A Specialist Search, Across Two Countries

This publisher runs a capable in-house talent team. For this particular role they decided to bring in a specialist partner with deep networks in the Indian games market, which is exactly the right call , senior game design is a narrow field, and reaching it depends on relationships built over years rather than on any single team's capacity.

Their UK Head of HR came to us through a referral, then read our website and our published work before making contact. We appreciated that. It is how we would evaluate an agency too.

We sent terms on a Wednesday. They came back signed the following Monday. Five days from first conversation to signed contract is unusually fast, and it happened because the client knew what they wanted and moved decisively.

Then the genuine complexity of cross-border hiring arrived, and it had nothing to do with sourcing.

A senior hire being assessed by a panel in another country generates a great deal of coordination. Profiles needed review time across two offices. Interviews had to be arranged across a four-and-a-half-hour gap, which took three rounds of scheduling; at one point our candidate offered to take a day of annual leave to make a slot work.

This is the part of the job we think is underrated. We watched every invitation, every time slot and every handoff, and where something needed clarifying we clarified it before it reached the candidate. When one final-stage slot fell late in the candidate's evening and early enough in the UK day to matter, we called him directly and moved it to midday, so both sides met each other at their best. When a technical access issue meant we could not upload a profile, we raised it immediately and stayed on it until it was sorted.

None of that is glamorous. All of it is the difference between a ten-week search and a six-month one.

"Sourcing is a fraction of a cross-border hire. The rest is making sure two teams in two countries meet each other at their best."