Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
We realize that many of our readers do get many cold calls from recruiters looking to break into Asia, some of whom have even had some modest success in the Asia markets placing US associates, perhaps with 1 to 10 to their credit. The cold calls are to be expected, especially if your name happens to be of Asian background and / or your firm website bio lists Mandarin, Japanese or Korean as a language you are fluent in. Expect the calls to only increase, even in what is a reduced lateral hiring market in Asia nowadays. Most of the callers are people who have very little experience in Asia but who will be very good in some cases at taking a tiny bit of information and spinning it into “yarn.”
We admit to bias, but we feel strongly that our Asia team is the best resource you can have for keeping abreast of the constantly changing legal markets in Asia. No other firm we know of has so had so much placement success, with approximately 200 US associate placements in Asia since 2006. Over these years we have learned that each placement represents a story, sometimes a relationship of years. Many job searches are more than a year long, with each helping forge close business relationships and even numerous close friendships with the relevant US hiring partners involved). We spend more time, energy, and resources researching and staying abreast of the market than anyone else. Evan Jowers is the head of our Asia lateral associate team and splits time between Hong Kong and US. Robert Kinney, the founder of Kinney Recruiting, is personally involved and invested in Asia, taking 5+ trips there annually and being involved in Asia recruiting daily. Evan has personally been the lead recruiter on over 100 US associate placements in the past few years and has been involved heavily in each of the hundreds of offers we have handled for associates and partners as a company in Asia. There is no substitute for experience.
Feel free to reach out to us any time to set up a call or meeting with Evan, Robert, or any of our Asia recruiters (several of which, in their own right, have been the lead on dozens of Asia placements). Even if just to discuss the Asia markets and your career in general, we are always glad to hear from people looking at a move to Asia and we always try to do what we can to help with counseling and advice.
At any given time, a recruiter on our Asia team is on the ground in both HK / China and NYC and we are available 24 / 7 by phone, for our law firm, US associate and US partner candidate clients.
