K Search Asia Consulting, Inc.
Helping clients grow from employee #1 up to the first one hundred demands the best strategy and strength in execution. Having the right tools could be game-changing.
Speaking with Ross Suarez-Galura, Senior Manager & Special Projects Head of KSearch Asia Consulting, Inc. - Philippines, we see how Recruitment Boost is able to support their agile ways of working.
ABOUT K SEARCH ASIA
CONSULTING, INC.
KSearch Asia’s executive search lineage can be traced back to over 20 years ago, the time when it was still a part of one the Big 4 accounting firm’s Consulting division. In 1999, the company became independent. KSearch retained not only the "K" from the parent company’s initials, but most especially, the love for and specialisation in finance and accounting roles. This enabled us to work on numerous volume engagements where we have helped start-up BPOs or SSCs get their first 100 to 200 employees from the top executives to the more junior ones. KSearch has evolved over time to support other functions like Sales, Marketing, HR, IT, Strategy, Products and Segments across different industries like Banking and Financial Services, Molecular Diagnostics, Pharma, Manufacturing, and Tech.
Also inspired by the tech companies’ speed and commitment to quality service, our company has implemented and succeeded in converting our small operations into an Agile environment this year. Our small size has certainly made it easy for us to implement changes and improvements in our process. This impacts the culture and the general mindset as well. I am proud to say that we have embraced just that - Agility.
Alongside agility, our capacity to deliver is hinged on our ability to understand the client's business and their requirements deeply. We make sure that we take the time to sit down with them so we can ask the right questions. Coupling this with our search methodology, and targeted selection interviews, we can problem solve any recruitment challenge from any industry.
HOW IS K SEARCH ASIA DIFFERENT?
Our competitive advantage is really taking targeted selection to heart. I know that a lot of recruitment companies apply targeted selection, but it’s really what we do and what we apply consistently to all our roles. Because of targeted selection and our consulting methodology, we’re able to apply it to any role and not just limited to one practice or one industry. If we follow that consulting methodology, the targeted selection methodology, we can be very much agile, we can learn anything.
Just last year, the direction of the company drastically changed – Coming strong from Finance and Accounting, suddenly the roles were IT-related and so I can say that one of K Search’s strengths is being agile cause we’re able to transition quickly. Wherever the demand is, we confident we can learn that. Even when the roles have changed, using our consistent consulting methodology, and the targeted selection techniques, we are able to hire by the hundreds. -- Even if it’s IT and it’s never been our strength, we can learn it and we can help companies start-up.
Most of our accounts are foreign companies and our strength is really helping companies grow from employee number 1 up to the first hundred or few hundreds. I’m very proud that we’re also helping the Philippines in that process. For example, I’ll be meeting with a management consulting firm and their client is western, we will pitch for the them to get jobs here. – And that has happened. It’s strategic in a way and it’s helping the Philippines cause it’s not just for K Search. Sometimes, if it’s for the Philippines and it goes to Malaysia, or it goes to India, the challenge is the capabilities here. So that’s another realm of expertise we’re really excited about and we’re very much actively participating in. That helps us in the business, and it helps the country also.
HAVE YOU ALWAYS USED A CRM?
I've had previous experience of working in a multinational bank where we used an ATS. In KSearch, there was an attempt to build a database in-house but the project got aborted due to dev-related challenges.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FEATURE AND HOW HAS RECRUITMENT BOOST HELPED YOUR BUSINESS?
The main propositions for acquiring Recruitment Boost are the ff: 1) Improve sourcing speed 2) House everything in the cloud. This will solve the problem of not having access to some CVs because of network-sharing issues, and would also address the pain point of not locating CVs because some consultants have resigned without a complete transition file.
My favourite feature is of course sourcing from this cloud-based software! We can do boolean searches, simple searches, fine-tune through filters, they're really helpful. Also I love parsing, it's like dopamine hit for me! It's awesome how the system captures most info automatically - saves us the time, and spares us from human errors. Massive upload is still ongoing so I really look forward to having everything there in the cloud. Eventually we'll move into the stage where we use it as a CRM. Looking forward to that. The vision is for the employees to work remotely even post-pandemic, so this tool helps that become a reality too.