Tom Tailor - Met their next Global Head of Logistics in 15 days
State 1: Looking to redesign and reframe the logistics set up at the company
State 2: Met top-noche candidates
Time Frame: 15 Days
“LS International was very quick and efficient through the talent search process, it was clear very early they are FMCG industry experts and their combination of global and local insight was very useful.”
-Liam Devoy, COO at Tom Tailor
Tom Tailor is a global key player in the fashion industry which got in touch with us to find their Global Head of Logistics, a newly created position reporting directly into the VP Global Supply Chain. At the time, Tom Tailor was looking for a disruptive talent, who could redesign and reframe the logistics set up at the company. With a strong focus on 3PL management, outbound transportation, and warehouse distribution, the individual who would take the role would have to be an in-depth, hard-won wisdom expert in the field, but also someone who had the necessary cutting-edge innovative and transformational skills to able to take on the big challenge of reinventing how Tom Tailor’ distribution set up.
With this perspective of developing a highly impactful position across all levels and markets, the in-house Human Resources team needed support to understand the state of the market regarding this type of talent and how that landscape could fit into their internal structure.
We jumped right in and in a matter of 15 short days, we presented the candidate who would end up taking on the challenge.
Zalando - Met Director of Supplier Operations in 7 Days
State 1: Need to optimize inbound logistics network in line with 2030 vision
State 2: Met top female talent in 7 days
Time Frame: 7 days
Zalando is one of the biggest fashion digital retailers in Europe. They got in touch with us to help them find their next Director of Supplier Operations who would report directly to the VP of Retail Operations. Zalando was on a very steep growth trajectory with their online sales and they needed a one-of-a-kind visionary leader to optimize their inbound logistics flow in line with their 2030 company strategy. This position was particularly challenging as the individual would have to work very closely with existing suppliers to improve delivery performance as well as help them bring product quality and safety to the next level.
Therefore, Zalando not only needed a results-driven, flawless performance supply chain expert but also an enticing communicator, particularly gifted at building trusting relationships.
We went to the market and we were able to share their next Director of Supplier Operations within 7 days. Of course, these individuals still needed to meet various other stakeholders, but after this process, offers were accepted 30 days later.
Puma - Met their Global Trade Compliance Manager in 31 Days
State 1: Penetrate new market entry barriers
State 2: Met a top performing candidate
Time Frame: 31 Days
“At Puma we are highly invested in maintaining and increasing our double-digit growth and doubling the size of the business in 5-6 years. LS International was a valuable partner when bringing in the right talent to make this happen”
– Morten Wigh Krogh, Global Director Logistics
Puma got in touch with us to find their next Global Trade Compliance Manager reporting to the Global Director of Logistics. As one of the industry leaders, Puma needed a high-potential, passionate expert who could represent them across already established markets but also someone who could understand and penetrate new market entry barriers. This individual had to face the challenge of educating the whole sourcing organization, creating best practices, and getting the right products into new markets inside and outside the European Union. With a proactive risk management approach, the Global Trade Compliance Manager had to deliver a clear and crisp message across all levels and simplify complex terms across multiple disciplines: 3PLs, Intelligence, Lobbying, and Customs.
Puma had searched for the role for months until they reached out to us. We were able to quickly assess the situation and understand which type of talent was desired based on the brief given. We went to the market intending to find this type of talent, however, because of internal priorities and timelines, the leadership team at Puma requested to have the initial profiles sent later, 20 days into the search, rather than the usual 7 days.
After conducting this initial search, we challenged Puma’s initial assumptions on the conditions of the market and the talent available. Taking into account the global scope and complexity of the position, we realized their idea of the type of talent desired, was slightly inaccurate. The focus was on a very senior, experienced profile rather than on a more high potential, international background, which was a better fit for the needs of the position itself.
Puma agreed with our diagnosis, so we proceeded to shift the target of the search. We went to the market again and we were able to share their next Global Trade Compliance Manager 18 days later – an overall timeline of 31 days since the start date. This is a longer process than our usual rates, but due to the complexity of the role as well as the changing brief, this was extremely quick and the client appreciated the flexible and agile performance.
Who is this for?
You should read on if you are a Supply Chain VP of an FMCG company and:
- You are aiming to transform supply chain processes and don’t have the cutting-edge talent to move things forward.
- You hate inefficiency and slow roll-outs, which compromise your strategic plan.
- You want to build a legacy as a supply planning pioneer, known for working with the best talent in the industry.
- You suspect that it doesn’t take 4 months to find the right talent for your team.
The truth is the most streamlined, high-velocity, robust, yet versatile supply chain structures are those that have the most hard-hitting, resilient, and visionary individuals in place to run them. It is undeniable that it is THE way to stay ahead of your competitors while saving time, and money, and not incurring any hidden opportunity costs.
