Director Global Consumer Service and Support - Semiconductor Equipment

IRC Global Executive Search Partner

Friedrichs & Partner, IRC Global Executive Search Partner - Germany

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Director Global Consumer Service and Support

Client/industry

Semiconductor Equipment

Situation

The company has special technical expertise in a specific market segment of the semiconductor industry. After some years of research and development work, this semiconductor market grew dramatically over the past 2-3 year. The output of semiconductor equipment (specialty machines and systems) grew by 300% during that time and therefore the existing structures and processes needed to be optimized. One area where optimization was needed was in service and support, where no global and holistic strategy was in place.

Assessment

Since the scope of this management task was mainly strategic, and a lot of process related and structural analyses and concepts were the key to the success of this position, a candidate needed to come from the semiconductor business. They had to have intimate knowledge of this dynamic and cost-oriented global industry. In addition to that, candidates needed to come from a “mature” semiconductor equipment organization where global processes and structures were already in place. In such a company, candidates should have ideally already actively managed such a change management situation and successfully set up a global service and support organization.

Challenge

The list of target companies was rather compact. The majority of the prominent firms are located in Asia and North America and usually have the central service management function at their headquarters. At the same time regional service managers have a more limited scope to their tasks and generally don’t have the required skill set and experiences for the vacant role. Generally also, potential target companies where much bigger organizations. Attracting potential candidates from larger companies to a small, but growing organization would prove challenging. The reason for this reluctance of potential candidates is the capital intensity of the semiconductor industry, making smaller growth-oriented firms quite risky employers as they are often lacking the financial substance to finance the growth. As a result, only small and medium-size semiconductor equipment companies were on the target list and they needed to be in Germany or the neighboring countries in order to have the central service and support role at their local head office. A further difficulty was the challenge of attracting candidates to a role which required relocation to a new job in a foreign country.

Methodology/Solution

Only an in-depth Executive Search would provide the opportunity to research and identify enough potential candidates from this specific industry.

Candidate

The successful candidate came from a U.S. semiconductor equipment company, which was in the exact same situation several years ago as our client, and needed to set up a global service and support organization. Therefore this target firm had recruited the candidate, who had formerly worked for a major semiconductor equipment company, as they brought a depth of experience in global service and support. At the time of our search, the current employer of the candidate underwent a severe restructuring program due to the financial crisis and business activities were shifted towards Asia. Because of this restructuring the scope of job of this candidate subsequently became more limited and he did not see a clear future perspective. Therefore he was open to considering a new job opportunity and he was even willing to relocate to Germany. He saw it as an opportunity to gain experiences as an expatriate. So everything fell into place.

Post-mortem

The candidate provided the specific expertise and experiences the client was looking for and he knew exactly what to do to turn a more regional, re-active service and support organization into a pro-active global service and support organization. He was also experienced in change management processes and was able to develop his team further in order to meet the increased future standards. The candidate brought the exact the desired added value to the client company and helped to prepare it for the next level of growth.

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