HRCap makes 2022 listing for Top 10 Executive Search Firms
Organizational success depends on several significant factors, among which investing in the ‘right leader’ who can navigate changes and market nuances is perhaps most critical. Finding transformational leaders who can drive scalable long-term growth is essential now more than ever, especially with the current Great Resignation.
The task becomes even more complicated when considering aspects like multiculturalism associated with globalization. “In order to effectively localize and globalize, you need a multicultural leader who can understand the market, maneuver all stakeholders, and drive transformational change,” says Stella H. Kim, the Managing Director and Head of Executive Search of HRCap.
Founded in 2000, HRCap is the largest Asian-American Executive Search & HR Consulting Firm in the United States, providing Total HR Solutions to over 1000 robust clientele ranging from medium-sized businesses to Global Fortune 500 companies across all industries. With over 400 combined years of Recruiting and HR expertise, HRCap excels at identifying and developing top candidates with the essential leadership skills and breakthrough expertise that can drive globalization and transformational change. “We have been instrumental in partnering with our clients throughout the pandemic by not only placing top talent with the critical expertise, but also advising them on building sustainable work modalities and cultures that enable greater employee engagement and productivity.”
In an interview with the Manage HR magazine, Stella sheds light on how executive placements are increasingly more about understanding the cultural aptitude of leaders, assessing their ability to adapt to different nuances of Asian-American cultures, and coaching them on essential organizational leadership that unlocks greater business growth.
What makes HRCap stand apart in the market?
Our biggest assets are our people. We pride ourselves on having an unmatched internal capacity to screen, secure, and serve. Our recruiters are trained to develop the acumen for identifying the right leaders upfront and building ongoing relationships. We thrive on accurately screening for industry background and technical expertise, given our exclusive internal network of over 30 Think-Tank Advisors who are industry and subject experts in their respective fields. We continue to lead the bilingual niche market, given our multilingual recruiters who can critically assess language and cultural fluencies.
Our recruiting process is highly digitalized and heavily data-driven. We leverage our internal ERP database of over 600K candidates and 1M historical interview data to thoroughly assess fit. We conduct multi-touchpoint phone and video screening sessions to collect data and intel on candidate expertise, leadership style, and genuine interest. We drive 360-degree reference checks to surface any risks or challenges that the client must address. We have piloted and are developing our proprietary HRCap STAR Leadership Assessment Tool (official commercial launch in 2022) that evaluates not only capability but also assesses candidate’s level of self-awareness and learning agility – the two most important leadership traits that signal candidate ability to drive transformational change.
We are highly digitalized yet even more personalized in our service. HRCap strives to truly understand our clients and our candidates by focusing on the why, not just the how and the what. Based on our continuous service feedback, the top two identified Brand Types were Performance and Experience. We partner with our stakeholders to win the War for Talent by guaranteeing unwavering performance with a differentiated white-glove service experience. Our Executive Search Practice has a success rate of above 92% for all our VIP clientele.
" We partner with our stakeholders to win the War for Talent by guaranteeing unwavering performance with a differentiated white-glove service experience. "
What process does HRCap follow to understand its clients’ requirements?
Our teams drive success by building trust across all stakeholders. We maintain transparency by communicating and managing ongoing expectations. We personalize relationships with our candidates by spending an incredible amount of time vetting their backgrounds and expectations in order to keep their best interests in mind throughout the process and beyond. Even when our competitors struggled to manage candidates during the Great Resignation, we were able to support our clients with best-fit candidates given our genuine investment in the partnership. After all, the most fulfilling relationships are those built with our placed candidates, who then come to us as clients in building out their respective teams.
Our clients also consider us as partners, not just agents or vendors. We are asked to partake in candidate panel interviews and internal meetings with hiring executives for alignment on their business strategies. Other agencies find it highly difficult to recruit for talent without a clear job description, but our teams rather excel at it given our organic understanding of our client’s business. We may often start without a clearly defined job scope but can easily take our understanding of our client to identify and attract the right talent to close those capability gaps. In fact, 20% of our client work is now generated on proactive, open recommendations, where we identify new breakthrough skills (candidates) that our clients must actively invest in instead of just reactively backfilling open roles.
In what way did HRCap respond to the emergence of the pandemic?
In response to COVID-19, HRCap transitioned to a fully remote setup by being extensively agile. We launched a pandemic task force, digitalized processes, invested in technologies, and created new performance management systems for business continuity and service excellence. We focused on transforming our people, processes, and technologies to rebrand and redefine our business normally. We hired extensively and launched monthly corporate-wide workshops to equip teams with new recruiting best practices and to drive synergetic cross-team engagement given our hybrid workplace. By strictly ensuring precaution but also adapting to the future of work, we found that our teams are generally satisfied and productive in our forever hybrid model. In fact, we were recognized by NJBiz as the first Korean-American firm to be named one of Top 120 “New Jersey’s Best Places to Work” in 2021.
We have also partnered with our clients in using pandemic-induced disruptions as a positive change agent to reroute. We provide strategic counseling on navigating remote hiring and building a sustainable hybrid workforce as the new business normal. We took on greater corporate social responsibility by sharing knowledge and insights with client HR seminars. We have also conducted resume writing and career coaching for candidates at no cost as our unique give-back to help mobilize the community in rising above the pandemic.
What do you envision for HRCap in the upcoming 12 to 18 months?
Our aggressive but optimistic mission is to double our headcount, service coverage, and revenue by 2025. We have become much more progressive with our hiring plans by proactively recruiting talent to grow our respective functions. We will continue to grow our client base and deepen our service excellence. Our thousand client groups consist of retained VVIP partners, ongoing turnkey recruiting projects, newly acquired clients, and renewed dormant accounts in the wake of the pandemic. Our current executive candidates will soon semi-retire and become advisors in the next 5 to 10 years. Our priority is to build and develop our next-generation executive talent pool who can become transformational leaders and localized executives at our clients and greater communities. Most importantly, HRCap is committed to future-proofing by staying nimble to learn, grow, and transform to define and lead the new HR normal.
(Source: Manage HR Magazine)
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