Ep59 The reshaping of recruitment in Asia, ft Seth Peterson, Korn Ferry

Korn Ferry's Seth Peterson reveals how AI and in-house recruitment are revolutionizing executive search in Asia's energy transition sector. Despite the current market slowdown in China, demand for ESG and sustainability talent in Asia Pacific is quite strong. Corporate culture and purpose emerge as key differentiators in attracting top executives. Seth forecasts AI expertise and data science becoming critical skills, while emphasizing that traditional career-building remains fundamental. His insights highlight the dual challenge companies face: embracing technological innovation while maintaining strong organizational values to secure future talent.

ABOUTH SETH: Seth brings more than 25 years of corporate and consulting experience. He leads teams to bring Korn Ferry’s Solutions to clients across the Asia Pacific region. He also executes Executive Searches at the Board, C-Suite and Functional leadership levels across key Industry sectors, working for both Private Equity portfolio businesses and regional conglomerates as well as western multinationals. Seth is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and has been based in Greater China for the majority of his thirty-year career. Prior to joining Korn Ferry in 2018 he spent over seven years as a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles in Hong Kong. In his earlier career he worked in strategic planning, business development, and general management with multinational businesses in the region. He was Vice President, General Manager, in charge of Asia Operations for a Business Unit of Hong Kong-listed Techtronic Industries; and earlier worked for Emerson Electric for several years, where he held several Business Development and P&L responsibilities for various businesses across Asia Pacific and served as a corporate planner at the U.S. headquarters for two years. He began his career in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the early 1990s as a Management Consultant where he was involved in the development of China market strategies for a number of leading corporations. Seth earned an MBA from Washington University’s Olin School of Business in St. Louis and a bachelor’s degree in Chinese Studies and International Relations from Grinnell College. He previously chaired the board of AFS Intercultural Programs, Hong Kong, and served on the board and Executive Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. 

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Transcript

Ep59 The reshaping of recruitment in Asia, ft Seth Peterson, Korn Ferry

PLEASE NOTE: AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED TRANSCRIPT MAY CONTAIN ERRORS. FOR ACCURACY, RELY ON THE ORIGINAL RECORDING.

Joseph Jacobelli: [00:00:00] Hello there, Seth. Thank you so much for making the time for the Asia Climate Finance podcast. So excited to have you. 

Seth Peterson: Yeah, it's great to be with you. 

Joseph Jacobelli: Let's start maybe with personal introduction could you tell us a bit about your career journey in Asia, Seth?

Seth Peterson: Love to and thanks again for the opportunity so my background from the middle of the US actually hadn't been overseas until age 16. I was an exchange student to Melbourne. For a year and did my fifth form there. But after that year, that opened me up to international and I decided to study Chinese. In college in states and then some studied abroad in Taiwan in 1989 for a semester, and then when I graduated in 91, I had a research fellowship for a year to do.

It was a had to spend 12 months outside the US travelled around doing research on. Overseas Chinese [00:01:00] communities. And then I'd been to Hong Kong a number of times at that point since being a student and on my research and so forth, so when it was time to start my career in 1992, I got a one-way ticket and brought my suitcases and landed in you know accommodation in Tsim Sha Tsui and started my career ultimately in strategy consulting.

And then that took me to Shanghai in 94 and I spent four and a half years. In Shanghai, initially with a strategy consulting firm, but then moved into industry. I worked for Emerson Electric for about nine years, initially in China and then in headquarters in St. Louis, and then that brought me back to Hong Kong.

I've been in Hong Kong now since 2000. This time and hard to believe it's been 25 years. But yeah, and I made a mid-career change 15 years ago now as I was approaching 40, I decided to take a sabbatical from, from corporate industry work And I did some independent consulting for a while, wanted to spend more time in Hong Kong, in those days we travelled every week.

And our [00:02:00] second child was arriving my wife has her own career and so I took a break did some independent consulting and I, and I, I had known some friends in, in executive search over the years who seemed to have a good life. And I thought it would be an interesting direction at some stage.

I wasn't sure about the timing having been on a general management career track at that point, but I As I explored it further, I liked the variety. I liked being able to spend more time in Hong Kong. So I sort of reinvented myself back into professional services. And here we are 15 years later.

