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As a professional services firm, our aim is to excel in everything we do. For this reason, we believe that there is always room for improvement, and thus we welcome any suggestion that may lead us towards increased proficiency.
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Q1: What services does your company offer?
Answer:
EMA Partners Romania is an Executive Search firm entirely focused on retained search. This service generates 100% of our revenue.
Q2: What markets – in addition to Romania – do you serve?
Answer:
EMA Partners is an international structure with operations in over 40 countries throughout the World and a remarkable presence in Europe. From this perspective we can cover most of the mentioned markets.
Through our local capabilities we can cover: Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Moldavia.
In special cases, only for tire-one profiles, Slovenia, Croatia, and Ukraine can be easily included in our reach.
Q3: What industries do you have experience in with executive search? State especially whether you have experience in following industries:
Answer:
We cover multiple industries, based on our consultants’ specialties:
> Advanced Technologies (Information Technology, Communication, Software, Semiconductors, Internet and/or Internet Services);
> Consumer Goods & Services (Consumer Durables, Packaged Goods, Hospitality, Retail, Media & Entertainment, Food & Beverage);
>Services (Financial Services, Corporate & Investment Banking, Insurance, Real Estate);
>Industrial (Agriculture, Construction & Building Materials, Electrical & Electronic Products, Industrial Machinery & Equipment, Industrial Services, Paper& Packaging, Transportation/Logistics, Manufacturing);
Please click here to see details
Q4: What type of positions do you have experience in with executive search?
Answer:
Our experience covers top management, middle management, and senior experts.
Functions covered: general management, finance, IT&C, and development (commercial, sales, and marketing).
Typical assignments are: Country Managers, CEO, General Managers, Financial Officers (CFO, Finance Controller, Tax and Internal Audit, Risk and Compliance Management), Information Technology and Telecom Officers, Operations Officers, Senior Consultants, VP Commercial, Marketing Director etc.
Please find some of the assignments we've posted recently on our website: http://www.advice-hr.ro/content/executive-opportunities-romania.htm
Q5: What do you believe is your unique value proposition that you can offer? What are your key strengths?
Answer:
Unique value proposition: Commitment to deliver excellence
Answer:
Key strengths:
1) highly skilled and experienced team,
2) efficient procedures,
3) communication,
4) open approach,
5) strong ethic values.
Q6: What track record of successful placements do you have (last two years)?
Answer:
For the last 24 months we’ve been contracted in over 100 assignments.
: 100% suitable short list presentation;
: 90% success rate (90 assignments generated successful placements)
To explain the difference:
: 2.5 (5 assignments) multi-country assignments. Non exclusive searches, with the participation of multiple offices and consultants within EMA Partners involving a larger number of candidates to increase both the cultural diversity and the chances to find the right match;
: 0.5% (1 assignment) profile changed by client;
: 1.5% (3 assignments) cancelled by client;
: 0.5% (1 assignment) replacement guarantee claim (successfully accomplished);
Q7: How will you ensure speedy executive search process? Please describe your typical executive search process and its following aspects:
Process steps
Answer:
1. Client and position briefing, context understanding and definition, selection criteria listings and search strategy
2. Research: listing the search resources (relevant sectors and areas, relevant companies, relevant positions and their occupants), off-limits agreements, data-base browsing, activating other resources.
3. Reference checking first phase.
4. Meeting the Candidates: telephone meetings, face-to-face interviews (exclusively by consultant)
5. Competence-based structured interviews, candidates’ assessments
6. Reference checking second phase.
7. Short-list introduction: most suitable 3-5 candidates presented together with relevant and detailed information.
8. Employers’ interviews and
9. Employees’ inclusion close monitoring. Status is checked on regular basis with both the candidates (now employee) and the employer.
10. Research continued in order to provide back-up resources in case of accidents.
Process timing
Timeline: 6 to 8 weeks from the start of the search to presenting the short list. 4 weeks in highly urgent situations.
We do not cut corners. With a sense of urgency, we understand when our Clients’ need us to be prompt and rapid in reactions. As a response, we made all our processes as efficient as possible.
In this view, we use complex databases, we size and assign the right resources for each project, we communicate with our clients in a consultative manner so our efforts are directed efficiently towards the objective etc.
Information / Communication flows
First status report is submitted two weeks after beginning the search, followed by regular reports on weekly basis. On your explicit request, written or oral status report can be submitted at any moment.
