The Chapman Consulting Group Annual Activity Report, July 2009

In the annual report below, we look at The Chapman Consulting Group’s HR searches conducted in the 12 months from 1 July 2008 until 30 June 2009. The statistics contained in this report are compiled from the advertisements put on our website in the last 12 months. The analysis on our searches cover the breakdown of HR specialisations, industries, locations, job types, travel frequencies, locations of the global headquarters, global turnover of companies, geographic coverage of the roles, and finally the level and position of the hiring managers.

Location

​Although The Chapman Consulting Group is headquartered in Singapore, 37% of our HR hiring work in fact has been outside of Singapore. Of the work conducted outside Singapore, more than 25% of these searches have focused on Japan, 23% on China, 18 % on Hong Kong and 18% in India. In the past year we have also performed HR searches in Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Dubai, Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. We expect regional locations outside Singapore – particularly India, China, Hong Kong, Japan Vietnam and Thailand to contribute more to our overall mix in the coming 12 months.

Job Function

​Of the HR assignments we have been involved in during the past 12 months, 49% of these were HR Generalist/HR Business Partner roles, followed by 11% in Organisational Development specialists. Of next importance were senior recruitment or talent acquisition appointments (8%), training specialists (8%), HR interim managers (8%), compensation/benefits experts (8%), HR operations/shared services heads (5%) and HR Information Systems leads (2%). We were also involved in several specialised search assignments in Employee Relations, Executive Compensation, Expatriate Management and HR Project Leaders.

Industry

​A goal of The Chapman Consulting Group has been to remain diversified in our industry coverage. We recognise that the best HR talent is moveable across industries, and it has therefore been important to us to ensure as broad a distribution of our relationships as possible. The Banking and Financial services sector was our most important sector, accounting for 31% of our searches. This was followed by the Industrial sector at 17%. These were followed by IT and Telecommunications (16%), Professional Services and Consulting (13%), Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences (10%), Fast Moving Consumer Goods (6%), and Hospitality and Leisure (5%). The Retail/Luxury and Advertising/Media sectors made up only 2% of our HR searches combined.

Job Type

​Not surprisingly, 91% of the HR searches we took on in the last 12 months across Asia Pacific Japan have been for permanent hires. Interim hires made up just 9% of the total number of our HR assignments. Interestingly, although our involvement in key HR appointments in Australia (all with a link into regional stakeholders in Asia) was relatively few, half of these assignments were to hire HR talent on an interim basis. This concurs with our general thoughts that roughly 50% of the HR workforce in the more developed markets of Australia/New Zealand, Europe and North America, is employed on a contract basis. In Asia, Singapore and Hong Kong were fastest growing markets for interim HR appointments. The HR search assignments we took on in China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, were all for permanent hires.

Geographic Coverage of the Role

​28% of the HR searches we were involved in across the region had a domestic/local focus. 18% of our searches had a sub regional focus (7 countries or less), typically being one of the following — South East Asia/ASEAN, South Asia, North Asia, Greater China or ANZ. 42% of our HR searches were for regional roles involving coverage of more than 8 countries, typically having an Asia Pacific remit. Increasingly, we are seeing the emergence of HR roles in Asia that have broader exposure than Asia Pacific, often including Asia Pacific and the Middle East/Africa, or even further beyond including Central Asia and Central Europe. Such international roles made up 5% of our HR searches and 7% of our HR searches for global roles. These global roles were with a number of European companies with some global functions in Asia, as well as some Asia Pacific based organisations.

Travel Frequency of Roles

​Travel is a common part of regional or international/global roles in Asia, particularly out of Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai or Beijing. 1% of HR searches we were involved in had travel of 75% of the time or more. 6% of the HR roles we worked on would have had the successful candidate travelling 50-75% of the time. More than 28% of roles involved 25% – 50% of travel, 33% involved 10 – 25% of travel and 32% involved less than 10% of travel. This 32% broadly correlates with the 28% of roles recruited that were domestic in focus.

Location of Global Headquarters and Annual Turnover

​48% of our HR searches in 2008/2009 were with US based companies, 42% with European headquartered companies and 10% were with organisations having an Asia Pacific headquarter base. Of these organisations, 2% had a turnover of more than US$100 billion per annum, 43% had a turnover of above US$10 billion but under US$100 billion, 39% had a turnover between US$1 billion and US$10 billion, while 16% had a turnover of US$1 billion.

Hiring Manager

​Our HR searches tend to come through three channels – Regional HR Heads/Specialists, Regional Business Leaders or Global HR Heads/Specialists. A total of 59% of our assignments arose from Regional stakeholders, including 48% of these being Regional HR Heads, 6% from Regional HR Specialists and 5% from Regional Business Leaders. An additional 6% of searches came from Sub-Regional HR and Business stakeholders. Exactly 20% of our searches in the last year came from Global stakeholders in the US or Europe predominantly, comprising 10% of Global HR Heads, 9% Global HR Specialists and 1% Global Business Heads. 11% of our HR assignments came from domestically-focused HR and business stakeholders across the region.