We were tasked with appointing experienced Country Managers in Germany, the UK and the Baltics for a multibillion Canadian agri-business who wanted to significantly increase their exports.
This was a key priority for the business, as it was anticipated that the success of these roles would fundamentally impact the extent to which it achieved its aim of producing ingredients and manufacturing products for many years to come.
However, in order to fully capitalise on market opportunities, the company needed to significantly expand its presence in Europe to remain competitive.
Following our in-depth analysis of market challenges faced by the company and verification of the resources at its disposal, the new management decided to appoint three new Country Managers.
Whilst our brief was to help appoint new Country Managers, we were also tasked with identifying pipelines of talent for sales and marketing requirements at a variety of levels.
Our response was to identify ‘high potentials’ and build long-term relationships with them to ensure that they would seriously consider our client as a future employer.
We mapped people across Europe, before approaching them, either as potential candidates or as speculative future hires, and progressed discussions as appropriate.
In addition to our research activity, we also placed a series of advertisements, online and in relevant journals and publications.
We launched creative, unbranded advertisements, in order to attract interest from individuals who wouldn’t normally consider joining our client.
We successfully identified first-class, high-calibre Country Managers from other market-leading businesses in the EU.
We established a new pipeline of potential candidates for our client who were both flattered and intrigued by our speculative ‘talent tracking’ approach.
We furnished our client with real insight into their brand value and the popular perceptions of them that existed in industry at that time.