Join Once, Stay for a Decade: Inside Singapore’s Best Workplace in Executive Recruitment — The Firm That Puts People First

Kerry Consulting has been recognised as Singapore’s employer of choice in executive recruitment — and the numbers explain why. Its consultants stay for an average of ten years. More than 80 per cent of its employees consider it a great place to work, while 92 per cent say they would want to stay—figures that align with HR trends UK and are consistently reflected across employee surveys.

 In 23 years, through every downturn, it has never retrenched a consultant. This is the story of how one idea — Returning the Human to Resourcing — built the firm the region’s best recruiters choose, and keep choosing.

Team Kerry Consulting at the firm’s Annual Kick-off in Taipei — the people behind Singapore’s best workplace in executive recruitment, who learn together, win together and build their careers together.

Recruiters know the job market better than anyone. They know every firm, every open desk and every offer in circulation. So when the people who understand the market best decide to stay somewhere for a decade, it tells you something no brochure can.

Kerry Consulting has been recognised as Singapore’s employer of choice in executive recruitment. The recognition invites a simple question — why this firm? — and the answer is written in its numbers.

Start with scale. Kerry has what is probably the largest executive-recruitment team in Singapore, with a focus that spans Asia Pacific. Its consultants support a broad range of organisations — multinationals, major APAC companies and public institutions — and are backed by substantial research, marketing, administrative and technology resources. Individual consultant billings are, Kerry believes, among the strongest in the industry.

Then look at who stays. The strength of that culture is perhaps best reflected in the longevity of its people. The average Kerry consultant has been with the firm for around a decade—an extraordinary tenure for a large recruitment business. Across successive Great Place to Work surveys, and reflected in its 4.9-star Glassdoor rating, more than 80 per cent of employees have described the firm as a great place to work. Yet the real significance lies not in any single statistic, but in the consistency of the sentiment over time.

Across 23 years, including several severe downturns, the firm has never retrenched a consultant. It is a culture in which many colleagues have built substantial careers together.

High performance. Deep learning. International exposure. Trusted colleagues. Serious support. Long-term careers. Few firms in any profession can offer all six at once. Kerry’s motto from the outset has been “Returning the Human to Resourcing”, and 23 years later it remains a remarkably good description of what the firm does every day.

A place to develop excellence

Kerry describes itself as meritocratic, competitive, transparent and strongly values-led. It suits people who are intrinsically motivated to develop and perform at a high level — and it gives them every reason to.

Learning is continuous. Less experienced consultants work alongside colleagues who may have spent ten, fifteen or twenty years developing markets, relationships and judgement — people at the top of their profession. They gain access to sophisticated clients, complex assignments and senior decision-makers across Asia Pacific and beyond. Kerry loves seeing people develop, and the firm is structured to make that happen.

Ethics matter. Performance matters. Billings matter. Results matter. At Kerry they are not in opposition; they are the same ambition seen from four sides. The strongest consultants contribute in many ways: through their own performance, by helping colleagues, developing others, contributing ideas, strengthening relationships and enhancing the reputation of the firm. The culture is deliberately apolitical, and success follows ability, judgement, contribution and results. That, as much as anything, explains why people stay.

Do good work. Performance follows.

Kerry began with a values-led focus on creating value for clients and candidates. The consultant is the intermediary, not the principal, and that matters. The strongest consultants focus first on doing excellent work: understanding the problem, helping the client, advising the candidate, creating solutions and building trust.

There is professional confidence in that view, and clients sense it. Do work you are proud of. Add real value. Treat people properly. Develop expertise. Build relationships. Commercial success follows — and Kerry’s billings are the proof that a values-led, advisory model can perform extremely well commercially. Doing the right thing and doing well have never been in conflict at Kerry. They are the same strategy.

When the people who understand the market best decide to stay somewhere for a decade, it tells you something no brochure can.

Work that is interesting and consequential

Executive search is inherently creative. Clients rarely arrive with perfectly defined problems; what looks like a hiring need may really be a succession issue, a capability gap, a compensation question or a shortage of the right talent in the market. The consultant’s first responsibility is diagnosis: what is the organisation really trying to achieve, and would the best people want the role as currently designed? The solution may be a different candidate profile, a different mandate or a different structure.

Done well, the work has real impact. The right leadership appointment can materially change the performance and direction of an organisation, and the right career decision can be equally consequential for an individual. For clients, Kerry’s work often extends well beyond a single appointment, into advice on succession, leadership capability, organisational needs and whether the talent exists to support growth and major investment decisions. For candidates, Kerry consultants invest time, energy and sincerity in helping people assess themselves, plan their careers and make strategic moves. The highest-paid opportunity today is not necessarily the best career decision, and a less obvious move may build the capability, credibility and breadth that create far greater opportunities later. Those relationships develop over many years, and a serious headhunter becomes someone a candidate speaks to long before considering a specific move.