Status reports consist in detailed and explicit information related to the status of each approached candidate, current or relevant company, current or relevant position, relevant information on candidates capabilities.
We strive to use our status reports not only as communication tools but, more important, as feed-back instruments. This way, the status reports usually give our Clients the possibility to control our actions at any moment.
Q8: Search strategy and channels: direct search, head-hunting, own data base, networking, IT tools etc.;
Answer:
All activities related to sourcing candidates are performed by our research team. As a general rule, we use a wide variety of resources, as wide as required by each assignment at hand.
During the last 12 months, over 85% of the candidates presented to our clients were identified using direct systematic search.
Our proprietary database is an important resource giving us the speed of reaction at the starting phases of a search project. Rarely and only in specific situations, we advertise opportunities in order to attract candidates.
Q9: What are your contract conditions?
Payment structure
Answer:
Our approach, which we firmly believe is not only logical but much more ethical, is to charge our Clients a fixed fee, based on the complexity of the assignment, agreed before we begin our work. This fixed fee policy will guarantee both to you and to the selected candidates that our position remains truly objective.
Statistically, our fees varied during the last 12 months between 20-25% of the gross value of the annual agreed income of the successful candidate.
We are a retained search company. Our fee is payable in 3 equal installments: on starting the assignment, on presentation of an accepted shortlist of candidates, and on acceptance of the selected candidate.
As we are committed to provide our clients with highly tailored, quality advisory services, we only work as retained consultants. However, within this context, we are definitely open to innovative payment models.
Q10. Additional costs related to each project.
Answer:
We usually consider as additional such expenses as:
- candidates and/or consultants travel and/or accommodation expenses;
- interview facilities (location, catering, video-conference etc) in case Client decides to use third party facilities;
- advertising the position;
- additional assessment;
Directly incurred candidate and consultant additional expenses are charged at cost and are payable with the second and third fee invoices.
Prior to any expense we will explicitly motivate the need and seek prior approval from the Client.
Any expense, including agreed fees, is subject to VAT (19%) taxation.
Q11: Risk sharing between Client and your firm
Answer:
We are committed to partner with our clients in a responsible manner.
To minimize any incurred risks:
- we split our fee structure so that every payment is strictly related to our KPI’s;
- only work under retained exclusivity basis so can fully assume responsibility of our work;
- we guarantee our work (minimum 12 months replacement guarantee);
- we communicate with our clients on regular basis, open and transparent status reports are submitted from the early stages; any potential risk is being emphasized in due time and approached accordingly.
- we only assign specialized consultants and decline any assignments in which we don’t see a reasonable chance to succeed;
Q12: Replacement rules in case that your placement leaves before agreed period
Answer:
We approach our responsibility towards our work with a great attention. We guarantee our work with a minimum 12 months replacement guarantee;
To support in an efficient manner our promises, we’ve implemented a set of post-contract procedures allowing us not only to identify in due time any mishaps but to be able to react promptly and efficiently.
Q13: By-placements and on-the-top placements (add-on candidates)
Answer:
Should The Client employ more than one of the presented candidates, within one year of their presentation, the fee for such an additional placement will equal 50% of the value of the fee for the first placement.
For any assignment targeting more than one profile (or person), adapted terms and conditions will be provided.
Q14: What mode of search do you use (direct search, advertisement based search, (online) databases, others)?
Answer:
All activities related to sourcing candidates are performed by our research team. As a general rule, we use a wide variety of resources, as wide as required by each assignment at hand.
During the last 12 months, over 85% of the candidates presented to our clients were identified using direct systematic search.
Our proprietary database is an important resource giving us the speed of reaction at the starting phases of a search project. Rarely and only in specific situations, we advertise opportunities in order to attract candidates.
Q15: What type of interviews prior introducing the candidate to the client do you use (telephone / 1:1)?
Answer: We only introduce candidates to our clients after a thorough assessment. Our standard procedure involves a minimum of:
1. Introductory telephone meeting: general presentation of the opportunity, general evaluation of the interest and motivation, general assessment of the candidate. Held by consultant.
2. Face-to-face interviews: held strictly by consultant, competency based structured interviews. We sometimes use additional interviews (a second or a third one), cross-interviewing techniques by multiple interviewers, various psychological assessments held by specialists.
3. Reference checking: before and after the interview. Held by consultant.
4. Post interview documentation. Held by researcher.
