Our client is an American Data Centre developer with locations in the US, Europe, and Asia. We’ve been working with the client since they entered the APAC market in 2021. Due to the client’s rapid expansion in the region and the competitive nature of the Data Centre industry, they require assistance with their hiring.
The Challenge
Data Centre construction is a significant growth market where quality candidates come at a premium. This challenge is exacerbated by several factors:
- The Data Centre market in APAC is not as mature as in Europe or the US, which means that clients can face challenges when hiring local talent. When primarily relying on the local talent pool, clients may need to engage more experienced expatriates to facilitate in-house training for the local teams which can be costly. The training can take time and put considerable pressure on project timelines.
- Often it is the client’s HR team which is driving the hiring process and job roles are highly technical and specialised – the needs of the role may not be fully understood to effectively leverage the search effort.
- Talent attraction is challenging; the competition is fierce, candidates can expect large compensation packages and it is not uncommon for companies to issue strong counter-offers to retain good staff.
The Solution
NES Fircroft has a dedicated base in Hong Kong – a data centre construction hotspot – but is also backed by a much larger global office network with wider experience in the construction and technical engineering sectors.
Through decades of staffing experience, we know exactly which skills to look out for and by utilising extensive screening processes are able to establish a candidate’s experience in much greater detail than what’s shown on the CV alone. We set-up a dedicated team to scour the local market for appropriate CVs. Utilising our established methodologies we cultivated effective candidate short-lists and delivered them to key decision makers, educating the client on how to recognise the value in candidates from different backgrounds with transferable skills. Examples include candidates from pharmaceuticals, clean room manufacturing, hospitals and airports - these environments can expose candidates to the same types of systems, plants, and machinery found in a Data Centre and evidences that they understand the operations of a multi-redundancy facility.
The Results
Outperformed their internal TA team and helped fill a role they have been struggling to source talent for.
We initially submitted six candidates, and all of them were of such high quality that they made it through to the second stage. From here, two made it through to the final stage, leading to the successful placement of a Regional EHS Director on a permanent basis.
The client opened other roles to us due to our strong performance
- Construction Project Manager (Japan)
- Principle Automation Manager
- Regional IT Network Systems Manager (Taiwan)