However, most FMCG companies are not equipped with the skills, experience, and network to specifically recruit for Senior Supply Chain related positions. The main reason for this is that this is a highly knowledge-specific function and a lot of talent teams are more generalists and find it challenging to support such a complex and foundational function within their company.
My core concept is that internal recruiters fail not because they are not successfully trained, or aren’t dedicated enough, but because they must recruit for the entire organization at various levels and they do not have an active approach that allows them to access the best individuals for one specific function.
Our Background and Grounding Story
Before we get into the steps and how-tos, here is a quick background on LS International for credibility reasons.
For what it matters, we were founded in 2015. Our team has saved our clients millions of Euros by speeding up their executive talent acquisition process for supply chain, sales, marketing, and general management positions. We have worked with Danone, Carlsberg, and Mattel, just to name a few, and we are endorsed by Patricia Corsi the Chief Marketing Officer of Bayer Consumer Health, who said:
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Lauren Stiebing and for the past 8 years, I have been identifying top talent and making more placements with the highest retention rate than anyone else in the firms which I have worked for.
After working at an executive search firm for over two years, I realized that there must be more to executive search. It is supposed to be about people: finding the right match between job, skills, passions, and that right company for each individual’s success, but it is more about making money and ticking boxes. Most executive search consultants were not thinking about long-term client and candidate success, but about making quick money and moving on.
I tried to look for executive search companies that offered a better service to candidates and clients, but I couldn’t find one with the professionalism and core values that I could align with. All the firms that I spoke to seemed to have the same short-term mentality…
After being discouraged by what I found out, I decided to take matters into my own hands and create LS International.
My strategy worked so well that I started helping the biggest names in the FMCG industry by finding the right talent in the functions of supply chain, sales, marketing, and general management. Nowadays with a 92.3% success rate and a 92.8% retention rate of LS International placed candidates, we can say that our approach to executive search is helping top FMCG companies by driving growth, while at the same time saving them millions of dollars in recruitment spend. But, even more importantly, we have helped them achieve their business goals.
The 5-Step Process to Finding Your Next Superstar Supply Chain Talent in 1 Month or Less and Avoiding Bottlenecks
This “new way” challenges conventional executive search wisdom because the “old way” is not effective in the current business environment. The pandemic has only helped reinforce the value of the “new way” we advocate. This can also be used for the successful recruitment of other functional profiles as well.
Step 1: Use a Numbers-Driven Approach to Come Up With a Strategy
Instead of thinking about getting external help or assigning a fully dedicated talent acquisition manager after too much time has been wasted, you should have a way to analyze the opportunity cost of hire and then decide on the hiring strategy.
Defining in advance how important a hire is, and hence the search is key. One way to objectively do this is to use a simple expected value outcome of the project. This needs two pieces of information:
- an assessment of the time the talent acquisition team needs to fill in the position; and
- the monetary value that the role is expected to add to the company.
A useful rule of thumb is that whenever the expected value of the worker’s outcome is at least 5x the salary, it is worth making someone fully responsible and accountable for the search. This doesn’t mean you tell HR and they post the job, waiting for candidates to come to them, but having at least one individual or firm working 40 hours a week approaching the right talent.
Not defining this before commencing the search can lead to both higher search costs and longer lead times (which in turn means higher opportunity costs due to not filling the role earlier).
According to several studies we conducted between 2016 and earlier this year, any time a company spends more than 71 days to fill a role, the opportunity cost overtakes the cost of hiring an executive search firm. In our case, we have seen cases in which a company contacted us after not filling the role for over a year. If you have a well-trained and specialized team, it should not take you more than two months to fill in any role.
At LS International we use an ROI calculator which incorporates a probabilistic method to calculate the return on investment that hiring this role will bring to the organization, and we compare it with the time that it takes for an executive search firm to complete the process.
Example - Supply Chain Director
Let me give the example of a Supply Chain Director that we recently placed. This individual’s total salary was 200K and his main task was to save the company 5M Euros in the next 2 years. This means that the total outcome value to salary per year is 2.5M Euros. If we introduce these numbers into our model we can see that the ROI is 798.9% and this means that the company did the right thing putting an executive search firm as soon as possible to find this individual in the fastest way possible. Check it out in the image below.
Now, a lot of people might think that these numbers are awesome but that the ROI would be even bigger if they do not get external help to fill in the role, and they are right but there is something that everyone should consider, the opportunity cost of not hiring this individual. To analyze this, we have created what we call, the Speed Breakeven Point. The speed breakeven point tells us how many days, the opportunity cost of not having this person performing the job, outweighs the extra cost of getting external help.
