Four years after initiating the largest seminar in the history of Russian search industry, conducted by a Canadian recruiter Clark Jackson, CONSORT Consulting Group, acting under the aegis of the Association of Personnel Search Consultants (APSC), recently organized a series of workshops in Executive Search.

Russian executive search professionals had a field day at the end of October. Moscow saw for the first time a series of open training sessions delivered by Jill Dillistone – one of the world’s leading executive search coaches.
Globally there are only a few thousand professionals in direct search for top managers. Companies in this field can be understandably reticent about sharing their expertise with competitors and risking revealing professional secrets to clients. As a result the number of those who train and coach across companies and continents can be counted on one hand.

Jill Dillistone is one of the few. With a background of international experience with leading executive search companies such as Russell Reynolds, Heidrick & Struggles and Whitehead Mann, she decided to devote her time to assisting less-experienced colleagues in this multi-faceted industry. The logic is simple: if you help people to understand the skills necessary to provide excellent client service, you share in their progress and that of the profession in meeting client needs.
Mrs. Dillistone’s Moscow debut consisted of three one-day workshops: Research and Candidate Development (for researchers and consultants new to the business), Search Execution and Client Management, and Interview skills (for search consultants with no less than 2 or 3 years experience). All the workshops were delivered in English, to groups of 16 people, and were a good combination of lecturing on the theory and practical interactive case study exercises.
Despite the language requirements and a rather high fee, the workshops sold out immediately: there were nearly a hundred applicants for forty-eight available places. Representatives of Ward Howell, Ancor, Amrop Hever, Neumann International, Boyden, Kelly Services, Penny Lane and others took part in the workshops.
The feedback received from the majority of participants was positive. Despite the diversity of their search industry experience, all appreciated the benefits of the combination of well-structured material and the individual attention given by Jill Dillistone to every participant.
After the workshops Jill Dillistone said: “Although I have worked with many non-English mother tongue groups, this was my first experience of working with groups drawn from a single language and cultural background other than English. It was extremely challenging and also stimulating. You have many talented young consultants here and I very much hope that the workshops will help them achieve professional goals in their companies more effectively”.
For Mrs. Dillistone a distinguishing feature of the workshops was the presence of corporate HR professionals responsible for recruitment within companies. This is a group that does not normally attend her workshops in western-Europe. “Their perspective was extremely valuable both for me and for other participants and I will work on attracting similar corporate recruitment specialists to our workshops elsewhere. They are, of course, part of our profession – although they work within the corporate environment – and successful interaction with them should ensure efficient HR solutions for our clients” said Mrs. Dillistone.

“To tell the truth, CONSORT Group started this pilot project with more good hope than experience” said Michael Bogdanov, the Group’s Chairman and, until recently, president of the APSC, following the success of the workshops. “None of us were sure we would be able to attract even 10-15 people. That’s why the eventual success of this endeavor felt so much nicer. It is fair proof that executive search training is in great demand, and it reflects a growing interest for this profession in the Russian marketplace as a whole. We’ll definitely give further thought to continuing our collaboration with Jill Dillistone in coaching Executive Search consultants, as well as drawing on the opportunities presented by the International Executive Search Federation (IESF) which our group represents in Russia and CIS as its exclusive partner.”
Ending her first visit to Russia on a high note, Jill Dillistone held a two-day workshop for CONSORT Group’s consultants.