The significant opportunities open to UK and international recruitment firms are best served by having an office in the country, recruiters familiar with the market and broader overseas expansion suggest tell Recruiter.

With Brazil preparing to host the Football World Cup and Olympic Games in the next few years, last week saw a trade delegation from Sao Paulo in the UK to present eight projects with a combined value of $20bn (£12.7bn) to potential bidding UK firms.

And the size of the opportunities is consolidated by the UK’s experience in hosting London 2012, according to trade and investment minister Lord Green.

Richard Paisley, chief executive officer of international procurement and supply chain executive recruiter Proco Global, tells Recruiter that alongside the Australian market, Sao Paulo is a market where a local office is key. “We really struggle to do business without having a physical presence there,” he says.

James Marklove, bid manager at recruiter Omega Resource Group, which operates in various overseas markets but not Brazil, comments to Recruiter: “You can place overseas contractors there without a local presence, but you need to have in-country partners such as umbrella firms given the level of bureaucracy and complexities of tax; it would be difficult to do it on an ad-hoc basis.

“I go to a lot of industry events where discussions turn to the amount of effort versus the amount of reward in terms of building into emerging markets, and Brazil is seen as relatively favourable in terms of that balance.”

Carl Chinnappen, international director of London-based multi-sector recruiter ewi recruitment, which has recruited in the Brazilian market, adds: “The market in Brazil will require a certain degree of international support but for the most part recruitment will come from the local market. Whether it’s an international agency or a local firm they will both be competing for the same kind of skilled personnel.”

And he adds: “The major challenge would be around language skills and local talent networks.”

With Brazil one of the world’s largest countries by land mass as well as population, and encompassing significant cultural diversity, Patrick Hollard, the regional managing director for Latin America at recruiter Michael Page, adds that recruiters in Brazil “must take into consideration these regional differences… to be present in most of these regions is crucial”.

“From our experience, recruiting in the South [of Brazil] is totally different than recruiting in the North. The contact channels, the way you interact with candidates among other things, are very important when you start a recruiting project in the country.”

In terms of the multi-billion pound projects being tendered in Sao Paulo, Hollard adds: “This kind of assignment makes you deal with all hierarchical levels, which makes a recruiter who has the capability to work at the same time with staffing, traditional recruiting and executive search, one step ahead.”