Europe

ART European Recruitment

We conduct senior management executive search assignments across the EMEA Region, on the EMEA, Europe Regional, sub-regional, or national levels. Candidate focus is on the recruitment of experienced managers who have worked at leading global companies or at well-run medium sized companies that have strong footholds in Europe or beyond. Other top candidates may also be considered.

All ART candidates are expected to have fluent or very strong conversational English skills. Many are multilingual. Many have worked in or serviced multiple European countries.

Some executive searches are for mission-critical sole-contributors, while other searches are for organizational heads supervising many hundreds or thousands of staff members.

ART is an American executive search firm, founded in 1987, that uses "best in class" methods to identify the best possible candidates for our client companies operating in Europe. Unlike most of our European competitors in recruitment, ART relies entirely on American-style headhunting - the direct approach method by which candidates at the client's competitors or near-competitors are solicited - as well as our own well-established candidate and industry contacts.

Although advertising is the predominant method in Europe for recruitment, ART has never used advertising, as recruitment by advertising is not accurately defined as a proper form of executive search, but rather only at best as some kind of roundabout, passive, luck-based strategy. Our client-companies do not hire us to be lucky. They hire us because we are professional headhunters trained to seek out, evaluate and present the best possible candidates for our clients' most important business missions in Europe and worldwide.

ART recruiters assigned to a client's search always have a minimum of ten years' experience in senior management executive search and recruitment. That person will not only be the client's contact person, but s/he also will be directly involved in the client's executive search. By keeping our recruiters close to both our candidates and our clients at all stages of the recruitment effort, the client can be assured that the ART search will be more intensely focused than is usually the case with European recruitment companies, especially if the search must involve multiple cities or countries.

The current state of executive search in Europe is so poor that often executive searches that take us 3-4 weeks to complete, take 3-4 months for our competition to complete. Part of this is due to poor training, part due to an over-reliance upon advertising, and part due to a neo-feudalistic worldview, where Munich recruiters often only know candidates in Munich but not in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Berlin, or Düsseldorf; where Paris recruiters only know Paris candidates; where Amsterdam recruiters only know Amsterdam candidates, but not candidates in Rotterdam, Antwerp, or Brussels. So when a company needs to look at all the best candidates across Germany, or all French candidates, or all Benelux candidates, or all candidates across all of Europe, where can they go? ART of course. We recruit candidates everywhere in Europe, because we understand how to conduct executive search and recruitment across entire continents. We have done so for over 25 years.

ART is in operation 24/7/365, so while our European competitors are working, we are working. While they are home watching TV, or enjoying nice long vacations, we are working. While they are asleep, we are working. And because ART recruits across all European nations and language groups seamlessly, there are no delays when there is a need for our search to expand its radius. There is no slow or inefficient hand-off from one office to another to another. And please note: ART never outsources any search or partners with any other search firm for any reason. In this way we can always control the quality and time lines of our searches.

Our clients also tell us that our flat rate results-only executive search fees are priced lower and with less risk than our competition's fees. It seems that most of our European competitors have picked up the bad habit of demanding up-front payment before presenting even one candidate. They ask for these retainers because supposedly the search is "so complex and difficult." But at the same time they invariably describe themselves as experts who are local recruiters that know everyone. But then why do they say their search is so hard and requires a retainer? Shouldn't they already have candidates if they are so well connected? We believe that retainer-focused recruitment is a ruinous behavior that only tends to focus the recruiter on getting the retainer first, and then filling the vacancy with someone/anyone who is tolerably acceptable. Such a focus traps an employer into hiring candidates that they otherwise might not hire. By contrast, the ART method, demands that the ART recruiters work at their best, and if the client does not hire our candidate, we are paid nothing. Our method has made our recruiters sharper, better trained, and faster at analyzing our candidates' career paths and our clients' business goals.

For more details, please ask your ART recruiter.

• Benelux: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg
• DACH: Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein
• Francophone: France, Switzerland, Belgium, Monaco
• Nordic: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland
• Anglophone: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales
• Southern Europe: Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Andorra, San Marino, Malta
• Central Europe: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia
• Eastern Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Macedonia, Belarus, Albania, Kosova, Armenia, Georgia
• Turkic: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan

 

In accordance with ART's global practices, our searches focus on identifying the best qualified candidates, without regard to age, gender, religion, marital status, race, ethnicity, color, etc.