A Week in the Life

Lorenza Alessie, Executive Search, London Office

My passion for the hospitality industry began at the age of 14; I was attracted by the international reach, variety and people aspects of the industry. Already at an early age, I wanted to work in an entrepreneurial environment, where new initiatives and creativity were encouraged and where I could make a difference. I eventually found this at HVS.

I started working in hospitality recruitment, right after graduating from the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, with Chess Partnership where I worked for over five years and opened their first international office in Geneva. What attracted me to recruitment was the relationship building aspect of the job, the great networking opportunities, as well as the end goal – helping clients find the right team members to help their businesses succeed. After five years I wanted to move away from contingency and middle management recruitment and to work on retained senior searches at the corporate level. HVS Executive Search was the only company I contacted because of their worldwide industry reputation and their company culture. I started working as an Associate Director and shortly after joined the Partnership Track Program with the goal of becoming Partner. Two years after joining HVS, I was promoted to Director, working with my Managing Director overseeing EMEA and Latin America.

Since I've joined HVS Executive Search, I have worked on a number of senior appointments in EMEA and Latin America. There is no such thing as a "typical week", but it could look something like the following:

Monday

• Weekly update conference call with all the associates of the London office and the Managing Director of the Moscow office. Discuss proposals, projects and any leads
• Weekly update call with my Managing Director to discuss business development activities of last week and business development action plan for the coming week
• Weekly conference call with clients to go through the end of the week project update e-mail
• Contacting short listed candidates with any updates further to the conference call with the client
• Follow up on any proposals sent through to clients in the previous week

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

• Leave to Madrid for a week
• Meet with private equity firms, banks, hotel operators and real estate developers to find out more about their business and tell them more about us with the hope of working on future projects. Some meetings are organized jointly with the HVS Madrid valuation team
• Meet with potential candidates that have either been referred to me or have gotten in touch with me directly
• Organize a lunch with existing clients and candidates we have placed in Madrid in order to touch base with them and see how they are settling down in their position and talk about any new developments and projects
• Attend Madrid hospitality focused investment conference as a networking opportunity
• Liaise with associates regarding projects' progress
• Follow up on any leads and make a number of sales calls to new clients in order to try and set up face to face meetings
• Continuously review the target list for a search to make sure it covers all companies and potential candidates. Contact identified candidates to present them with the job opportunity
• Conduct a number of telephone and face to face interviews, ask candidates to complete our 2020 assessment tool as well as write up their profiles

Friday

• Conference call with the associates to touch base regarding the working progress of the search/project
• Together with the associates, prepare the updated target list and candidate profiles to send through as a weekly update to the client. Set a time and date with the client for a separate verbal update

Other aspects of my job include conference attendance and article writing (click here for links to my articles). I have completed the AESC Certified Researcher/Associate program as well as a number of other trainings. I have also done some presentations, including a presentation to the MBA students of the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne from which I co-authored an article. I am also part of the HVS Sales & Marketing Global Business team, which works on a number of Sales & Marketing initiatives to promote HVS both internally and externally. Some initiatives include the creation of an alumni webpage as well as publishing a quarterly office update on our intranet. Even though I am based out of the London office, my office allows me to work outside of London and therefore I spend most of my time between Geneva and Madrid.

To date, working with HVS has been a fantastic experience and I have particularly valued the freedom to develop new initiatives and the industry exposure. I am proud to work for HVS, I am fortunate to work with great people who make the job fun and I fully recommend a career with this firm.