I had a pleasure to work with Ilham for around 3 years as Research Associate at Pedersen & Partners. I would have never imagined that headhunting could be such an interesting and thrilling experience! I enjoyed it so much! As my mentor, Ilham Hajiyev who managed the region of Caucasus and Iran at that time showed me how one can be strict, demanding, well structured, highly professional, and so empathic, kind, supportive and positive at the same time.

Ilham is truly a man of values! He is honest with his clients. He spends time to understand better the search context, the client expectations, corporate culture, and other important issues. With his understanding of business needs and great network Ilham could accomplish complex and challenging regional search projects, and find win-win solutions both for the client and the candidate no matter how difficult the case was. I am proud that in 2013 Baku office became # 1 among 53 offices of Pedersen worldwide per performance. Per meeting our billing targets (percentage wise). It was a real achievement! Together we have closed many international projects in various countries and industries always aspiring to generate the best available solution for our clients.

Working with Ilham is an enriching experience: he always inspires and motivates people around him to change for better, to learn new things, to work on self-development, to create a better world around us. He shares the knowledge. He is much patient with others’ mistakes: corrects and guides smoothly. His attention to details always impressed me: he catches gaps in a doc in a second. He always cared for the quality of written communication, gave tons of useful advices. In not so many companies in Baku one has such a chance to improve her written business English. He was officially awarded with “Best Storyteller” prize in the firm.

Working with him was fun. Challenging, but not stressful. Flexibility with time. He builds his professional relationship with his team members based on trust and honesty by giving them freedom. Thanks to Ilham I gained precious experience in recruitment, communication, analytics and proactive approach to my tasks. He had a major impact on my career development, and his passion for the job, his genuine values and high integrity, general diversity, curiosity level for so many subjects, permanent hunger for new knowledge inspired me much for future achievements. He is a role model and I am happy for all Researchers and other people who will have a chance to cooperate with him in future.