Recently, BMES Managing Director and Co-Founder Tony Moore and KINT’s Managing Partner Igor Quezel-Perron sat down for a catch up. They discussed the current landscape of the recruitment industry, coaching, and the range of overseas offerings that both KINT and BMES provide.
Interim Solutions
Tony began by asking Igor how KINT are managing their interim solutions and how they are evolving their business with clients.
“We call it Situation Management because we are facing different situations from our clients,” explained Igor. “We think that careers can easily be a mix of short-term and long-term periods at any time within their working lives. We see now that younger people prefer freelancing, with more interest in the mission than in the contract. We do both, and we are one of the few players in Europe totally counted upon to do that”.
When discussing KINT’s other offerings, Igor explained that they have helped with market entry and growth for a few key clients throughout Italy and Spain, etc. “We are doing operational consulting, and some smaller assignments, especially for due diligence. So we are not only here to fill a position, we go deeper into what the company really needs.”
Tony then revealed that there are strong similarities at BMES and within the APAC region, saying “we’re definitely seeing an increase in a lot of those requirements, especially at senior levels —predominantly in manufacturing and other product spaces. Given some of the dynamics in Asia right now and the issues we’ve seen around Covid: in China, with manufacturing and supply chains being disrupted and also moving in to other parts of the region as well—that has led to requirements popping up for people who understand how to set up operations, move operations, and how to do that form of transformation as well.”
Outsourced support
When discussing the range of services that both BMES and KINT offer, Tony posed the question about how KINT provides ongoing support to assigned situational managers, and whether that support is available overseas.
“Yes, we do,” said Igor. “We can do this ourselves, or sometimes we need more local correspondence, you know, for countries in which we are not located. It’s a mix of management, mentorship and general or technical support. This is quite different from search, where sometimes you place a candidate, and after three or four months you lose contact. But now we are in contact every week for the whole duration of the assignment and people like that. It’s extremely useful.”
Tony commended this, saying it was a fantastic form of support. “We have seen a rise on our side in the numbers of our clients who are using or adopting our executive coaching services as well. Some of which we provide using in-house resources. But again, like yourself, sometimes we bring in specialist coaches from outside depending on the industry and the location as well. Not only talent attraction is key these days, but talent management, support, retention. And obviously, in in the interim management space, ensuring a successful outcome.”
Success stories
Igor shared a recent success story, explaining that a company called Bloom Energy contacted KINT one year ago. “This company wanted to go abroad but had no structure outside of the US except for Korea, and they wanted us to find several CEOs for France, Germany, Southeast Asia, and Italy. We were able to—in one or two weeks—find some people and we were in situation management mode because they had no subsidiary to pay them. So, we found the people and we also managed all the contractual documentation for them. And it’s been really, successful.”
Tony similarly explained a recent success story from BMES. “Speaking of energy or battery companies, we just completed a search for a silicon anode and fuel cell technology group called Nexeon from the UK. They were looking for someone very, very specialist in this part of the world. Our mandate was across North Asia, and we’ve very recently found them—they’re the right person actually based out of Korea, rather than here in Japan. We’ve done a number of multi-geo searches in recent times. We filled our first ever search in Dhakar, Bangladesh quite recently too, which this was a very challenging global search also.”
To learn more about our Interim Management solutions, please contact us!
