Hellenic Technologies
Hellenic Technologies is a well-respected, market leading creative agency from Italy. Hellenic’s principal business is delivering integrated marketing campaigns to client companies, driving their growth, building their brands and ensuring strong ROI in an increasingly digital world. They came to Singapore in the early 2010s to capture the rising digital marketing trend in Southeast Asia and in China. The business enjoyed a huge bloom with the team doubling its size within 3 years. Clients across the region apparently appreciated the creativity and passion that the Hellenic team brought to their work.
The Brief
Hellenic Singapore was undergoing a reorganization to fundamentally restructure the business operating model when they approached GlobalK to request for consultant services. Their plan was to double the market share, open more offices across the region and serve a larger group of clients by increasing the range of services offered.They wanted to have more local talent within their teams and set up new teams to support new services including: 3D animation services, digital product design and most important, new financial director.
It was important that the business recruited the right members that would act as a true business partner to the CEO/Board to help shape and drive the growth agenda and continue to build and execute strategic plans that delivered against the Groups Operating objectives and margin growth targets to realize its future aspirations. It was also important to understand Hellenic unique culture and driving principles to ensure the ‘right fit’ and seamless integration.
Our Approach
We studied the proposed growth agenda carefully and agreed right from the outset that to achieve our recruitment objective, the role the new Finance Director would need to display huge experiences around creating shareholder value, financial strategy and risk & control. Together with our client, we developed an assessment test designed to explore these themes in detail. Hellenic indicated it was interested in evaluating candidates from a wide range of backgrounds including the advertising and communications vertical but also across the broader professional services domain.
We also identified a slate of experts from regional and international advertising and creative media to fill in the roles for creative services. The key was to identify experts who demonstrated a sound understanding of the challenges facing the broader creative agency environment, their clients, coupled with strong design leadership with conclusive experience in proposing choices that align with the clients strategy and be able to demonstrate a much deeper understanding of the business and all potential assumptions and outcomes.
The Result
After conducting an extensive research, we provided a strong shortlist of 6 candidates – 3 from the creative agency sector, 1 from a startup and 2 from a media company. The client conducted interview and gained strong interest in 2 of the 6; 1 from creative agency and 1 from the startup. The second interview revealed exemplary feedback on both candidates, indicating that either one was the right match for the role.
Eventually the client chose the executive from a similar sized creative agency as their new Finance Director due to his familiarity with the financial aspects of a creative agency. The feedback shared with us 3 months later showed high satisfaction with the new Finance Director from the Board of Management.
As for creative experts, the new team was a success as members could collaborate closely together to deliver excellent results to Hellenic’ clients. The client was surprised at the quality of the work delivered as they considered 3D animation was not Hellenic’s strong point.
