Global executive search in Poland: a headhunter’s perspective

These days, you can find a list of sought after skills for top executive roles in a matter of seconds on the web. But finding them on a map? That’s a different matter.

Traditionally, international corporations have installed their C-suites at their global or regional headquarters. A British retail business might have its CFO in London. The CISO of a US manufacturer would work in Houston, Texas. A retail multinational will place its Regional Operations MD in Amsterdam. And so on.

Zooming out on the organisational chart, if you invested in centralising, nearshoring or offshoring services, you would site your operational teams in Poland, India, Malaysia or another hub. And by the same logic, you would keep your C-suite minus-1 roles close to the business — in Frankfurt, Paris, London or similar.

So far, so familiar. But traditions change — and I’d like to tell you how and why.

In particular, I want to discuss why companies are broadening their scouting locations when recruiting for executive talent, including my home country Poland alongside the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and other Western locations.

I will also write about:

▶️       How the common acceptance of remote work is changing the way recruitment and executive search companies operate

▶️      Why more and more companies are centralising regional and global recruitment services in Poland

▶️       Why many prefer to work with leading global executive search companies in Poland to manage their international searches and how this has impacted our work in recent years

The path that led us here is like a river fed by many sources. The first trend is well-known but worth reviewing: the success of business services and shared services centres (SSCs) in Poland. The second is more recent but also more exciting: the accelerating influx of sophisticated and now also strategic roles that give Polish professionals the chance to shape the regional and global development of companies. Let’s examine these trends in more detail.

SSCs: A Polish success story

Let’s start with shared services and its close relation, business process outsourcing (BPO). Most of you will be familiar with the application of these concepts, which allows organisations to achieve economies of scale by centralising business processes, typically by moving them to cost effective countries and locations.

For me, watching the rise of the sector has been a phenomenal ride. I started my career 18 years back in Warsaw in what was to become the Dutch ABN Amro’s shared services operation covering Europe. After moving to Michael Page, I watched the team grow to 200 and then to 1,500 following the acquisition by RBS.

Fast forward to today and research by ABSL Poland . “Poland remains one of the world's most attractive locations for the business services sector. Despite numerous global challenges, Poland has added nearly 100,000 jobs in the industry since 2019. Currently, the number of employees exceeds 435,000, an increase of 8% year-on-year, across over 1,800 business services centres in the country, while the share of the industry in Poland’s GDP rose to 4.5%. The value of exports per employee exceeded $53,000.” says  Jacek Levernes , Honorary President of ABSL.

In short, the international SSC & BPO sector is one of the largest and fastest growing in the Polish economy. Michael Page has played its part in this expansion, recruiting thousands of people into this industry for expert and managerial roles, while Page Executive completed tens of executive search mandates for Heads, Managing Directors, Global VPs building and/or managing such hubs.

What’s the secret to Poland’s success?

The first aspect is the access to talent. Look at the demographics — particularly the massive availability of young and highly qualified people. The student population in Poland stands at almost 1.5 million — higher than that of all other CEE countries combined. Furthermore, ABSL data shows that SSC and BPO-type operations in Poland deliver services in around 40 languages, the most common being English, German, French and Italian. This business has existed here for 20 years and moved to the maturity stage.

Second is the economic to added value ratio. Despite rising costs, it’s still cheaper to hire talent in Poland to do the work traditionally done in the headquarters of Western companies. This is true at both the operational and managerial levels, although salaries for the most senior roles are edging closer to Western European levels. The salary arbitrage has been a driver of growth for the country – especially since the work delivered in Poland is of high value, including assignments of high complexity that are not equally well delivered when offshored elsewhere in the world.

Thirdly, look at the map. Poland is located at the heart of Europe, with convenient air, railway, road and sea connections with other countries on the continent. Among the Central and Eastern European Countries (which includes other shared services hubs like Slovakia, Romania and Czechia), Poland is the largest in terms of land mass, population (38 million) and GDP. It’s also in the same time zone as most of Europe and just one hour ahead of the UK.

Finally, there's what you might call the Polish mindset. Even now, years after Poles helped tear down the Iron Curtain, Poles still have the urge to prove that we are just as good as people in the West.

The people

In his great, insightful book, “21 Polish Cardinal Sins” (it would be amazing if it were translated to English one day!), Polish philosopher and my dear friend Piotr Stankiewicz (https://piotrstankiewicz.pl/zapisz-sie/) writes about our fascination with Western Europe and what he calls the European norm. Today, when a certain part of the country seems to want to contest European values, the larger part is still driven to learn faster, work harder, travel farther and generally do whatever we can to achieve equal recognition with our peers in London, Frankfurt, New York, etc. This is not only my observation but one shared by Poles in various professions who have spoken to me on the subject.

