winning silver in athens! - qualifind group€¦ · the panthenaic stadium is also known as the...

Winning Silver in Athens!

Carlos Acosta | Oct 25, 2019

"The strength of the team is each individual member. The

strength of each member is the team."

“The value of a diverse team is its capacity to challenge the norm or

group think and thus boost organizational performance and

improve decision making.” – Yrtha Dinzey Flores

These two inspiring quotes summarize my experience attending our annual search &

recruitment conference in Athens, Greece earlier this month. One of the highlights of this

year’s event was participating (and competing) in an array of team building exercises in

Panathenaic Stadium.

1/12 www.ircsearchpartners.com

The Panthenaic Stadium is also known as the Kallimarmaro and hosted the

world's first modern Olympic games in 1896. It seats more than 50,000

people and

is the world's only stadium made entirely of marble.

Each of the 6 teams competed in a variety of physical and mental

exercises that challenged us to achieve an objective under tight time and

physical constraints.


The 6 teams were comprised of our search colleagues from 45

countries. While we're generally focused on collaborating with each

other to secure key talent for our clients, this exercise pitted us against

each to win Gold, Silver or Bronze status.

My team was comprised of my search colleagues from Finland, Israel,

Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Japan, the US and the UK.


Aside from the age, gender and physical diversity, our group also

represented distinctly different cultural backgrounds and native

languages and yet our collective efforts netted us Silver medals (2nd

place) out of the 6 teams in the exercise.


Pictured left to right: Piotr Mazurkiewicz (Poland), Michelle Bedford-

Shaw (South Africa), Richard Boot (United Kingdom), Jan Holmstrom

(Finland) behind Richard Boot, Raj Kumar Paramanathan (Malaysia), Ron

Magen (Israel), Grace Abella-Zata (Philippines) & Carlos Acosta (USA &

Mexico).

While the exercise served as a great source of camaraderie and

laughter, it also served to underscore one of the most practical

experiences I’ve had regarding the value of diversity coupled with the

strength in teamwork.


It wasn’t just fun and games, we settled into the global conference along with our search

and recruitment partners from 45 countries to engage in Best Practice benchmarking,

hear about some of the latest technology in talent acquisition and hear from thought

leaders that impact our ability to be the best at supporting our clients by leveraging both

practical and Best-in-Class recruitment and retention strategies.


Left to right: Monicca Yan (Singapore), Carlos Acosta (US & Mexico),

Cees Hagoort (Netherlands), & Michael Kantel (Germany).

In my role as the Americas Leader for the Industrial / Manufacturing Practice Group, our

annual meeting is an opportunity to go beyond our monthly video conferences and meet

face to face. (Monicca Yan is the Practice Group Leader for the Asia Pacific (APAC)

region, Cees Hagoort the Practice Group Leader for Europe, the Middle East & Africa

(EMEA) and Michael Kantel is the Global Practice Leader.) Each of us are active in an

ongoing effort to ensure full visibility of trends or market dynamics for both our clients

and our regional and global partners. We're also vigilant to opportunities to reinforce our

bench strength for recruiters and consultants in regions or markets as needed.

It was a fun conference, one where we had many take aways and we now look forward

to our 2020 annual meeting in Bangkok.

Carlos Acosta is the Senior Managing Partner and Practice Leader for The QualiFind

Group's professional recruiting and search practice. Based in San Diego, CA; The

QualiFind Group has recruiters and research staff in strategic locations throughout both

the US and Mexico and is ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the Top 20 Search &

Recruiting Firms in North America. Carlos can be reached at

[email protected] or 619-240-2638.


winning silver in athens! - qualifind group€¦ · the panthenaic stadium is also known as the...

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