An e-commerce company learns that a 2-year search for C&B Director should only take 60 days

The world’s largest e-commerce company required a Director for their Compensation & Benefits (C&B) team. The search had been open for 2 years and the client had no success in identifying candidates during that time.

Due to the historical success we’d had working with this firm across multiple business units they requested our assistance.

We sat together with key hiring managers to discuss challenges they’d had with the search, including why candidates were rejected or inadequate.

More than anything it was clear that the biggest challenge was in how the hiring manager viewed the talent pool. The client’s expectations could not be met due to an inherent mismatch between the level of seniority required and the budget allocated.

At the same time, the regional team were filtering candidates based on their regional expectations while the global team had different expectations.

BMES functioned as a bridge between the global and regional perspectives to get both sides on board with a mutual hiring strategy, which included clarifying requirements and revising upward the budget allocation. Once expectations were clear and set, we were able to go to market to develop a map of candidates from target companies and begin identifying which were suitable.

Due to the major scale of our client it was clear that we needed to focus on companies of similar size. We created organization charts of C&B teams within the targets. Due to the market leadership of our client there was significant interest in the role.

However, the bar was very high and only 6 candidates passed the stringent first round of screening requirements.

The candidate ultimately selected for the role met all client requirements including the strictest, strong leadership skills. The candidate was a key asset and highly valued by his own firm. A unified closing strategy between BMES and the client was critical to closing him despite a major counteroffer given by the candidate’s firm. In the end, we were able to close the role that had been opened for 2 years within 60 days.