As the Irish partner for the Kennedy Executive Search network, I was delighted to meet my colleagues face-to-face at our annual conference in Salzburg, Austria recently. In my opinion, Executive Search is the ultimate people business and thus it is vital that as colleagues we meet in person. After having the right people in place, the two most important aspects of business are timing and communications. We have so many different ways of communicating and in Kennedy we have our monthly partner Zoom meetings and multiple other channels including Slack, WhatsApp, email and the totally underrated humble phone call. But at the end of the day, relationships are formed by in-person interactions and that is why our annual conference is so important.
Just as a quick sidenote regards our venue, if you have never been to Austria, it is one of the most picturesque countries you will ever visit and Vienna consistently ranks as one of the most liveable cities in the world. Salzburg would be the fourth biggest city in Austria and would be only slightly smaller than Cork and would have a more historic feel about it. It is nestled in the Alps and has a very relaxed way of life. Our Austrian partner Markus Unterberger and his team were the perfect hosts and their pride in their city and their country was obvious.
Like any business network our agenda meant that we discussed and shared issues and solutions on a range of topics that affect our clients, our candidates and our own businesses. For clients, the main topic was the use of AI in recruitment and the general consensus was that it will have a significant impact but that we are currently in the hype phase of this new technology and that the final impact will be less than predicted. In addition, we are advising our clients to attach more weight to skill sets over just prior work experience. For candidates we advise them to have a clear career plan and focus on applying for roles that have a strategic as well as a tactical focus. Regards our own businesses we looked at the issues of succession planning and the increasing level of cross border assignments that Kennedy partners carry out for our clients in multiple countries.
A busy year awaits us as a group before we meet in Buenos Aires in 2025.