Striking The Bullseye

A diversified multinational with products and services in agriculture, FMCG, beauty care, and supply chain management, was looking for a seasoned Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) professional to setup and manage the function at a global level. As an Executive Search firm, we are the happiest when the requirements from the Client are very specific. In this case the Client had specified – Internal Audit experience, work with the Big-4 audit firms, and currently heading the Internal Audit and ERM functions at an MNC. Additionally, the ask was for a candidate with significant exposure to the European or American markets and willing to relocate to Dubai (UAE). Given this, the pool of potential candidates was extremely small indeed, the chances of finding the right candidate willing to relocate being lesser still.

Given the mandate, the market mapping exercise proved to be the toughest step and called for a thorough search across global FMCG players. For any talent agency in UAE like in any other market, LinkedIn is the largest repository of professionals and the go-to place to look for candidates. However, in this case, the sheer number of criteria made it nearly impossible to identify the correct candidate as he or she could not be traced through available filters. The process required manual parsing of several CVs till one candidate was found – An individual who ticked all the boxes and was managing a similar role at an Energy to Entertainment major in India. Once identified, it took several calls to convince the potential candidate to agree to a conversation with the Board of Directors at the Client, and then finally agree to make the move.

Finding the right candidate and closing the position brought an immense sense of satisfaction specifically in this case given the fact that the ‘right’ person proved to be very difficult to find. To put things in perspective, imagine being asked to find someone ‘exactly’ like a Hollywood hero, and then managing to do so.