The Country Manager twenty interviews had not found

When the previous Country Manager left, the client ran its Thailand business remotely from Singapore. A year in, it was clear the absence of local leadership was holding the market back, and the search for a replacement began.

A year of remote management had cost the brand visibility in the Thai market, which made the role a harder sell than the company's global position suggested. And by the time we were engaged, the obvious market was gone: the client's own talent acquisition team in Singapore had been running the search directly for six months, had interviewed twenty candidates and had approached many more, without a hire.

This is what a decade of IT sales recruitment in Thailand is for. We mapped every suitable candidate across the target companies and went to market directly. Many had already been approached or interviewed by the client, so the search was about finding the ones who had not been, and putting the opportunity in front of them properly.

The candidate we put forward was vastly experienced and well respected in the market. He had been Country Manager at another global technology vendor selling comparable solutions, so he knew the industry, the market and, critically, the customers. He was coming to the end of a contract and close to available.