FROM MAY 2015'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Extended recruitment services — corporate governance advice, candidate screening and outsourced HR functions, for example — are slowly but surely creeping into the Chilean market. While in high demand from clients, such services are generally supplied by only the most trusted recruitment firms.  

The Chilean market is competitive, with many recruitment firms scrambling to gain a foothold, Amrop managing partner Max Vicuña explains.

At the top of the recruitment food chain, or pyramid as he calls it, are about four well-known, well-respected recruiters, including Amrop. 

Intensive sector knowledge, local knowledge and good contacts are what have got them to the top but it is an extension of their services that is keeping them there. In Amrop’s case, that added value is corporate governance advice, into which the company now puts 50% of its efforts. 

For Hays’ Chilean managing director Pedro Lacerda, advice on HR policies is helping clients achieve economies of scale: “We are not having the role as recruiters; we are having the role clearly as advisers in HR policies.”

He continued to say companies, particularly international firms, were increasingly open to services other than the standard search and selection offerings — for example, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and working with managed service providers (MSPs). 

“When we talk to managers and HR people, there is a clear tendency to outsource much more of their HR function. Companies don’t want just the standard recruitment solution; they want much more efficient tools and solutions,” Lacerda says.

That ability to help drive and advise a company’s strategy only comes with experience and trust, he says. He adds: “I think it is clearly a competitive advantage.”

Selling that strategic vantage has been a hard road, says Vicuña, who founded his own executive search firm 20 years ago. It then became part of the Amrop network in 1996.

It was hard in the beginning to sell the value of executive search, let alone advice, but companies are increasingly becoming convinced of the value. 

According to Vicuña, about four recruiters sit at the top of the pyramid, about 40 in the middle and “as many as you like at the bottom” — all trying to make that next step up.

That is where the competition comes from and, alongside market reaction, is what creates a barrier to entry for any new agencies wishing to start up.

“So if the market values you as a relevant player they will accept your phone calls, they will accept [your invitation] to come to your office and… to take part in the process because you are a big firm or a relevant firm. They will not accept any of those invitations coming from an unknown brand or consultant.”

The other complication is the “local, very close-minded” nature of Chileans. For a foreigner, Vicuña explains, it can be very hard to develop a social or business network, especially if you want to recruit at the executive level. 

His advice for setting up a recruitment business in Chile? “You will be in trouble… really,” he says, “unless you get into an ongoing [established] company.”

That is exactly what Empresaria Group did with the acquisition of family-run Alternattiva in 2007. Group finance director Spencer Wreford said Alternattiva had been operating for quite some time, so had a strong base of local staff with the local knowledge. 

“I agree that you can’t just parachute people in from overseas and expect them to be able to set something up. I think you have got to have people on the ground. It’s one of those markets that still [requires] face-to-face [contact],” Wreford says.

Off the back of that acquisition, the group launched its executive search arm, Monroe Consulting, in Chile last year and hired local people to run it. The launch was supported by the back office capability and physical office space already there because of the earlier acquisition.

Sarah Marquet [email protected]