Bussines cases

The internationalization captain

One of the critical stages for a growing company is to enter new markets. When taking this leap, how the process is managed becomes crucial, as the difference between failing and succeeding isn’t only measured in time and cost, but also on how much the future and market positioning of the company gets compromised.

Objective

Find a professional to lead the international expansion of a Spanish real estate company.

Project

Search for a professional expert in international management with profound knowledge of the industry and extensive expertise leading multicultural teams.

Results

Selecting a candidate with outstanding leadership skills who knows how to attract talent and build teams, while leaving a mark in the organization.

How we did it:

Organizing an international search process in our quest to find suitable candidates from different countries
Carrying out a thorough industry analysis in all markets where the sector had a significant presence.
Short-listing 5 candidates with different diversity variables
Selecting a candidate with outstanding leadership skills, which was also a key and decisive aspect considering the importance it had for the role in both attracting talent and carrying out the internationalization process successfully

The approach

The profile requirements coupled with a scarcity of candidates in the market added to the complexity of this search process:

The position required experience in internalization processes, as the selected candidate would need to create methodologies and structures, etc. from scratch.
When designing the ideal profile, high importance was placed on the candidate’s technical knowledge. In particular, they would need to have expertise in private debt and retail asset management.
The leadership skills were the most sought after of all the soft skills. The candidate would need to have an executive profile and high visibility, both internally and externally
Although expertise was more highly valued than the country of origin, the candidate’s culture fit was critical la experiencia y la preparación primaban sobre la procedencia, era crítico el encaje cultural del candidato.
It was a very young market, so there were only a few candidates that could fulfill all the requirements. This implied we needed to conduct a highly curated prospecting plan in order to thoroughly cover the industry