Consultants also draw on more than two decades of accumulated client relationships, brand credibility and deep professional networks. Public professional information is now abundant, yet it rarely tells the full story of performance: who really built the business, how someone performed under pressure, whether strong people would work for them again. Public information is increasingly easy to obtain. Real insight is not — and real insight is what Kerry’s clients value most.

High support. High productivity.

Kerry invests heavily around each consultant. Approximately 0.8 support staff sit behind every billing consultant across research, marketing, administration and technology. The objective is simple: maximise the time consultants spend on high-value work — clients, candidates, assessment, relationships, thinking, problem-solving and advice. The result is a high-support, high-productivity model that reinforces itself. Strong consultants are better equipped to produce outstanding work, and strong productivity funds continued investment in them. It is also a statement of respect: a consultant’s time is the firm’s most valuable asset, and Kerry treats it that way.

Public information is increasingly easy to obtain. Real insight is not.

Breadth and reach

Functionally, Kerry recruits across C-suite leadership, Finance, Human Resources, Technology, Legal, and Sales & Marketing. Its sector expertise spans Banking and Financial Services, Consumer, Real Estate and Hospitality, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Energy, Commodities and Chemicals, Technology, Semiconductors, Food and Nutrition, and industrial and infrastructure markets, with newer capabilities — including a Digital Infrastructure practice — developing alongside. Teams travel frequently throughout Asia Pacific and globally. For consultants, the result is exposure to a remarkably broad range of organisations, industries, cultures, people and problems — the kind of range that turns a good recruiter into a trusted adviser.

Built for the long term

Kerry continues to invest heavily in technology and expects its consultants to be among the best equipped in the market. Tools will keep improving, research will become faster and administration increasingly automated. But excellence lasts longer than any particular technology. Judgement, credibility, specialist knowledge, commercial understanding and genuine relationships become more powerful when better tools sit behind them, which is why Kerry sees excellence itself as one of the strongest forms of future-proofing. The underlying need is permanent: companies will continue competing intensely for exceptional people, leadership will remain scarce, and the right appointment will keep changing the fortunes of organisations.

Ownership supports the same philosophy. Founded in 2003 by Declan O’Sullivan, Kerry is privately owned — neither listed nor private-equity backed — which gives it considerable freedom to invest for the long term in a highly cyclical industry. Never having retrenched a consultant is not the reason to join Kerry; it is evidence of how seriously the firm takes continuity. Networks, judgement, credibility and reputation take years to build, and Kerry believes that preserving good people and accumulated expertise through economic cycles creates far greater value than repeatedly rebuilding them. Its people know that, and it changes how they work: with confidence, with patience and with a long horizon.

Values that endure

Kerry’s wider commitments reflect the same outlook. Its involvement with the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme dates back to 2005, and it has been a long-term supporter of Community Chest, Food from the Heart and many other social and environmental causes. It has also supported three significant environmental films, among them The Girl and Her Piano, which explores climate change and Himalayan communities, earned film-festival recognition in Berlin, Los Angeles and Bhutan, and was broadcast in the United States on PBS. None of this is central to Kerry’s employee proposition. It simply says something about an organisation that has consistently taken its values seriously.

Never having retrenched a consultant is not the reason to join Kerry. It is evidence of how seriously the firm takes continuity.

Returning the Human to Resourcing

Kerry started 23 years ago with an idea about how executive recruitment could be done across Asia Pacific: values-led, meritocratic, high-performing, supportive, international and long-term. Today it sits at the top of Singapore’s executive-recruitment profession, with reach across the region and a reputation built one relationship at a time.

For someone who wants to maximise their potential, the attraction is straightforward: excellent colleagues, industry-leading clients, continuous learning, outstanding financial opportunities, international exposure, long-term opportunity and interesting, consequential work. Above all, it is the opportunity to become exceptionally good at a profession that rewards judgement, curiosity, creativity, confidence, relationships and performance — and to do so among people who have chosen, year after year, to build their careers in the same place. For the profession’s most ambitious people, that is not a job description. It is an invitation.

“Returning the Human to Resourcing” was Kerry’s philosophy from the outset. Twenty-three years later, it is a model that has proved itself — and the reason Singapore’s employer of choice in executive recruitment is exactly that.

Discover more about Kerry Consulting at kerryconsulting.com.