The mind is everything. What you think you become. - Buddha

Home About

About us

OVERVIEW & MAIN INSIGHTS
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 17 years of executive search experience (of total 25+ years of business management background).
T&I Consultancy

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 cross-border 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 and Middle East mainly, as well as occasionally in Europe and the USA.

We are a boutique firm. We are small, but reliable, focused and committed with a ‘never-give-up’ attitude. We do care for quality rather than quantity. We are attentive to details as we believe they do make difference. Our values and principles are not just slogans: we mean them, we live them. Confidentiality is a nature of our profession. Towards both candidates and clients.

We work hard to obtain the best possible solution for each search mandate. Though our daily scope of research work and communication traffic, analytics and creativity in searching for a right talent remain often unseen behind the curtains, we love what we do as we bring positive change in others’ lives and career.

INDUSTRIES

Overall, Ilham carried out search projects in 15+ industries (in alphabetical order):


  • Agriculture
  • Banking & Financial Services
  • Construction
  • Distribution
  • Entertainment
  • FMCG
  • Food Flavors
  • Heavy Industry
  • Hospitality & Tourism
  • Industrial Technology
  • Information & Technology
  • Legal Advisory
  • Manufacturing
  • Oil & Gas
  • Pharma
  • Retail, and others.
INTERNATIONAL CLIENTELE
Ilham executed important – often highly sensitive and confidential, ‘only-one-person-knows’ type of – 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.
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
androidPartnor
INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP

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 more than 60 countries across the globe. Consequently, GESN is the largest professional executive search network in the world in terms of geographical representation.

Membership at Global Executive Search Network allows T&I Consultancy, as well as other members, to be able to provide, in addition to its local market services, a large pipeline of variety of other human capital management services – some quite specific and niche ones – being supported by solid expertise of the GES Network partners with decades long track record specialized experience and references in these services.

Such a partnership with Global Executive Search Network allows T&I Consultancy conduct important global and regional cross-border search assignments with more comfort and confidence. Being a local boutique executive search firm in Azerbaijan, T&I Consultancy is able to support its regional clients’ critical recruitment – both executive and managerial – needs internationally regardless of frontiers and distances. Whether they are in Europe, Middle East, Latin America, Far East, Africa or somewhere else.


COMPETITIVE EDGE
  • Local brand boutique with global reach capacity
  • Strong values and ethics. High professional reputation
  • Strong knowledge of international industry standards and practices
  • High focus and dedication to the project. Quality over quantity
  • High attention to details. High orientation to quality and ‘win-win’ relationship between candidate and client. Trust and integrity
  • Knowledge and understanding of Soviet, Russian, Turkish and Persian cultures & traditions (both business and personal)
  • Track record ability to successfully execute highly confidential searches (with knowledge of only Regional Director or Shareholder or CEO. Even our research team members and shortlist finalists may not know who our client is)
  • Seasoned regional track record experience of challenging cross-border assignments
  • Diversified generalist experience in different industries, business functions and geographies
  • High rate of successful project closure (above 90%)
  • High stick rate of placements (in average about 6+ years within a healthy and fair corporate culture; some placements with already 10-15 years of employment within clients’ organizations)
  • 15 years’ career with no ever need of a search relaunch per a guarantee period
BIOGRAPHY

Born and raised in a multicultural district of Baku, Ilham’s diversified business management experience expands over twenty-five years. In 1992 Ilham started his professional career as 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, dived into studies of his favorite subjects in 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 an avid reader interested in various subjects (Big History, evolution of life on Earth, anthropology, primatology, DNA genealogy, human energy optimization, the healing power of food, biohacking, yoga and meditation, brain power, personal transformation & self-development, life coaching, and many others). He is passionate about art, history and traveling (600+ places in about 80 countries), and enjoys practicing yoga, and participating in yoga retreats.

Ilham completed MBA in Finance from Ecole Supérieure de Gestion in Paris (2002-2003), and MBA, Legal Regulation of Economics, from Western University in Baku (1998-2000). In addition, he received Diploma cum Laude in Italian Language & Culture from Università per Stranieri di Siena, Italy (2000-2001) and Diploma in French Literature from Sorbonne University in Paris (2003-2004).

In 2016, Ilham spent four weeks in Germany as a participant of Manager Training Programme initiated by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). The Programme allows participants to learn more about German companies and how they work. During that trip Ilham visited more than 20 large world-known German manufacturing companies based in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria and operating in various industries to study their best practices, business challenges, marketing strategies, etc.

Ilham is a native bilingual 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.