Placing top executives in Japan' best companies takes the right recruiter. TKO International is looking for people to rise to the challenge. Maki Nibayashi spoke to Rod Szasz, Japan Manager of TKO International, about their search for an Executive Search Recruiter and a Business Development Recruiter.
Please tell us a bit about your company. TKO is the Japanese subsidiary of Hall-Kinion Incorporated, a NASDAQ traded company with US $300 million in sales for 2000 and ranked 28th in Forbes' 200 Best Small Companies to work for in America. We have over 40 offices in the US, the UK and Europe. TKO is the Asia-Pacific Executive Search wing of Hall-Kinion with currently 20 employees in San Jose and Hong Kong. In Japan, we currently have four people with immediate plans to double that to eight by September, and to 12 consultants and business development people in total by the end of the year. The key word is "Executive Search," and that is what we doﾑactively recruit key presidents, CEOs, directors and business and technical managers that make up the Japanese talent our clients are looking to hire.
Who are your main clients? We serve two kinds of clients in Japan: those who are looking to expand already existing operations by hiring senior executives and those who are looking for general managers to get them started in Japan. Our clients have traditionally come from high-tech areas such semiconductors and software, pharmaceutical and biotechnology and manufacturing. Our headquarters in Silicon Valley helps attract a lot of clients, as we are well-known in the Valley, but we also utilize our London offices as well in gaining new clients.
What position(s) are you seeking to fill? Right now we are looking for two key hires to move the office to six people: Executive Search Recruiter and Business Development Recruiter
What makes up the right candidate for positions in your company? We are trying to pinpoint that vital mixture of positive aggression, humility and trust in all potential recruiters. Aggression is more of a given trait than cooperation in individuals; it is much harder to teach a person to trust and to cooperate than it is to teach them to be competitive. Yet it is both traits that define a successful Executive Recruiter and how recruiters marshal the entire resources of the company to service the client. Hall Kinion is very much a marketing driven company with a lot of time and resources spent on knowing how to make placements. We know that teamwork and trust most effectively fill positions. The "lone-wolf" approach with one person working on one client, viewing his colleague recruiters with distrust, we know, yields very poor results. We want to avoid this right from the start by ascertaining how effectively prospective employees cooperate in the company. Dedication is what holds the company together and gives resultsﾑcooperative teams mean more placements, which means happier clients.
Could you tell us a little about salary, benefits, etc? We offer an attractive base benefit with a commission scale to 60 percent of total billings. In addition, we offer training, both individual and corporate. We have a rotating educational service traveling to world offices of Hall Kinion. All of this helps us act in a more professional manner and hones the edge of consultants so that they can quickly become effective producers for the company and, therefore, for themselves. We are dedicated to bringing a level of professionalism to our recruiters that is quantitatively and qualitatively different. All employees must attend our yearly sales/ training seminar in California, and in addition, those who reach certain milestones can win everything from a new car to a chance to travel on the corporate vacation. Last year it was in St. Thomas, this year it is the Bahamas, and next year it is Cancun. Over 200 recruiters attended for both years.
But being a good executive recruiter is not work for those who expect an average job, and we do not expect average levels of commitment. It takes about one year in Japan for an executive recruiter to really hit their stride and be an effective producer pulling in commissions and salaries of at least US $200,000 a year. We are not interested in attracting people who are satisfied with less. That means long hours, and hard work and a willingness to learn from others and contribute to others.
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