Key Industries
Member Login
Candidates
Marketing Director
Global Marketing Intelligence firm (Retained Search)
Support through a tough resignation and relocation transition.
Optia’s Life Sciences team managed to identify and relocate a candidate from Kobe to Tokyo to help a foreign company start its operations in Japan.
A Global Marketing Intelligence firm needed to secure an experienced Oncology Product Manager who would be willing to break his career path to work with a foreign start up on a new product for the Japanese market.
Having worked on a number of Oncology Product Manager positions in the past our team had a strong pool of candidates already screened. However, these candidates had devoted their working careers, firstly, as MR’s then as marketers to oncology. The thought of branching into consulting even if the therapeutic area was the same proved to be too much of a risk for many.
However, some of the candidates were willing to keep an open mind to at least interview and explore the opportunity. The client immediately ‘fell in love’ with one of the candidates. There were a few hurdles to overcome. Firstly, he lived in Kobe and would have to relocate to Tokyo and secondly, having worked with the one company for 20 years would mean that resigning would be difficult. His boss made it very difficult, having kept him in a meeting for 9 hours grilling him over his defection; he then refused to accept his resignation.
We counseled the client to keep the doors of communication open and have the candidate meet as many foreign visitors from headquarters as possible. This helped to strengthen his resolve. Our experience told us that over time his company would eventually accept his resignation and that if he kept his faith he would have an exciting opportunity.
After several months the candidate won his fight to leave his company. The client had a deep understanding of the cultural sensitivities and understood that patience would pay the dividend of having hired an outstanding candidate.
©2007 Optia Partners. All rights reserved.