While working in large, multinational companies, whether corporate or executive search firms, Emmanuel and Zhao Hui repeatedly heard Clients and Candidates voicing a common concern, that executive search is very often transactional, impersonal, superficial, bureaucratic, and volume-driven. In this system, candidates are just a commodity to be traded. 

This dominant model is not satisfactory from Candidates’ perspective as it means bad personal experience, and no value add, no learning, no insights on the job opportunity and its business context. Candidates feel they are treated like an object being passed along in the process. This is a reason why many Candidates are driven away from transactional search firms. Several excellent candidates have even told us: “I have eliminated most search firms from my contact list because of their transactional and poor value-added behavior”. This turns into a problem for Employers that collaborate with such executive search firms: they miss out on top quality candidates as a result.

Furthermore, Emmanuel and Zhao Hui observed that many players in the executive search industry pursue a standardized and globalized growth model directed from their Western-centric head-office. This is another obstacle to high quality outcomes because in executive search, it is the consultant on the ground who can make the difference, not the multinational platform behind, with its underlying bureaucracy. By pushing the technocratic standardization and globalization onto the executive search craft, these firms hamper the necessary independence, entrepreneurship, and agility to embrace the local particularism. 

The globalized and standardized model for sure provides a form of convenience, like in other industries such as retail or fast-food, but this model is not suited to a complex and ambiguous craft like executive search. Sadly, Emmanuel and Zhao Hui saw Clients frequently use Western-based global executive search firms for China just because they are familiar with those firms in their home market or because of a global contract, not because the consultant on the ground is the most suited to conduct the search. This inclination toward the easy and yet suboptimal approach poses a problem of search quality and outcome. 

Companies often hire senior executives without checking thoroughly into their background: either because their HR directly conducts the search and is not equipped to manage thorough due diligence, or because their search firm is eager to close the assignment thus botching the due background checks or not fully disclosing their findings on a final candidate. This common poor practice poses very high risks. Firstly, bad surprises may happen once such candidate is on board. Secondly, the whole market locally is generally quickly made aware of any negative baggage in the hired executive, which dangerously affects the local subsidiary’s culture and its employer branding. 

When multinational companies hire key executives without a proper background check, they expose themselves to leadership problems and performance issues down the road. In addition, the hiring of leaders with poor reputation makes it increasingly difficult for these companies to attract the best talent in the market, which ends up hurting their business performance in the region. Emmanuel and Hui heard so many executives in China say: “how could this famous multinational company hire such an executive who has notoriously committed compliance violations in the past or engaged in grave behaviors with team members? Then, if such is the culture or the insensitivity of this company, I will turn them down whenever they contact me! No way I will join such an organization.” 

The global spread of social media professional platform has encouraged some companies to get in the business of directly contacting and poaching other companies’ employees. Emmanuel and Hui heard most senior executives in the market concur that a multinational’s such direct talent search activity, while it can work when hiring junior to mid-level managers, is in fact seldom an effective approach when it comes to hiring senior executives. A company's self-promotion triggers doubt in many senior executives as they point out to a bias and lack of objectivity.

Candidates seek instead a trusted independent advisor who can act as an honest broker along a hiring process. They prefer to work with a search consultant with strong seniority and credibility at senior leadership level, a consultant who has built very solid business practice and industry expertise. Candidates most prefer when they deal directly with the founder of the executive search firm as a successful business leader and entrepreneur who can coach them and bring lasting value to them.