Where Dubai once witnessed a dearth of talent, it is now a hot bed of high performance executives, and complete with Harvard Business Alumni quarterly meetings. While the quality of talent has increased, there is still a gap for qualified CEOs in the region, leaving a niche for C-level executive search consultants.

In a location which epitomises the East meets West paradigm, companies are often tangled up in creating a penetrating vision of the future and a compelling strategy for the present. And all this amid an organisational structure from the last century.

As legacy corporate champions groan under the pressure, they struggle to find CEOs who can manage a board of directors made up of family members or riddled with influences and a corporate structure peppered with best-in-class expatriate talent sourced from New York, London, and Singapore. All of which is underpinned by a staff liberally buttered with old school loyalists who have been with the company since inception and determined to resist change.

Middle East companies effect change with their right hand while they grasp to tradition in their left. This leaves shareholders dissatisfied with the C-Level talent they have and CEOs discontent with their ability to execute. Both create the perfect storm for executive search professionals to thrive.

The search business in the Middle East has seen strong growth since its inception in the 1990s when there only two or three firms offering the service. Today, the Association of Executive Search Consultants lists 21 such firms in the region and complemented by a dizzying number of unaccredited firms which do not qualify for membership to the association. The business employs over 1,000 search consultants.

Retained search today accounts for only 5 per cent of mid- to senior-level management placements. But once you move to the group CEO level of publicly listed companies, it can be as high as 60 per cent. As a CEO interview can take as long as four hours and where a wrong decision can cost you tens of millions of dollars, most boards chose the assistance of a qualified professional to take the process from start to finish.

A search consultant’s first job is to work with the board and leadership team to define their vision and strategy. This takes sweeping statements like “we want to be an industry leader” and translating it into tangible items such as where will the business will be in 36 months or five years from now.

An assessment of the business case facing the organisation is completed and an understanding of what the mission critical elements are will be clearly articulated. For example, a company may need to take marketshare, but this may come at the cost of net profit. Or a company may not need to increase marketshare as they may already be the market leader but will require an increase in net profit as their bottom-line has stagnated.

These are different needs and require different types of CEOs. In addition, the search must assess the culture of the company, the organisational structure, how decisions are made and how much autonomy executives have to do their jobs.

While a CEO may be hired on technical ability they are fired on fit. It is not what you know but how you do your job that counts. Boards and executives in the Middle East have their own unique way of communicating and making decisions, which can sometimes provide a death bed for unsuspecting western CEOs who think they are the new sheriff in town.

A successful placement must last more than four years and to do that search executives must possess deep local knowledge, strong understanding of the economic market cycles, a firm grip on the idiosyncratic nuances of the client company and a penetrating insight into their candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

The writer is CEO of Philipps Group.