Our client, a Magic Circle firm, was looking for a Senior Associate or Counsel in Projects/Project Finance to replace someone after 10 years’ service who had a well embedded Middle East practice. After getting nowhere with a number of suppliers, Hydrogen was asked to undertake a mapping project to target all lawyers at 4-10 PQE in the Middle East region at the top international firms with Projects/Project Finance or general banking with projects experience.

With a database of over 111,000 lawyers and over 12 years’ experience in the Middle East, our digital research team map over 12,000 candidates each year. Able to provide resourcing at senior consultant, researcher and digital researcher level, we agreed a list of target firms and mapped the entire market within two days, detailing how many relevant lawyers at each level of PQE were in the region. This meant the firm could choose where to headhunt and where they may need to be more flexible.

• The firm was able to target specific individuals they wanted to meet, and we were able to provide them with immediate feedback on candidate interest.
• They realised that the best individual may not be in the UAE, so we also utilised our networks from the UK, Europe and Asia.
• The client secured the right candidate that was identified via our mapping project.