A new professional success of Consort, this time in the field of oil refining.
In early June, a team led by the highly experienced Alisa Efremova successfully completed a search project for the position of Deputy General Director for Capital Construction for a large oil refinery at the federal level.
It is the highest reward for consultants when their clients stay with them for many years, sometimes even for decades, entrusting to the consultant the most complicated, non-standard searches.
Recently, Project Director Irina Vasilieva has completed what became probably one of the most difficult searches. All that was needed was to fill in a seemingly standard position of an HR director for a mining company in Kuzbass area. However, the first snag was that this joint venture with foreign business revealed a serious discrepancy between the strategic goals and business approaches of Russian and foreign owners and top managers. An additional complication was the poor environmental situation in the mine area, which was the reason for refusal from a number of candidates. The search covered all Russian regions; candidates came and went — they were either dissatisfied with the coal smog or did not suit the mine’s Russian or foreign co-owners. A compromise was reached only when candidate number fifteen was presented.
So far, this search has seen a record-breaking length for our company — almost 2 years!
A challenging project of finding a Sales Director for a large mining holding came to a successful completion thanks to the outside-the-box approach taken by a team of consultants led by Project Director Irina Vasilyeva.
Back in February 2020, before the introduction of the self-isolation regime, an old client — a private finance trading partnership — contacted us.
The pandemic is still there but life, including personnel search, goes on!
In July 2020, Consort Petersburg completed the search for a Secretary/Interpreter for our long-time client, a German manufacturing company. Applicants for this role were required not only to speak German at an advanced level in order to communicate with the German CEO and HQ in Germany but also have good English skills. One of the candidates — a student of the Philology Faculty of the St. Petersburg State University — already had some experience of administrative work and a semester of language internship in Kiel (Germany). It was at this time that she was writing her thesis to receive her master’s degree. She was successful in getting her postgraduate diploma, and the very next day she started her job with our client’s company. Of course, she still has a lot to learn about how a full-fledged German business works in Russia. And we are certainly pleased with the fact that we were able to «give a start in life» to a worthy representative of modern youth. And once again prove our ability to be of use in terms of recruitment for the «picky» German companies!
In the spring of 2020, the regional representative office of CONSORT Group in St Petersburg / North-West successfully completed a search in a new area: a Service Engineer was found for a western company that produces various systems and equipment for all types of rail vehicles, including railways.
In mid-March 2020, Consort Petersburg (Russia) completed a search assignment referred to us by the IESF Partner Gertjan van de Groep from the Netherlands.
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.