I spent seven years with Heidrick & Struggles in the industrial practice, and now with Korn Ferry for, I'm in my seventh year. And Korn Ferry is, is not only executive search, I lead the industrial practice in the region and I oversee across our lines of business. But I personally do executive search assignments from the board and C suite and heads of functions, mostly in Hong Kong, Greater China.

But some of our key account [00:03:00] relationships as well. 

Joseph Jacobelli: A lot of people will have heard of Korn Ferry, but for those not familiar with Korn Ferry, could you just share a little bit about the firm and perhaps give us an overview of what it means to be an executive search consultant?

And could you also, in particular, explain your work with corporations in the industrial sector related to sustainability, the energy sector and the like? 

Seth Peterson: Sure. 

So Korn Ferry has its, its origins. It started in 1969. In Los Angeles by Mr. Korn and Mr. Ferry who came out of the I think it was Peat Marwick one of the big four in those days.

Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . And they got into this business and then it, it, it grew and particularly in the last say. 15 years through acquisitions Korn Ferry has broadened from executive search to mid-level and volume recruitment with different lines of business beyond executive search, such as we call professional search or also [00:04:00] recruitment process, outsourcing, RPO and those are all under this umbrella of talent acquisition.

And then we have another side of our business, which is broadly called HR or organizational consulting. And that spans things around organization strategy talent assessment and succession, leadership and professional development and rewards and benefits. And so that's all in addition to the talent acquisition piece, which I mentioned.

And so that gives us, gives me as an executive search consultant, a lot more to bring to my client conversations. So as I say, on a day-to-day basis I am doing a combination of, of serving, my existing clients developing new client relationships. And bring, try and bring the best of Korn Ferry to those clients to help them with their, all of the things that are happening in, in, in their businesses where talent [00:05:00] meets a business strategy.

And in particular, in the so industrial sector that is the broadest we're the largest as well globally and in the region within Korn Ferry, but we span everything from energy and infrastructure and engineering construction. And infrastructure through transportation, logistics and distribution, as well as automotive and all sorts of sub sectors across industrial manufacturing chemicals to capital equipment to automation, etc.

And so the energy transition and sustainability. Those areas actually also span a lot of different sub sectors from electric utilities to alternative and renewables to equipment suppliers and then sustainability as a function, sustainability and ESG. Obviously has had a lot of attention in recent years as [00:06:00] well.

Joseph Jacobelli: Right, right, right. Moving if I could, Seth, to the industry trends. How has the recruitment process evolved over the past you know, five or ten years? In the industrial sector in general, and, and then, you know, after the evolution, but what are the current trends?

Seth Peterson: There's definitely been a lot of disruption. I will say that with a combination that's a continuous thing that You know continuous sort of disruption and an increased complexity and pace and so forth. But so in recruitment in particular one of the threats to or, or trends and, and just realities really are that Is the advent of in-house talent acquisition.

That's one of the key trends that I would say is that our clients do make by decisions and, or not, but decide, well, we're going to build an in-house capability and in house team rather than pay. Outside service [00:07:00] providers to support our recruitment efforts. So that is a very widespread now in most companies.

It's various, various shapes and forms and sizes, but typically and often those, those in house talent acquisitions, those could be the people that for certain levels of recruitment that then come to us. For certain roles where there's it's confidential and or they it's a succession exercise or they have been unsuccessful on their own or unsuccessful through other channels.

And so they can still be our clients. That's one trend. The other trend is the use of AI. And there's just an increased, and this is something that's very much real time in process, including with our own firm, is understanding the AI features and functionality in different platforms and how to utilize that To basically it's there's a lot of AI enablement happening with AI [00:08:00] champions in our, in our firm and also I think across our client base, it's a certainly a tool to a productivity tool can increase efficiency and so forth in the recruitment process. 

Joseph Jacobelli: When you're talking about these companies, if I just clarify one point, when you're talking about a corporation to build the internal capabilities. But when it comes to, you know, everything, sustainability, ESG, energy transition, just transition in general, that's something pretty new.

I mean, internally, people will not necessarily have had that. experience, right? So is there a little bit of an exception for that particular area or are companies also trying to build that capability in house? 

Seth Peterson: It definitely we see that it's being the energy transition has been a theme and a reality for now already a number of years.

And so our clients who have established their own, capabilities [00:09:00] to support that from a recruiting standpoint. That's but if they are, oftentimes they need to supplement and augment their own in-house capabilities with outside support. So they will come to us and for, for us for support with some of those efforts.

