Diversity Pipelining – India
The Challenge
Our client is a global leader in the drinks category with a significant bottling operation across India. Our challenge was to produce a talent pipeline of women (Indian decent) currently working in Supply Chain & Manufacturing at management and executive grade. It was hoped this would significantly speed up the recruitment process whilst improving the diversity of the business.
The Approach
The decision was made to map the Indian market for women in supply chain and manufacturing across competitor and associated business segments. Approaches were made to gather information on the targets’ current responsibilities, long term career aspirations, salary and package and personal backgrounds. This information was documented and taken into consideration for any positions which became available within our client’s business.
It became apparent that relevant profiles in India were scarce, so the search was broadened out globally. Searches were conducted on females graduating with Engineering / Manufacturing degrees from respected Universities in India who were now living abroad and working in manufacturing / supply positions. These were also mapped and targeted, thus expanding the available pool of potential targets.
The Outcome
Once the project had gathered significant momentum, there were many documented cases of successful hiring of women into senior management / executive positions within the business. The programme also helped the client to reduce the recruitment timeframe by 2 weeks. Once established we passed over the project for it to be managed internally.
VP Indirect Procurement – North East Asia
The Challenge
Our client is a world leading conglomerate with a significant presence in the industrial and medical devices sectors. It has a turnover of over €6 billion Euros across its businesses in China, Taiwan and South Korea.
There was a need to hire a VP of indirect procurement for the region as the incumbent was on an expat contract which was coming to a close. The business had committed to localising its senior workforce as it aimed to reduce the number of expatriates in senior leadership positions.
Finding someone from the local Chinese market with experience in navigating the complexity of a European / US conglomerate whilst running a large team of over 100 local procurement staff directly was paramount.
The Approach
We identified international businesses with turnovers of over €3 billion in their NE Asia region. We also ensured that these businesses had been present in the market for long enough that they had a localised candidate with the experience we were looking for.
From these companies we produced a longlist of candidates and after extensive interviewing and testing we produced a shortlist of 5 to present to the client.
The Outcome
The successful candidate came from an international business which had divested its products base to a large Chinese manufacturing business. The candidate identified had been managing the indirect procurement team and as a result of the acquisition suddenly had a much larger global footprint and a team of internationals to integrate into the company structure.
This person led the cultural and systems transformation with significant impact on the business’s performance and once the project was completed was ready for a new challenge.
The candidate has since joined our client organisation and has future leadership potential having progressed swiftly up the procurement function within 18 months of joining.