different from our client’s business, and giving absolute priority to candidates’ cultural adaptation as opposed to pure experience.
The result is that the position was filled, with a high degree of satisfaction on both sides.
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