Joseph Jacobelli: Got it. Well, what's the, in your view, what's the biggest challenges that companies face in attracting and retaining talent right now in, in, you know, the industrial sector and energy transition, et cetera. 

Seth Peterson: Well, to some extent there are, the company nature, the product nature broadly, not only in the energy transition, but this can be a consideration for candidates say, for example, if our you know, if you're talking about fossil fuels some candidates don't want to work in certain for certain sorts of companies Location is definitely a [00:10:00] consideration and where I'm based in Hong Kong, there have been challenges to bring people in, bring talent in for people who are not as familiar with Hong Kong.

For example, there's it kind of gets caught up in some of the geopolitics and the perception that Maybe it's not as good a place for if a family settled in Singapore, kids in school and so forth, challenges to move people employee value proposition that a company has, the company culture.

DEI core values and ways of working. These are all things that are important for companies as well as professional development and career progression opportunities. These are important areas for companies to be to be able to attract and retain a talent for sure. 

Joseph Jacobelli: As you know, as you pointed out, the energy transition has increasingly or sustainability, ESG, impact investing, all of those things have [00:11:00] become a little bit more prominent in in in recent years.

And we've also seen some regulatory changes related to that. So, for example, you know, now companies have to a lot of companies, at least in the Asia Pacific region, have to have climate reporting in there and reports et cetera. So are there any other significant regulatory changes or economic factors that are affecting recruitment of senior executive in the industrial sector right now?

Seth Peterson: Well, I think in addition to ESG related reporting or investor sort of pressures to be more sustainable and so forth you have disruption from A. I. We see headlines of companies like Chevron cutting thousands of jobs. I think some of that is A. I. related. You see, my colleagues in India are busy helping to set up tech centres [00:12:00] for, say, oil majors, and for example as they put analytics, data analytics and, and, and back-office capabilities in in those locations.

So these are some of the, I don't know if the regulatory changes, but economic factors that are affecting recruitment locally here in Hong Kong. We see for example, the Hong Kong talent scheme. So since I mentioned earlier, some of the challenges. With the perception of Hong Kong or attracting talent to come to Hong Kong.

So the government has proactively introduced the various talent schemes. So far, a lot of that has been taken up by mainland talent. So there is definitely a lot more Mandarin speaker. I, I work in central and Hong Kong and much, much, much more Mandarin than ever before, but that's been a trend for, for, for quite some time.

But now more than ever, particularly with the talent scheme. And it is attractive as we talk to Mainland Candidates and I think it's, we, clients oftentimes are asking us specifically to, for Hong [00:13:00] Kong based roles. collaboratively we're looking at. They may have their own schemes. They're going to Tsinghua in Beijing or wherever in Guangdong, whichever universities to try to attract certain talent to come to Hong Kong too, because there's a, maybe a shortage of, of certain engineering talent, for example.

And there'd been these outbound migrations in Hong Kong specifically following 2019 unrest and COVID and so forth. There have been, we know the numbers of people that have left Hong Kong and that needs to be replenished. And, and so the mainland has been a good source of, of some of that talent. 

Joseph Jacobelli: Got it. Moving to talking about just the market in general, and I just got one, one, one question on that. What, what's the, you know, current demand for professionals in industrial sector related or not related to. the energy transition and sustainability. And also, are there any kind of specific areas which are [00:14:00] experiencing high demand or shortages?

Seth Peterson: Yeah, I say it varies, but the market for, I would say generally recruiting has been soft, particularly China has been soft, but with multinationals across the region things have been soft the based-on year over year comparisons and so forth. And then with multinationals you know, containing headcount and headcount reductions and things of that nature.

But, you know, ESG reporting, sustainability, those have continued to be strong energy transition related. There's still investment in those areas and across the region. You know, I was going to say that India, for example, had been a beneficiary. There are certain beneficiaries of again, you have to go and look sector by sector.

Energy transition is not necessarily one that is a beneficiary of Supply [00:15:00] chain rebalancing from China to Southeast Asia or India, but there's certainly been that trend. And then I guess, also and my colleagues in the private equity sector and infrastructure fund sector, I know are also keeping fairly busy helping investment funds or investing companies to find executives and or board members in various places, including say the Philippines Vietnam, Taiwan, where, you know, there have been alternative and renewables investments and so forth data scientists, quantitative technical specialists as well.

