Korn/Ferry search firm expands

By ADAM GIFFORD

GLOBAL executive search firm Korn/Ferry International has opened an Auckland office by the Viaduct Basin.

New Zealand operations vice president Annika Streefland says servicing the country out of the Wellington office was getting inconvenient.

"Half our work was always in Auckland. The way New Zealand is, you have to be in both places if you are serious," Ms Streefland says.

"We are a global firm. In Australasia we wanted to put our foot on key cities."

The expansion is a sign of confidence in New Zealand and reflects the needs of global firms expanding into this country which need seasoned executives.

"As a firm we believe in New Zealand, we believe it will grow, there's a lot of innovation here and it's essential to the sub region of Australasia," she says.

Korn/Ferry is one of a small group of companies which service the top end of the global recruitment market.

Ms Streefland says her firm fills between 30 and 40 positions a year at the board chairman, chief executive or national manager level, and at second-tier management level such as chief financial officers or chief information officers.

"There's a huge amount of work with one CEO appointment. We have to look offshore as well as New Zealand. It's a long process with a lot of research involved."

The company tends not to advertise for positions.

"For jobs paying beyond $150,000, the people who might respond are not the people you are targeting. We're targeting people who are performing very well thank you in their current role. They're satisfied. We look for the best."

That means constant research, maintaining a global database of the performance of individuals, including those who may be coming up through organisations.

"If we are looking for a director of marketing, we would say 'what competitors do that well and who are the most innovative, the most effective, who has the most potential with leadership skills?'"

Picking leaders is no easy task.

"You can take a highly intelligent person and put them in a leadership role and they could fail.

"Leadership tends to be around emotional intelligence - self awareness, self control, the ability to build positive relationships with people, someone who can convey a vision."

She says the salaries New Zealand-based companies can afford to pay are " a problem because we're playing in an Australasian skill market, even at the CFO level.

"What we could offer was a better tax rate, but that's fast becoming history. We can offer more breadth in role than offshore companies, but the way we attract talent is often just family reasons - it's a good country to raise a family."

Salaries are not exceptional here, she says, and this country needs to attract world-class talent, "be they New Zealanders or other nationalities."

Ms Streefland says the resourcefulness and energy of many New Zealanders also makes them targets for poaching across the Tasman or further afield.