The rocketeers: four companies in Latin America that can power-up your resume - Best Employers - Best Employers survey

Latin Trade, Dec, 2002 by Greg Brown

There are hundreds of corporations in Latin America, most offering generous benefits, decent entry-level pay and a chance to become, some day, a hard-charging business leader. For mid-career executives, though, there are only a few key spots that can make a career.

In our first annual LATIN TRADE Best Employers survey, we set out to find the companies that offer that kind of executive quantum leap. We polled international recruiters at the top of their game, and we asked them a pretty simple question: I want that big job, the one that turns me into a hot prospect for every recruiter in the region. Where do I send my resume?

We started with a list of 51 companies culled from already-published best employer surveys for the region. We then asked recruiters to rank the Latin American operations of global companies in four sectors--finance, oil and gas, technology and consumer products. Once we got the top four, we went back and asked recruiters why their No. 1 choices ranked so highly. Then we quizzed the winning companies and their workers.

What the top companies have in common is a focus on recruiting the very best, then building those people into the culture. In the case of Citibank, workers get hit early on with big responsibility. At British Petroleum, mobility ensures talent can thrive.

For Microsoft, it's all about brain power--and motivating people to stretch. And at Coca-Cola, understanding your customers is the name of the game. "A manager trained in marketing at Coca-Cola has a great ability to listen to the consumer. You know what the consumer wants, in your guts," says Javier Meza, a senior brand manager for the company in its southern Latin America division, based in Argentina.

Hunting a high-pressure job with big rewards? Read on. If not, turn the page. These companies seek only the hungry....

British Petroleum Wildflower Power

About a dozen years ago, British Petroleum (BP) bet that emphasizing diversity, social concern and inclusiveness would attract the best people. That, says Rafael Carrillo, one of BP's top Latin American talent executives, is an integral part of what could be called BP's wildflower philosophy: Get good people onboard, then let them blossom where they may in the organization.

"We have medical doctors acting as business leaders. We have reservoir workers, drillers and mechanical engineers in managerial positions. We have lawyers working in supply chain management," says Carrillo, who came to BP as a surgeon in 1991 and stayed, rising to become head of human resources for Colombia. It works because open postings of internal jobs make it easy to move from one position to the next and from country to country.

Once inside, BP recruits--often university graduates with no experience--are heavily trained and rotated around the company. The best get challenged with fast-track management jobs within three years.

Ines Shuk joined BP soon after finishing a graduate degree in international relations at the University of Kansas, then rapidly moved from the press office to corporate communications, became an executive assistant, left that for gas sales, then jumped to management. "That's a lot of jobs in 10 years, and that's the way this company works," says Shuk, recently appointed general manager for BP Solar Colombia, the part of BP in charge of developing solar power. "I think merit and delivery count in this company," she says. Shuk says she took courses to polish her business skills, but "if you deliver, they will give you the opportunity you want."

The BP philosophy--society and diversity count--has a curious effect of focusing people, says Jorge Milberg, managing partner of Heidrick & Struggles in Buenos Aires. Milberg says he once interviewed a BP executive in an effort to place him elsewhere.

Instead of considering the new position, the BP exec talked mostly about people, social responsibility and what he liked about his current job--at BP. He stayed put. "It made my work tougher, but I was pleased," says Milberg. "They do what they say. It's not just a poster on the wall."

Citibank Sink or Swim

"If you like living in the comfort zone, this is not the corporation for you," says Patricia Ferro, Citibank's consumer bank head in Peru.

She should know. The Colombia native's first big assignment: Running an 80-person corporate branch in Central America with US$10 million in revenues,--solo. "I was 36 and running a bank in Honduras," says Ferro. "It was great. The risk is measured to an extent, but you're still running a whole business."

The bank doesn't abandon you, says Ferro, but compared to companies that stress top-down control over risk, Citibank can be quite hard on the unprepared or unwilling. "You push hard and scream if you need help. If you think you know it all, it won't work," Ferro says. "You don't have to be a genius, but you have to resourceful."

That kind of sink-or-swim ethic is prized by outside recruiters, who see it as the bank's strong suit: self-reliant people. "They give you responsibilities. They let you make decisions. They let you make mistakes, which is very important, as long as you don't make the mistake twice," says Jose Luis Daly, a recruiter for Korn Ferry in Lima and a former 20-year employee of Citibank. "They give you parameters, but they empower you early in the game."