Do UK finance recruiters really need to risk it all with a US office?
Another UK financial services boutique has succumbed to the (potentially fatal) urge to open in the US.
Omerta Group has now got a US office, thereby following in the not-necessarily-illustrious footsteps of Whitehead Mann, Principal Search, Sheffield Haworth, and Kinsey Allen.
"You can't serve the US properly out of London, you have to be on the ground" says Jason Mort, Omerta's MD. "We've been talking about this for many years, and this is the right time for us and our clients."
The US is a notoriously difficult market to crack. "The market's so over-broked you need to be incredibly good to go out there and make it work," says one London search to search consultant. Various UK firms, including Whitehead Mann, have been forced to pull back from the US in the past. Others, such as Principal Search, are understood to have lost some of their US consultants.
"UK search firms opening in the US usually go out and hire a lot of locals," says the head of one UK headhunting firm. "Those locals wait until bonuses have been paid, and then leave."
Another headhunter with US experience puts it more succinctly: "The problem is that you bring people in, train them up, and suddenly they think they're walking on water. They either ask for a better deal, or quit."
The risk of opening in the US is that you think it's too easy," says Ken Brotherston, chief executive of Kinsey Allen, which has recently opened a second US office in Boston "The market is much more polarised between high street, contingent type businesses and the more traditional search firms."
However, there is one leading UK search firm which does most of its work in the US, but doesn't have anyone on the ground full time (and requests not to be named for 'tax reasons'). "We're there every six to eight weeks," says its leading consultant. "If you're establishing a new business you need to be on the ground, but we've been working like this for 12 years now and have a very established presence."
