Snapshots: Andrew Walker and Nadia Angelova

Andrew Walker is managing director of Ashley Harvey Associates with offices in London, Edinburgh and Sofia. He was previously managing consultant of Wheale Thomas Hodgins plc for their London and International practises. Following an early career in accountancy, he then held various roles in the City of London within the Inchcape Group, The Bank of London & South America and Sterling Credit Group latterly as group company secretary. At Reed Elsevier he held a variety of positions during a 15-year career with the group including executive assistant to the chairman and chief executive, vice president of Reed Wallcoverings in the US, and managing director of a group of 40 weekly magazines and newspapers within their IPC Publishing Division.

He has travelled extensively working across Europe, Australia, South Africa, South America and the US. Andrew entered Executive Search in 1993 and has been managing director of James Wrightson Walker, a joint venture with a past chairman of the joint defence chiefs to facilitate the transfer of graduate officers from the TRI services into industry under “Options for Change”. He has served as a non-executive director of an NHS Trust and managing director of WWP Associates. In his early career he qualified a chartered secretary, read for the Bar and was a member of Grays Inn. He is a licensed practitioner in occupational psychometric assessment. He is co-founder and is director and joint president of the International Executive Search Federation, now the world’s largest group of independent search consultants in 43 countries and 96 cities around the world.

Nadia Angelova graduated from Sofia University with a master’s in psychology in 2006 after earlier obtaining a bachelor’s degree in education for people with impaired vision. She worked as an HR consultant and spent a year as a clothing store owner, and spent some time in the US working as a lifeguard and swimming pool operator.

From the late 1970s onwards, there they were at airport terminals, revolving on the stand alongside the diet guides and digestible and forgettable novels. Titles included Help, I’m A Manager, and the 10-Minute Manager, or was it five minutes or one, or all of these pressured time spans? I forget.

There seemed to be an idea that there was a species called Manager that, rather like the universal electric current adaptors also sold at airports, was capable of coping with any sort of system, technology and level of energy. Like the inflatable neck pillows (same airport, a few counters down), one size fitted all.

To be fair, it is worth remembering that some decades ago, corporate cultures in the West were fairly homogenous (dress codes, working hours, recruitment procedures, egregious things to do with copier machines at end-of-year parties) and there was little lasting impact from dissenting views such as the Peter Principle (in any organisation, an individual rises inexorably to his level of incompetence).

The world has changed, continues to do so, and always will. Corporate cultures changed, and diversified. In no particular order, Casual Days came along, and flexitime, outsourcing, work-from-home, video-conferencing, technology with a capital IT, and in some corporate environments, the notion that a “top-down approach” should go the way of flogging, two-martini lunches and workplace sexual harassment. Yet for all the corporates offering workplace massages and muffin bars, some still may want managers with eyes and spines of steel, Howitzer personalities and fibre-optic cable for veins.

Andrew Walker understands this diversity. The proof? Consider the numbers. In 2002, Walker and a colleague founded International Executive Search Foundation (IESF) with two offices, one in Hong Kong and other in London. In the past five years, IESF has grown to 43 countries and 96 cities. The outfit built itself into the largest executive search firm in the world (so anointed this year by Search-Consult magazine) by recruiting local companies to join it on an invitation basis. By its own description, this means that IESF has a network of independently owned local partners to deliver quality service to clients and candidates. One of its newest partners is Ashley Harvey Bulgaria, now in its fourth month, headed by Nadia Angelova.

Over coffee, and accompanied by Angelova, Walker, who is both joint president and director of IESF and managing director of Ashley Harvey Associates (offices in The Strand), explains the dynamics of IESF.

“As you can imagine, it’s a challenge to bring all those cultures under the banner of the same quality of service that is required by both our clients and candidates alike. I say ‘candidates alike’ because so often the candidate is the last person to be considered or dealt with in a professional way. We decided that one of the things that we needed to do was to make sure that candidates felt like they were human beings.”

