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The Chapman Consulting Group Annual Activity Report, September 2011

In this annual activity report, we look at The Chapman Consulting Group’s HR searches conducted in the year from 1 August 2010 until 31 August 2011. The statistics contained in this report are compiled from the advertisements placed on our website. A total of 337 HR jobs were advertised on our website in 2010/2011, an increase of 48% over the 227 HR jobs placed on the website in 2009/2010. This increase compares favourably with the 19% increase the previous year. The following analysis of our searches covers the breakdowns of HR specialisations, industries, locations, job types, travel frequencies, global headquarter locations, global turnover, geographic coverage, and finally the level and position of the hiring managers.

Location

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With a 48% increase year on year in total searches as background, The Chapman Consulting Group has expanded operations significantly into Hong Kong and Greater China and also Japan and Korea. Searches in Hong Kong and China now account for 19% of the total, up from 15% the previous year, representing a growth of 88% of searches in those regions. Growth in Japan and Korea increased from 9% share of searches to 15%, being an actual increase of 150% in total searches for this region. The share of searches in Singapore dropped from 59% to 55%, yet still experienced a real growth of 38%. South East Asia (being Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines) made up 5% of our HR searches and India & South Asia constituted 3% of our HR searches, although we spent a significant amount of time talking with Indian HR talent as we move the best and brightest into other parts of the region.

Job Function

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​The breakdown of HR searches remains very consistent, with 50% of our HR searches being concentrated in the HR Generalist and Business Partnering space for the third year. Organisational Development searches share grew another 2 percentage points from 13% to 15%. Compensation & Benefits searches remained at 10%, while Learning & Development searches slipped back in share from 9% to 8%. Recruitment/Staffing searches remained at 9% and HR Interim Management opportunities slipped from 5% to 4% of our total. HR Operations, Shared Services, Employee Relations and HRIS searches were up from 3% in 2009/2010 to 4% of the total this year. In view of our 48% overall growth in searches, each category enjoyed healthy real growth across the board.

Industry

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​As previously stated, a continued goal of The Chapman Consulting Group has been to remain as diversified as possible from an industry coverage perspective. We like to know each individual industry space well (particularly banking and financial services) but we recognise that the best HR talent is moveable across industries. We liked to keep the broadest spread of relationships possible. We have managed to demonstrate this commitment during the past year by improving our industry diversification. While the Banking and Financial Services searches increased 11%, this sector now accounts for 24% of our total versus 32% a year ago. The Industrial and Manufacturing sector was up 1 point to 23%. The Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences sector while growing 13% year on year, dropped from 17% to 13% of our focus, while Professional Services’ share was up from 9%to 10%. The biggest growth came from IT/Telecommunications, with a total searches growth of 239% and more than doubling share from 7% to 16%. Fast Moving Consumer Goods fell in share from 7% to 6%.

Job Type

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93% of the HR hires that The Chapman Consulting Groupwas involved in during the 2010/2011 year were permanent appointment hires. Interim hires made up 7% of the total. This share split remained the same as the previous 12 month period, meaning that both sectors grew at equal rates. Organisations in Singapore and Hong Kong are beginning to embrace the concept of interim talent hires. This has been particularly the case in the Banking and Financial Services space, which has seen the greatest number of contractors added.

Looking across the region, Australia and New Zealand remain the two most popular countries where we are seeing HR contractors being used.

Geographic Coverage of the Role

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As expected, being based in a regional headquarter setting, it is natural that the largest proportion – 47% of the 337 searches performed by The Chapman Consulting Group in 2010/2011 – had a fully regional remit. 13% of our searches had a sub regional remit (Greater China, North Asia, South Asia and South East Asia being some of these). And while less than 1% of our searches had an international multi-regional remit, 5% of our searches had a truly global remit. Our biggest growth came from the country level where the number of searches grew 92% bringing the share up from 27% to 35%. Much of the growth in country-level searches has been in China.

These figures remained relatively constant with those in 2009/2010, with regional searches reducing share by 2 points, sub regional HR searches losing 1 point, international HR searches losing 2 points, global HR searches dropping 2 points, and domestic searches being the biggest change increasing 7 points.

Despite our large growth in domestic country searches in ‘big’ geographies such as China and India, we remain confident of the emerging trend of international and sometimes global HR positions being moved to Asia. We predicted this trend two years ago and think that it will start to become more visible over the next three to five years. Asia, as a key growth location in the world, will become an important local for key global talent.

Travel Frequency of Roles

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Travel is a necessary part of most regional and international roles, and often country roles. Of the 337
HR searches that The Chapman Consulting Group opened in the 2010/2011 year, 36% had less than 10% travel in an average month, an increase of 4 points, reflecting the increased share of domestic country roles in our searches. 36% had between 10% and 25% travel, a drop of 5 points. At least 24% of roles were with travel frequency of between 25% and 50%, the same as the previous year. Now, 4% of jobs had expected travel of more than 50%, up by one share point.

Location of Global Headquarters and Annual Turnover

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​54% of our HR searches in 2010/2011 were with North America-based companies, an increase of 6 points from 48%. European headquartered companies make up 39% of our HR searches relative to 42% the year before. Around 7% of our HR searches arewith Asia Pacific headquartered companies. 59% of our searches are with companies with a US$10 – 100 billion turnover, up 7 points, and 6% are with US$100 billion plus. The remaining 35% of searches were with organisations with a turnover of less than US$10 billion.

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Hiring Manager

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​Our HR searches tend to come through three channels — Regional HR Heads or Specialists, Regional CEOs (or Business Leaders) andGlobal HR Heads or Specialists. In the year of 2010/2011, 46% of our searches came from the Regional HR Head, down 5 points, and 9% of our searches came from a Regional HR Specialist. A total of 23% of our searches came via way of the Global HR Head or Global HR Specialist. The importance of Global HR Heads of Specialists being a source of our key HR searches in Asia is dramatic. Searches coming from Country Heads of HR or Country Specialist leads across the region represent less than 5% of our business.

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