In our Supply chain Director example, the Speed break-even point is 3.87 days. Even if by incurring extra cost, you can find this person 4 days earlier, a savvy executive should decide to hire external help.
Check out the speed breakeven in this example in the model below.
Step 2: Use Outbound Search Instead of Inbound
Using job boards would require the HR team to spend days or weeks filtering profiles, which results in slow execution and time-to-hire. The main reason for this is that usually the best candidates are not actively looking for new opportunities, since they are too busy leading their team, overachieving their targets. Even if they do see the post, they have a very attractive career development plan in place and most cases are that they would not apply. Think about it, when was the last time you directly applied for a position?
Targeting candidates at competitor companies will mean that you will be able to outperform them faster than if you hired average talent, who are usually the ones applying for jobs. The high complexity that the supply chain inherently possesses is second to no other function, therefore its talent must be up to par. You know what that means? Active job-seeking candidates might not be enough.
So, forget about posting jobs and start approaching candidates directly, this will result in better quality hires, lower time-to-hire, and better short-mid and long-term results.
Evidence of why outbound search leads to better quality profiles:
We have a client who specializes in tech fashion and they asked us to approach companies that were also in the fashion industry, we did this within 1 week, and we were able to provide candidates for their Director Supplier Operations position. As of August 2020, the company’s partner program GMV grew over 100 percent compared to the same period last year and the volume of items shipped through the platform grew 180 percent.
In this specific case, it was very important for our client to start competing as soon as possible and start seeing a fast return on their investment.
We completed a survey with talent and hiring managers which said that 86% of their top-rated executives came through a recommendation or targeted hiring. Only 14% of successful hires of executives came through traditional job posting and application submission.
Step 3: Execute a Niche-Specific Hiring Strategy
Instead of assigning the internal team or a generalist executive search firm, you should use a niche-specific hiring strategy implemented by someone with a good enough network in the industry and function. Supply Chain is one of the functions within FMCG and Retail for which a high degree of deep understanding of both the product and the discipline is needed. Big challenges are approaching when it comes to quality service, supplier relationships, risk and crisis management, and fast-changing markets.
Lack of industry knowledge leads to low-quality profiles that end up wasting your time during interviews and lead to longer fill times. Therefore, a niche-specific hiring strategy is likely to provide better outcomes if it is implemented by someone with a good talent network, as well as industry knowledge. An individual or firm that has deep connections with top talent in a specific industry and understands the current state of the market and trends will be able to access talent at a different level. They will not compare them to talent generally, but benchmark them against those who may be outperforming you at a competitor company.
Searching for candidates within a specific niche leads to compounding benefits. Over time, your company’s reputation for excellence (say, in Operations) grows because you have the best people. As you look to hire more people with the relevant skills, referrals grow as does your ability to attract better candidates in a shorter amount of time.
Evidence of why outbound search leads to better quality profiles:
Most of our candidates come from referrals. Over the years we have built a network of FMCG individuals that can help us find the right candidate (our ‘source’). As we mentioned before 86% of hiring comes from referrals and targeted direct approach hiring.
In this chart we can see a few of our placements and the way we found the final candidate:
Step 4: Do a Global Search Instead of a Local Search
For core roles such as a Supply Chain Director, it is important to map out the best talent globally. Do not fixate on a specific market or region. As we see, borders do not mean as much as they used to for the Supply Chain as global processes and decentralization of the end-to-end structure are key. Therefore, why would you knowingly conduct a search that only looks for candidates in a certain geography?
Instead of running a search, and filtering applicants based on location, one should start the search with a global approach and narrow it from there, to ensure that no top-quality candidate is left out.
Focusing on location and not skills or industry experience may result in the search excluding qualified candidates from other locations who are willing to relocate for the right opportunity. So, instead of running a search that is based on a candidate or firm’s location, the search process should look at a global pool of candidates and then narrow the search based on experience, fit, etc…
To run a global search, international experience and leveraging technology will be more important than ever. Executive placements that involve a location change also help gauge the candidate’s commitment to succeed in the new role.
So, implement a strategy that removes geographical restraints; this will result in more qualified job candidates and will add diversity to the company.
Evidence of why outbound search leads to better quality profiles:
- 66% of candidates placed by LS International moved at least 248 Km away from their previous job location for a new role.
- We have different case studies to show that the location of the search firm, or candidate, is no longer important. Mike Tignol was a very high-potential talent in our network who was looking for the next step in his career. At the same time, we were working with Danone in the search for their next VP of Sales Russia. We had no previous experience in the Russian market, however, we introduced Mike to the GM of the region, Charlie Cappetti in 30 days. Before we stepped in, he had hired a local firm that couldn’t deliver because they were focused on the Russian market. We presented Mike, who turned out to be the perfect candidate, with a mix of local and international experience which added extra value to the role.
