The core executive search expertise of T&I Consultancy is based upon the firm’s Founder and Managing Director, Ilham Hajiyev, a regional headhunter with about 15 years of executive search experience (of total 25+ years of business management background).

The first eight years of his executive search career Ilham ran the Baku office of Pedersen & Partners (2007 – 2015), a global executive search firm with then 53 offices worldwide. As Country Manager, Azerbaijan, and Head of Caucasus & Iran, Ilham built and developed from scratch Pedersen & Partners into a main executive search firm in the region being in charge of operations in three countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran). In 2013 Baku office was #1 by performance among 53 offices of the firm.

Ilham is a seasoned generalist. He enjoys being engaged in different industries, conducting regional multicultural search assignments for various business functions. Overall, by today, he conducted 300+ retained search assignments of mid & senior management level (both Regional & Country CxO, General/Country Manager, and Head of Department for different business functions) with positions to be based in 14 countries within CIS, Middle East (mainly) and Europe.

Ilham carried out search projects in 15+ industries: Agriculture, Banking & Financial Services, Construction, Distribution, Hospitality & Tourism, Entertainment, FMCG, Food Flavors, Heavy Industry, Industrial Technology, Information & Technology, Legal Advisory, Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Pharma, Retail, and others.

Ilham executed important – often highly ‘sensitive’ and confidential – search assignments for multinational, regional and national organizations, including both public and private (family owned) ones. The list of international clientele includes, but not limited to, BASF, 3M, DuPont, Honeywell, Festo, Wika, Multivac, Danone, Nestle, Carlsberg, Colgate Palmolive, Lactalis, Bel, Imperial Tobacco, Aujan, Ulker, Arc International, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Novartis, Astra-Zeneca, BERLIN-CHEMIE Menarini, Polpharma, Sopharma, Abdi Ibrahim, Agfa Health Care, Santen, Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, APM Terminals, Panalpina, Doehler, IFF (International Flavors and Fragrances), Oriflame, and others.

Since 2016 Ilham is an Executive Board Member of the Italy-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (ITAZERCOM).

Since 2021 T&I Consultancy is a member of Global Executive Search, a worldwide network of independent executive search firms with members in 50+ countries across the globe. Consequently, GESN is among the top 3 executive search networks in the world in terms of geographical representation.

Born and raised in a multicultural district of Baku, Ilham’s diversified business management experience expands over twenty-five years. In his early career, during the perestroika, he completed his two-years military service in Ukraine and then took on several positions, including stoker in a government bank, forwarding agent in a large bread-baking plant, and translator for a private agricultural enterprise.

Wishing always to be independent and free, at his own, he started working, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a freelance interpreter during the first international missions of the World Bank and IMF for companies and private businessmen visiting Baku to explore business opportunities.

A year later, in 1992, at the age of 24, Ilham was appointed Country Business Representative for Hallwood Energy, the US private oil company based in Denver, Colorado (then #27 in the US, and #83 globally). This cooperation eventually resulted in the signing of a joint venture agreement with SOCAR in April 1994 for the development of an off-shore field (the first one in the history of the post-Soviet Azerbaijan). Unfortunately, in September, the Board of Directors decided to pull out Azerbaijan and the project, due to their poor assessment of regional perspectives and stability which eventually led to a significant opportunity loss.

In 1995 - 2007, Ilham founded and ran Robero Ltd., a construction & real estate company that provided various property management solutions (construction & renovation, project management, maintenance, leasing, market research, evaluation services) to international business and diplomatic communities in Baku (BP, AIOC, CIPCO, Amoco, Pennzoil, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Mitsubishi, the embassies of France

and Germany (Kapel House), World Bank (Shaki Khan Sarayi/Royal Palace), and private international and local clients). Over 130 construction and renovation projects were completed within first five years before his grand voyage decision to leave for Europe for several years to discover the world.

As a result, Ilham lived in Italy and France for four years (2000-2004), during which he learned the languages, studied art, culture and literature, completed his MBA in Paris and traveled extensively (400+ places). Inspired by this experience, in 2007 he authored a novel «Капля дождя, застывшая между небом и землей...» under his pen name Keym Son. In 2010 the book won a literary award of the Moscow municipality Fund named after Yuriy Dolgorukiy which reviewed the literary works in FSU written in Russian language by a non-Russian.

In his free time, Ilham is a writer and lover of culture, history, art and traveling (600+ places in about 80 countries). He practices yoga. He is an avid reader interested in various subjects (human energy optimization, the healing power of food, biohacking, yoga, meditation, Big History, evolution of life on Earth, anthropology, personal transformation & self-development, life coaching, and many others).

-Diploma, French Literature, Sorbonne University, Paris, France, 2003-2004

-MBA, Finance, Ecole Supérieure de Gestion, Paris, France, 2002-2003

-Diploma cum Laude, Italian Language & Culture, Università per Stranieri di Siena, Italy, 2000-2001

-MBA, Legal Regulation of Economics, Western University, Baku, Azerbaijan, 1998-2000

-BA, English Language, Azerbaijan State University of Languages, Baku, Azerbaijan, 1990-1995

Ilham is a native speaker of Azerbaijani and Russian. He is fluent in English, commands an advanced level of French and Italian. He masters conversational Turkish and Persian, and has an intermediate level comprehension of written Spanish, German and Ukrainian.