CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Rahul Shah, Co-Founder & Director, WalkWater Talent Advisors.
Started in 2011, We are a 12-year-old boutique executive search and talent advisory firm started by me with 3 more friends from executive search industry – Harold Dsouza (Ex DHR International), Ashutosh Khanna (Ex Korn/Ferry Future step) and Kunal Girap (Ex ABC Consultants).
WalkWater focusses on leadership hiring across the CEO, CXO and CXO minus 1 levels. Today the firm is one of the fastest growing Executive Search firms in India. Our team size is around 30 and is spread across our regional presence in 4 cities in India (Mumbai, Bangalore, Gurgaon and Pune) apart from operations in the United States.
In the last 12 years, we have worked across sectors with 400+ clients where we have closed 1000+ senior management searches and also completed 50+ bespoke talent advisory engagements.
Over the years, we have emerged as a clear alternative to the global search firms and an equal in terms of industry expertise, client partnering, candidate connect and access. Our work has spanned large MNCs and Indian Business houses and a whole array of start-ups / emerging companies across sectors.
How is WalkWater Talent different from other executive search firms? Also, shed some light on the role of technology here.
The WalkWater team brings a unique mix of strengths – Intensive Client Partnering, Deep Domain Knowledge and Global Coverage; this coupled with a start-up drive to excel, and a constant focus on values, provides an unparalleled experience to our clients.
WalkWater thrives on fostering long term partnerships with clients and industry leaders. As a testimony, a large percentage of our business is repeat and many of our key client relationships are multi-year partnerships.
The experience of the WalkWater team translates to a wide network of relationships with CXOs across industry segments, backed by a strong value system. WalkWater takes pride in its experienced founding team, a set of senior recruiting leaders themselves today, who have grown with the firm over its journey.
How do you think technology has played a key role in revolutionizing the executive hiring industry?
Like in other industries, Technology has helped us streamline our operations and led to standardization of ways of working in the firm. Today, we use an AI powered work flow platform to run all aspects of the search process. This has made the firm more collaborative and helped us to mine our database of resumes much more effectively. It has also led to a much more effective CRM process helping us to reach our customers much better than in the past.
Your take on ChatGPT? Also, are you planning to bring ChatGPT into Walkwater Talent’s services?
The Executive search industry is highly driven by relationships and the effectiveness of a search consultant is his/her ability to reach out to potential talent, present the opportunity and assess their fitment in the context of the client’s culture, functional and behavioral needs. Executive search is hence an art backed by the science of behavioral and psychometric assessment.
We do not foresee that Chatgpt will have any impact on our industry.
Do you anticipate that some workers may lose their jobs due to ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence?
No, we do not foresee this.
What are WalkWater’s priorities in 2023 and beyond?
Over the last few years, WalkWater has been one of the fastest growing executive search firms and we continue to remain bullish on our growth aspirations. We will continue to build market share in our addressed market in India and our aspiration will be to be amongst the top 3 India based executive search firms in our industry.
Source: CXOToday