Last year, an audit company from the top 10 approached us to find a HR Director. The task was to introduce the best practices implemented in Big 4 companies into the work of our Customer’s company.
A seemingly simple task turned out to be more difficult than we thought. During the search, the Customer unexpectedly limited the range of candidates to only those who have or have had long-term work experience in one of the big 4 companies (and not just in consulting). According to the Customer, only in these companies does an HR professional gain unique experience in attracting and retaining highly qualified employees with specialized expertise, and personnel in auditing and consulting, without exaggeration, “decides everything.”
The main difficulties we encountered were the reluctance of candidates to move to a company with a lower rating, the relocation of many Big Four HR employees abroad, as well as the insufficient level of remuneration for the transition. As usual, before starting work, we provide the market level of expected compensation for the required specialists, but for a number of reasons the Customer was not ready to “outbid” candidates. We came to a joint decision to look for candidates among those who currently have experience in several HR functions, as well as the potential and ambition to “grow” with the company into a 360° HR Director. Moving in this direction, we managed to reach several candidates, among whom the finalist was selected by the management of the client company. Our candidate successfully completed the probationary period, during which she formed a new HR team, and also reorganized recruitment operations which are the highest priority area for companies in this industry.