As part of achieving the potential of its global reach, IESF partner companies meet twice a year, once globally and once regionally. The meetings are geared to ensuring continuity in quality of service and to be opportunities to exchange information and discuss challenges.

Walker says that the fact that each member of the IESF is an “own business” means “it’s not quite like other well-known brands that are publicly quoted. Because we all own our own businesses, we get up faster in the morning, stay out later at night, in order to service the customer better”.

It is key to be very careful about how recommendations to clients are handled, pre-eminently that they are appropriate to the client’s needs and corporate culture.

In all this, apart from serving clients and candidates, there is the question of the approach to the enterprise’s own executive search – to wit, its decision of who should head its Bulgarian office.

Walker looks at Angelova: “Nadia is not only an extremely intelligent person, with two degrees and three languages, she has the personality and the understanding of people and how they relate to client needs. You’re a major in psychology (she nods), which has to help, but also a people person.”

For executive search (some may call this “headhunting” but the word was never mentioned in the interview) is a background in human resources a good qualification?
“No,” Walker says.

Does that then mean that it’s a bad qualification?

“I did not have a background in human resources. My background is in running businesses. When you run a business, you of necessity make decisions about people. Hopefully you get it right. Add to that the service element of actually being in the search market. I can bring reality to what clients are actually going through in terms of resourcing their people needs. A human resources person with experience could equally do that, but probably wouldn’t have the same spread of commercial knowledge.”

He emphasises that judgment is of core importance, not merely on the question of whether a candidate is suitably qualified, but whether the candidate will fit in culturally with the company.

“So often, that’s the most difficult thing. We spend a lot of our preparatory time with the client, understanding their culture. Every business is different.”

Making a wrong decision is extremely expensive, he says, and “we recognise that”.

“If we don’t get it right, we don’t eat, and if the company doesn’t get it right they’ll choose somebody else. So we have to be good.”

Asked for insight into whether the global trend is for executive appointments to be made irrespective of nationality or whether searches result in local hires, Walker replies that this depends on the client.

“The more international a client is, the more international their staff tends to be. There are instances where it is HR policy to move people around the world, so that the high-fliers get good experience.”

As to the Bulgarian market, Walker says that he believes that its EU membership will bring great benefits to the country. “Things have changed already. I think that there is a long way to go, but there is a great need for talent here, and I think that we can encourage Bulgarians who left years ago, who were well-educated in the first place, but have now got that management experience overlaid that they can bring back to this county.”

Asked how these skilled Bulgarians could be tracked down, including in cases where they may have accepted foreign citizenships, Walker says: “That’s what we do. The very best candidates for a particular job are very happy where they currently are. It’s our job to encourage them to change, because it would be good for their careers and good for the client.”

Top executive search firms all use similar techniques (though usually are reluctant to describe them in detail) and Walker pays tribute to the growing role of the internet. “We can now use techniques such as web-spidering, which is an incredible way of locating people to specification.”

“However,” he says, “having said that, it’s still a people business and there’s nothing like taking a recommendation from somebody who knows the person.”

Then there is the question of clients in Bulgaria, especially Bulgarian firms that may be sceptical about an executive search firm.

“We are still changing people’s hearts and minds. In the main, people that we’ve met have had bad experiences in the past, (with) people who said that they will deliver the moon and just delivered CVs. That’s not what we do.”

Angelova says: “I have seen how many recruitment companies work (in Bulgaria). I was a part of such companies. I can see the difference between recruitment and executive search. I can see the lack of professionals, and the market needs professionals. Executive search in Bulgaria is something new, even though some companies say they have been doing executive search, it was hardly professional and the correct style. I always wanted to be able to give the client exactly what he needs. We will be able to do that now. There is a need in Bulgaria for such a professional approach.”

Says Walker: “What we’re doing is to introduce something that is quite new here. From reactions from clients so far, they are very pleased that it is actually a service. And that it isn’t throwing money at the wall. They’re actually getting added value. It’s like a management consultancy, but centred on people”.

