Niche industrial tech firm needed to close 2 hard-to-fill roles

A European industrial firm specializing in power generation and temperature control solutions required a Country Sales Director as well as a Sales Engineer with expertise in a precise kind of technology. The client selected us based on our previous work successfully identifying their North Asia Director and local Finance Director.

The client’s requirements were not senior-level but due to their specific nature the client knew a standard search approach would not work. They had almost no visible brand recognition and were new to the local market.

Their sector was highly niche with only a few direct competitors, not substantial enough to offer a credible candidate pool.

Additionally, the local leadership had very different expectations to what was required for the roles than the regional leadership. This lengthened the process of mapping the market as time was required to reconcile these competing views.

The client understood our research capability would be necessary to fill their search expectations in what they knew was a difficult market. Because both roles included specific technology backgrounds and due to the limited number of foreign companies competing in these tech areas, we agreed it would be necessary to add domestic firms as targets as well as companies with related but different product lines.

For this search we dedicated a team of 4 to methodically identify all potential candidates for the roles. Qualified candidates were in short supply. The conservative nature of the sector ensured that only very few were interested in taking a chance with a company of limited reputation in the market.

In the end, extensive market mapping was required to identify shortlists for each role. For the Sales Director role we submitted 4 candidates and for the SE role we identified 2 candidates for submission. Each candidate passed preliminary interviews and for both roles the client’s preferred candidates were successfully brought onboard.