Executive Search is a craft, one whose main element is not wood, metal, or fabric, but talent.  Yet we take inspiration from eternal artisans: Tang Dynasty’s Changnan potters, Renaissance goldsmiths, and Suzhou silk-weaving craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty, or modern Swiss watchmakers. Like them, we apply a combination of art and technique bolstered by an obsession for quality, depth, and detail in the relentless pursuit of perfection. 

Our co-founder, Emmanuel, is a passionate craftsman of executive search. He lives and breathes his trade as a noble and sophisticated craft that demands a subtle combination of hundreds of soft variables around people’s psyche, aspirations, and emotions to deliver a tailor-made service, a premium experience that is personalized, high-touch, intuitive, creative, insightful, but also tenacious, rigorous, and thorough.
 

Rather than seeking to grow bigger and pursue a ubiquitous and “general merchandise” model, Emmanuel Hemmerle favors niche, hands-on service that specializes in a limited industry scope and focuses on a defined geography. As a complement to executive search, we also offer our advisory services to assist our existing clients.

In the realm of pure human high-touch service, small is beautiful in order to provide superior, flexible one-on-one service to both clients and candidates.
 

Headquartered in Shanghai, we have built a powerful global reach and possess a strong business and cultural expertise of the markets we operate in.

Most of our searches are global in nature: we scout for talent all over the world.

The leadership positions we fill are based in Asia and in Europe.

Our searchers' roles have scopes that cover China, or Asia, or the whole of Asia Pacific, or the entire world when these are C-suite (CEO, COO, CSO, CMO……)

EH is an independently owned firm. We can provide nimble service to our clients because, unlike big executive search consulting firms, we are free of a heavy global infrastructure, stock-market imperatives, and global HQ’s volume targets. 

Our long-term plans involve keeping the firm private, where the owner will continue to personally take care of every single client.
 

We present all our market research and feedback to our clients in a completely transparent and unadulterated manner. 

We conduct rigorous screening of the candidates we present to make sure we weed out future integrity risks for our clients. 

We have the luxury of choosing our clients as much as they choose us. To avoid conflicts of interest, we work selectively with a reduced number of players in any given industry. In addition, we only partner with those companies that uphold integrity in their behavior and respect China and its values. 

We also give both our clients and candidates honest feedback and tell them straightforwardly what is possible and what is not. 
 

We work in trust-based long-term relationships as much with our clients as with our candidates. This is how we get to know very well our clients: their business, competition, leaders, organization, culture, and internal dynamics. We can thus best help them find the most suitable executives and assist them with adjacent services. Similarly, our long-lasting partnerships with the best executives in the market enable us to get easy and quick access to them, both as candidates and sources when needed. 

We strive to provide the best possible advice and experience to both our clients and candidates.
 

It all starts with the business. In our eyes, a recruitment is not just about filling a vacancy based on a dry HR job description. 

At EH, we place a search for a C-suite executive into the greater business context: this requires not only a strong knowledge of the company’s business in China but also an expertise into China’s broader economic dynamics. We don’t engage in a search without firstly carrying out our own due diligence into the business context and secondly holding at the onset a deep discussion with the senior business leader who oversees the position.  

Our business focus is rooted in our corporate business leadership background and our experience as independent business owners in China.