A healthy and beneficial partnership
IN A competitive human capital market, search firms are pressured to make the first match between a corporation and an executive talent to ensure their place in a major corporation’s hiring process. These firms often hurry the process and forego the necessary steps to make the best talent matches. For some firms, finding the right talent begins with following a standard of ethics and a partnership that makes both client and talent meet their needs without compromise.
Highest Integrity in Recruiting Executives or H.I.R.E., Inc., a boutique executive search firm founded by veteran human resource executive Carmen Tengtio-Guevara in 1991, is one of those firms. A former John Clements Consultants, Inc. executive, Ms. Guevara has espoused the ethical and international standards that she has learned since 1976 at her own firm. This commitment to a code of conduct has inspired Ms. Guevara to highlight this value in the company’s name and its acronym. She is also the vice-president and one of the founders of the Philippine Association of Executive Search Professional, Inc. (PAESPI), a group of executive search professionals who follow a set of ethics that will protect both the corporate clients and the executive talents during a headhunting process.
For 25 years now, H.I.R.E. has been conducting rigorous searches for toplevel executive and managerial level positions, with a minimum salary of P2 million. The firm focuses on developing close client partnerships over volume generation, choosing to work on a shorter list of clients than a longer one, for an unrivalled focus that delivers quality results.
“This model enables H.I.R.E., Inc. to work long term with its clients and to remain true to its code of ethics,” Ms. Guevara told This model is best for facilitating closely monitored searches, she added.
H.I.R.E.’s team of consultants, researchers and database administrators observe a comprehensive and timebound search that values the client and talent’s trust and rights. The first consideration of the firm is the proper understanding of the client’s needs by gathering the right job requirements. These client requirements or “specs,” as Ms. Guevara calls them, are what guide the team to do appropriate research. “It’s like building a house. If you don’t have the specs, you might get all the wrong materials. It’s not going to end up being the house that you want,” Ms. Guevara said.
The firm’s searches are closely monitored to meet the standards and values that it represents and ensure that both the client and the executive talents’ needs are being met. “We agree on a working timetable with them on our deliverables. We follow our code of ethics for both clients and candidates. Precisely, that is what our name stands for. Finally, we work with utmost confidentiality in all our searches as this is perhaps one of the primary reasons why clients would use a headhunter,” Ms. Guevara said.
Confidentiality is of great importance to H.I.R.E. as most executives have reached a level where having their information float around is a