Looking at the 6 dimensions of national culture, a model developed by professor Geert Hofstede, provides further insight to the unique societal blend found in Poland and some best practices to navigate doing business here. A highly individualistic society (promotions should be based on merit, management should be management of individuals) but, paradoxically, one with high power distance (hierarchical) – managers are advised to establish a second level of communication and have personal contact with everyone in the structure. High in what he called “masculinity” so motivated by wanting to be the best (emphasis on equity, managers expected to be decisive, people “live in order to work” and are driven by competition) as opposed to “feminine”, motivated by enjoying what you do. Very high uncertainty avoidance (emotional need for rules, security is an important motivator). Relatively low “long term orientation” (traditions are important) and low indulgence (less emphasis on leisure time). You can read more and compare Poland to other nations here: https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country/poland/

When the Iron Curtain fell and Poland started its transformation to capitalism in the 1990s, many entrepreneurial Poles set up small businesses selling products – even from the trunks of their cars. Their business imagination was without limits and fortunes were made in the most innovative ways. When the country opened up to foreign investment, Poles gained experience by working with expats sent here from the West. Recruiting for General Manager grades 15 years ago we had to approach candidates from a limited pool of expats. Today, there is an abundance of locals well prepared for CEO and executive board positions and headhunting the most talented Poles is one of the focuses of our team. 

Global Poland

Now for the good news: I believe that Poles are growing in confidence on the global stage and have every reason for doing so. This is tied to the second trend I want to talk about: the growing demand for high-level roles based in Poland.

This didn’t happen overnight but rather reflects the slow but sure evolution of SSC and BPO roles. At first, these were almost purely operational — support services in accounting, HR, payroll and IT. But as it became clear that Polish professionals were a good investment, international firms began to recruit them for more sophisticated roles.

Formerly, clients contracted us to recruit accounting staff with the typical split of general ledger, accounts payable and accounts receivable operations. Nowadays, they are also hiring us to help build complex financial planning and analysis teams of experts who prepare budgeting for the entire EMEA region or finance controlling for various countries. We have helped set up such hubs of 10-50. The largest one comprised 130 FTEs FP&A experts for a global pharma enterprise in Poland and tens in other global locations. These experts work alongside the hundreds they already employed in traditional, transaction accounting SSCs or via BPOs.

Then there’s IT. Where once we recruited helpline operators, now we look for software developers creating applications for a global user base or providing complex cybersecurity services. We’ve placed hundreds of these roles, and there are plenty of companies anxious to jump on the bandwagon and move their technology operations here.

I could go on. On a regional or global level, out of Warsaw, Cracow, Wroclaw and other cities, Poland now covers marketing, supply chain, procurement and risk management. You name it, Poland is providing it and we had a chance to support clients in building their centres in these areas from the ground up.

As people gained experience, they were given the opportunity to manage operational functions. In doing so, they gained the skills to supervise more sophisticated teams and now we have thousands of mid-level and hundreds of top-level managers in Poland leading teams of a few to up to several hundred or thousand people for global enterprises. The concept of having Poles lead these complex international multicultural teams has been proven to investors time and time again.

Iwona Dudzińska , Citi Solutions Center Poland Head, comments: “We set up our center in Warsaw back in 2005 – almost 20 years ago. It has since grown from running plain vanilla processes for neighbor countries, to one of the largest solutions centers globally with close to 7,000 employees, serving complex processes for clients in 70 countries. The level of sophistication of roles located in the Poland CSC has grown immensely over the last years. We are providing solutions and driving strategic initiatives in areas such as Cyber Security, Cloud Architecture, Climate Risk Management, Data Transformation. It was possible thanks to the trust and confidence in our team based on diverse, well-educated talents located in Poland.”

You can download the latest ABSL report on the topic here for free: https://shop-absl.pl/Business-Services-Sector-in-Poland-2023-p122

Coming back to Jacek Levernes: “A major factor for the strong growth of the business services sector in Poland stems from its strategic shift to acquiring highly specialized services involving complex processes and often global roles. More than 85 percent of newly created jobs are in services requiring advanced skills. Increasingly, decisions taken in Poland are having an impact on global organizations.”

Slawomir Soszynski , Vice President of the Management Board and Chief Information Technology Officer at ING Bank Śląski, one of the largest banks in Poland, confirms. “Being on the business side, I see a significant shift of competencies and investment profile of shared services located in Poland in the last 10 years. In the past, the majority of these centres were delivering relatively simple operational or supporting roles for their organizations. Talent cost was a primary driver for location selection decisions. Nowadays, this sector in Poland has matured with abilities to drive organization’s incremental value(s) and business excellence. Our talents have proven to be of top class value and, as a result, companies are placing high-value jobs, including global leadership roles here. Despite numerous ongoing local challenges, these are promising signals that our country will remain one of the world’s top locations for business shared services.”  ING itself has located numerous business service centers in Poland, including one for global technology.

The nearshoring trend has gone far beyond shared services. Ten years ago, we supported the launch of the Capability Network in Poland for one of the largest global players on the consulting and outsourced operations market. They are now a team of 1,000+ consultants employed in Poland and sent on projects across Europe and beyond. These consultants do the exact same work as their Western counterparts, with assignments ranging from creating target operation models for companies from all sectors, leading transformations, to system integration for clients in the UK, France, Germany and others. Others followed suit.

End of Part 1 of 2. Join me for Part 2 where l focus on what has changed in the last years and how these trends are impacting executive search and opportunities for executives and companies alike:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/global-executive-search-poland-headhunters-part-2-kulikowska

Whether you agree or disagree with this prognosis or any of the points in this article, I’d love to hear from you! Continue the discussion with me in the comments section below or email me at agnieszkakulikowska@pageexecutive.com.