Headhunters’ Targets: Who Are They?

Luc Jones
Partner
Antal Russia

Although the Russian labor market is only just recovering from the global economic recession, demand in certain fields significantly exceeds supply. The shortage of these professions is caused by several factors. Firstly, almost all of these positions are new to the Russian market — local companies are only now beginning to comprehend their importance to the business. Additionally, education in Russia is often not linked to a future career, so practical experience is actually the only way to gain the necessary skills for the workplace. Companies are willing to outbid each other for these specialists, offering them high salaries and attractive work conditions.

When the crisis started, companies were focused on increasing efficiency and cost optimization, and so they felt an urgent need for demand planning specialists. The main duty of such a specialist is to conduct a strategic demand analysis, taking into consideration data from sales, logistics and marketing departments and controlling the implementation of forecasts. These professionals are still in great demand.

Because of Russian companies’ growing investment activity, employers are starting to consider the role of IR manager, who would be responsible for building relations with the company’s investors. Companies usually face some difficulties in hiring people for this position, because IR managers with the relevant experience are very rare on the Russian market. The same problems appear while looking for banking strategic planning specialists, a position that has recently become popular on the banking market. The demand for such professionals is rather high, because more and more local banks are considering entering the international market and international banks are expanding into the Russian market, and so there is a need to create a common development strategy.

The economic recovery has enabled companies to start paying attention to developing corporate culture and staff motivation again. There is a considerable lack of compensation and benefits managers, who develop and implement competitive compensation systems, carry out salary surveys and control evaluation projects, and also of internal communications managers, whose responsibility is to develop and conduct events aimed at forming effective communications between employees from all departments and supporting corporate culture.

A considerable growth of derivative deals has resulted in rising demand for lawyers who support these deals. Lawyers with strong derivatives experience, especially with international expertise, are in great deficit, so it is very difficult to outbid for them. This is why companies are either preparing their own specialists or starting to cooperate with law companies where experienced professionals work.

Owing to new IT projects starting and old projects resuming, system analysis and program development consultants and project managers are in demand again. The demand for specialists who have successful implementing, customization and support experience is quite high. It is particularly difficult to find SAP consultants who specialize in production module implementing. There are not enough candidates on the market, thus why experienced consultants can dictate their conditions.

If you are thinking about what profession to follow or have faced a dead end in your career, you can consider choosing one of these professions. We predict that demand for these specialists will remain significant in the near future. The compensation level and career opportunities offered to candidates in this article can be very attractive.