He cites the corporate slogan of IESF: “Global reach, local knowledge. We chose that advisedly, because that’s what we do – every market is different. I am not a Bulgarian and therefore wouldn’t presume to be the best person to advise. Nadia is. Local people who have local knowledge.”

International groups, Walker says, have experience of search and know what they want but many local companies believe that their own network of “passing people around and around and around” is the answer.

“My opinion would be that at some point that circle, the local network, has to be broken into in order to let Bulgarian-owned companies grow and have the input of experienced managers.”

The Ashley Harvey Bulgarian operation at the moment is a team of four, with two UK executives coming in every few weeks. A new member of the team, a Bulgarian with two degrees and four languages, joined the Sofia office this month. Notably, the IESF global meeting this year to decided to locate the federation’s marketing executive in Sofia on a full-time basis.

Overall, Walker says of Bulgaria, “we are very impressed with the talent here.” That multi-lingualism is the norm, he says, makes Bulgarian talent “frankly much better than I can get in London”.

Angelova, in turn, is positive about Bulgaria, and rejects the outlook of some of her compatriots who have the mindset that someone should come to Bulgaria to help them.

“Especially, young people should think more about what they can do for this country, and for their own lives.”

Acknowledging that it is not an easy feat, especially in a country far from being the wealthiest, she hopes that Bulgarians would pay more attention to the fuller dimensions of being Bulgarian – the country’s culture – rather than simply pursuing money.

The International Executive Search Federation (IESF), made up of a global network of local privately-owned executive search specialist firms, believes that the upward trend in the market worldwide will continue.

According to an IESF media statement, the market for search services in the past year was strengthened by a shortage of executive talent because of demographic changes including baby boomers going into retirement, the increasing trend for senior managers to spent shorter periods in office, shareholder demands for bigger and better results “and the increasing need for executive talent especially in the BRIC (Brazil Russia India China) economies and Eastern Europe where lower cost of production is drawing more and more talent, leaving gaps in the developed economies”.

IESF said that it had an advantage in its members’ local knowledge “as advertising proves less effective” but the downside was that IESF saw a trend of larger companies taking the recruitment and search function in-house.

Of Bulgaria, IESF joint president and director Andrew Walker says that the market is growing as inward investment grows. It is said that there is zero unemployment in Sofia, meaning a very great shortage of candidates in the country’s capital city, where most companies are headquartered. Joblessness in the country as a whole may be about seven to eight per cent.

In a normal market atmosphere, this would be good news for search consultancies, with demand driving up earnings. However, with Bulgaria, a special priority is to persuade expatriate Bulgarians with the skills needed, to return home.

According to a Wikipedia entry, The Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) is the worldwide professional body representing the retained executive search industry. Founded in 1959 in the United States, it is today a global organisation with its international headquarters in New York City, and a European office in Brussels.

“In Q2 2007 global industry revenues increased by 20 per cent, as compared to the same period the previous year, according to the latest quarterly AESC State of the Executive Search Industry Report. The average revenue per consultant also experienced an annual increase, up 6.7 per cent from Q2 2006,” an AESC media statement said.

Consistent with previous quarterly and annual market share trends, the media statement said, North America represented 42.2 per cent of the global retained executive search market in Q2 2007, Europe 34.6 per cent, Asia/Pacific 16.1 per cent and Central/South America 7.1 per cent.

Year-on-year comparisons also saw Asia/Pacific experience an increase of 15 per cent in the number of searches started from Q2 2006 to Q2 2007, while the "Other Europe" category (European countries excluding the UK, France and Germany) saw an increase of 10 per cent. European searches experienced an annual rise of seven per cent, as compared to the same period the previous year. In Q2 2007 the UK held the greatest share of European searches with 28 per cent of the total market.

Germany followed with 13 per cent while France maintained 11 per cent of the European market share.