The Senior Tax Manager Russia & CIS has joined the financial team of our regular customer. The success of this search was preceded by one of our consultant’s lengthy selection process.
Where did its complexity lay in? Our client requested a mandatory combination of four-to-five years of consultancy expertise (from the Big Four) and in-house experience with a large international company. But such a “mixed” experience is usually found in older candidates who already held director’s posts in tax departments. Most of up-to-forty-five years of age candidates who were interested in this job had experience either entirely in consulting or in-house.
The position’s attractiveness was also decreased by the lack of staff to be line-managed. Most candidates with the required expertise already had experience in managing teams and did not want to lose a manager’s status. Another problem turned out to be compensation — very low for those knowledgeable in tax legislation of the CIS countries as the expert’s area of responsibility covered eighteen (!) geography markets.
Despite all obstacles, our consultant succeeded in a seemingly impossible search. Elena Kvartalnova promptly presented three equally competent candidates to meet the declared level of compensation. When the chosen finalist refused, unable to wait for a six-week long approval of the job offer at the client’s HQ, Elena was able to provide a new pool of candidates in a short period of time. In total, fifteen candidates were presented in the two-stage search.
As our client commented, our consultant has even managed to “overfulfill the plan”: the second finalist, in addition to meeting all the set requirements, also had an eighteen-month experience in the London headquarters of one of the Big Four’s companies. This was recognized as a great advantage by her future superior — a British line-manager.