Benefits of partnering with LS International
Here are ten specific benefits you can expect when you work with LS International:
- 95% likelihood of top talent to have signed your offer within 2 months.
- Save thousands of Euros in terms of the opportunity cost caused by waiting for the right talent to come to you or long drawn-out search processes.
- You will not waste time interviewing the wrong talent; meet two (or even more) “ideal candidates” within two weeks.
- Acquire a complement to human resources which you need to execute your strategic plans.
- Hire people that buy into your vision and are ready to help you achieve it.
- Allow you to focus more on your core business because you can rely on our expertise, integrity, and access to curated talent networks.
- You do not have to worry about missing targets because HR did not deliver the right talent.
- You will have “insurance” for your talent recruitment, thereby increasing the odds that your plans are executed in time.
- Say goodbye to underperformance and start building that winning team you always dreamed of.
- Start getting ahead of your competitors without looking like you are making excuses by blaming gaps in your team.
The way LS International helps clients:
So, let us summarize our proposal so you will understand all that you will get by hiring LS International:
- Initial consulting and feedback on profile and market trends.
- LS International curated briefing document.
- The network approach involves 50+ calls to more junior and senior individuals for referrals.
- Video job description.
- Outsourcing the interview process of all referrals and potential candidates.
- Candidate calibration to benchmark against your internal candidates to make sure we are meeting the right people and not wasting your time.
- A long list of 4 candidates.
- Video pitch from each candidate.
- Reference checks of all candidates.
- Psychometrics candidate assessment.
- Psychometrics results report.
- Brand ambassador services and candidate insights.
- One-year candidate insurance plan.
- Hiring ROI Calculator.
- Candidate Satisfaction Survey
Besides all of this, we will help you determine if it makes sense to hire us for the position that you are looking for. The main drivers to understand when it makes sense to hire an executive search firm are the economic outcome or value creation of the role and the time that it takes for the internal team to present candidates to the hiring manager.
But as mentioned earlier, our long-term relationships with certain clients preclude us from working with other companies when conducting searches for certain roles. Therefore, please contact us right away to make sure that it is not too late for us to help you and your organization.
FAQs
Simple, with a close rate of 92.3% and a retention rate of 92.8% of LS International candidates, if you compare this with firms you have used in the past, you will quickly realize this is far above the average.
We have a long-term view on executive search, and we have created a network of talented individuals within the FMCG industry, that allows us to execute searches faster and more efficiently than any other firm. We also build long-term relationships with our candidates which result in better candidate response rates.
Personalization is key in today’s world. This means personalization when it comes to our approach to candidates and clients. This is something which the large firms cannot offer, both candidates and clients alike are just a number to them.
Also, we are specialized in a niche market which allows us to be up to date with every possible top-rated candidate. This means higher retention rates and successful searches for our clients.
Discover our process Here
For us there is no option of failure, we will address and re-address the issue with you if we see a misalignment in the brief or the current state of the market. We also always include a warranty in our contracts which help prevent this issue happening.
Because we are only specialized in the FMCG industry and we have a very long-term view on headhunting. In big firms, each account is run individually, and many consultants are working in different industries. The principals are industry specific and that is why from a business development perspective they seem niche-specific, but the consultants conducting the actual interviews are not. This allows them to reach a lot of people, but this does not allow them to build long term relationships with candidates that are essential for response rate, retention, and in turn cost reduction. These are some of the reasons why our retention rate and our success rate is higher than our competitors.
We can find better talent because of our active approach to reach candidates and because we are specialized in sales, marketing, and general management functions within the FMCG industry. Internal teams must recruit for every department and every level in the organization which makes them more generalists than specialized in a specific function and level.
If we do not provide you with the candidates you are looking for, we will return your engagement fee and you would be free to contract another firm or search for candidates on your own. There will also be a potential full money back guarantee which we can discuss if you may qualify in the call.
If you find a candidate yourself, you should send them to us. We will include them in the search and make sure they are benchmarked with the other talent so that you only spend time meeting the best 4 candidates.
This only happens 5% of the time for LS International candidates, but if it does happen, we will replace the candidate, free of charge within 30 days.
Our rates depend on the assignment, the market, and the years we have been working with each company and understand their business. We are committed to building new client relationships, so we are flexible with first-time clients.
There is a simple method that can be used to know if you must hire an executive search firm. This method considers the expected outcome value, time to fill in the role, etc… And considers the opportunity cost and the total cost of the search process.
It depends on the assignment, but generally speaking, you will be able to meet candidates in 2 weeks