Joseph Jacobelli: Understood. If we can move to kind of like you know, if you can get the dusty crystal ball out of your desk and talk a little bit about the outlook, given that, you, you've been doing this for quite some time what, what's your long-term outlook and are there any emerging trends or disruptions that could impact? [00:16:00] recruitment in the future. 

Seth Peterson: Yeah. Well, recently we've had a talent trends, 2025 report that's available. I think I may have it on my LinkedIn. This is a Korn Ferry. LinkedIn has also put out an AI. Related report just recently. And, and increasingly AI is, is embedded in the LinkedIn and other platforms or other platforms that clients are using.

These are all evolving with more built in AI. And then. Large companies, multinationals and others are exploring generative AI in their talent management and succession planning and in all facets of their recruiting as well. So I think there's said at the outset, there's just increased disruption and complexity particularly for the recruiting side of our business.

But I can always say that thankfully Korn Ferry has expanded you know, through acquisitions and continue to grow into non recruitment [00:17:00] areas, including something called career transition services, CTS, which helps. Now that's, so for example, if there is a restructuring in a company and there are executives that are going to be.

Made redundant as a consequence career transition services are often of interest to those companies as they help to try to support those executives with career transitions. 

Joseph Jacobelli: Mm. Mm. Mm. And are there any areas of expertise that may become more valuable in the next, you know, three, five or 10 years?

if you were to predict something? 

Seth Peterson: Definitely ability to use AI including ourselves, right? Learning to understand that, understand how it can be a benefit and what it can and can't do, because it doesn't replace human judgment and so forth at least at this point, but so that tech data related roles data scientists [00:18:00] architects and so forth, or, or subject matter experts are, are areas that that come to mind for sure.

Joseph Jacobelli: Just a couple of things before we wrap up would you have any advice to companies? That are looking to stay competitive and attracting and retaining talent in the, you know, industrial sector and, and or, you know, sustainability, energy transition, ESG, impact, investing, et cetera.

Seth Peterson: I mentioned earlier the employee value proposition and company culture. I think those are important areas for companies to be able to, it's not just about talent. compensation. You know, candidates, executives want to have want to be working for a company with purpose that they feel they can buy into and, and then, and then company culture in addition to the other areas around professional development, career progression.

And things of that nature in terms of attracting and [00:19:00] retaining talent, I think those are, those are important. 

Joseph Jacobelli: Mm. And then I have a kind of let's call it a sideline question just because both of us have got kids who are looking for jobs or soon will be looking for jobs. Would you have any advice for young, professionals who want to work in an industrial sector and specifically in the sustainability and energy transition era?

Seth Peterson: Building the building the resume, building qualifications and experience it's maybe old fashioned, but I also think having a career having some, some respectable training early in one's career with a reputable or known and well regarded organization I think sets one up well for one's for one's career as well as Yeah just having that I think having continuity and you know, there's, there's a [00:20:00] startups and so forth.

And, and, and the, I guess generation is generation X or the millennials the difference considerations, different priorities but accumulating experience, some stability. Early in one's career, I think is important, not moving around too much trying to find a place that one can commit to for a number of years to build a, a credible, a base of experience, because there's a view, I think, that If you're in an organization for lesser than two or three years it's questionable how much you can learn and or contribute.

So that's, that's part of my advice to, to young people.  

Consulting can also be a, a good, a training ground early in one's career. If there's some area of. Management consulting to get a variety, learn, you know, business problems, learn analysis, learn to work in teams, learn to work quickly [00:21:00] under pressure, those sorts of things consulting can be a good training ground or any good corporate track management trainee type of track.

Joseph Jacobelli: No, that's great. That's great. That's great. Any, any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Seth Peterson: Yeah, I think energy transition in this part of the world will continue to be despite all of the you know recent noise in the, in the, in the world, global world order will continue to be an important opportunity for, for, for all people to develop their careers in and it's changing so quickly.

And so becoming part of it and growing and learning with it. I guess that's my, my final advice for people. 

Joseph Jacobelli: Fantastic. Well, listen, Seth, I know you're very busy, lots of meetings and stuff. So I really, really appreciate your time and your insights. So thank you so much. 

Seth Peterson: Pleasure, Joseph.

I really enjoyed it. [00:22:00] And look forward to continuing to follow your podcast. 

Joseph Jacobelli: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again.