Clara Vitalini

Clara graduated with a B.Com from McGill University in Montreal, and after an experience in marketing at Procter &Gamble she obtained an MBA from SDA Bocconi.

She joined Bain&Company Italy as a strategic consultant, then continued as Marketing Director for the multinationals Ferrero-Soremartec, Yomo and Pharmacia&Upjohn, operating at the local, European and global levels.

Since 2002 she has been working as a consultant in Italy, where she heads up important projects in Strategy, Organization, Marketing and CSR for clients who operate mainly in the world of Consumer Goods & Services.

In 2010 she joined the company as a partner alongside Monica Calenti, adding a new perspective to her already multifaceted career in corporate management.

She contributes to the growth of the team by bringing her in-depth knowledge of business and her passion for organizational issues. She is certified as an Assessor by Six Seconds and Decision Dynamics.

In addition to her native Italian, Clara is fluent in English, French, Spanish and German.

She is Managing Partner of Ema Partners Italy | Calenti & Partners, and leads executive search projects for international clients, often for departmental start-ups.

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Clara Vitalini's interview

What does Executive Search mean to you today? How do you distinguish yourselves in an increasingly competitive field?

Our job is extremely delicate because we accompany organizations and people in their growth and evolution, and this is certainly a great responsibility. Our sole objective is to bring people into the company who not only make an immediate contribution, but who will continue to make a difference in the future. People who are aligned with the objectives of the role and the team they will lead, who are in tune with the style and culture of the company, and who are able to make the necessary changes so that the organization can be successful over time.

That’s why every search is a custom project, carefully planned and tailored to each client.

We ‘enter’ the company to deepen our understanding of its culture, its values and styles of success on the one hand, and of the market, the business model, strategies and organization on the other.

Only in this way are we able to identify the best people for the job, who have the technical skills, experience and personal traits that will enable them to succeed in the new reality.

For this reason, we have developed a process for getting to know our candidates that allows us to read the person in his/her entirety, thanks to one-on-one interviews and assessment sessions. And we share the results with transparency, agreeing together with both client and candidate on the alignment with the current project.

This approach not only allows us to work in total partnership with the company, but also generates an excellent “candidate experience”.

What are the fundamental characteristics of a successful candidate?

We live in an increasing complex world, in rapid and continuous transformation, where the jobs with the highest demand today didn’t exist 10, or even 5 years ago, and where 65% of today’s primary school students will do jobs that do not yet exist.

In this context, the success of a manager at any level is less and less linked to technical knowledge and skills and is instead directly proportional to his/her ability to learn.

By this I mean the ability, and above all the curiosity to keep up to date, to grasp new trends, to understand and anticipate the dynamics of the markets, and to continue to evolve in the application of technologies.

But I also mean the ability to learn from experience, observing and interpreting the results obtained, the alternatives evaluated, and what has been learned along the way, so as to be able to effectively handle any new situation or change. I’m talking about the awareness of oneself and one’s impact, and about Learning Agility, both of which are complex traits that we look for in our candidates.

What is the value that Ema Partners International brings to you and to your clients?

Born as Calenti&Partners in 1998, we decided to partner with Ema Partners International. We are the Italian subsidiary of the group, while remaining a company with independent capital. Ema Partners International is present at a global level with 32 partners, all companies with Executive Search and Leadership Development as their core activities.

The group allows us to offer international projects to our customers, with the assurance of shared quality standards and a flexible approach that responds to the needs of the client. We can act as a sole partner, or switch to a decentralized model with partners in multiple countries if preferred. For each job, we establish what is most appropriate for the project/customer.

Moreover, the group helps us to stay updated on corporate clients around the world, on the evolution of our sector, and on better ways of offering valuable services to our clients. It allows us to establish global partnerships with companies that improve the way we work, such as Decision Dynamics, a company that provides advanced assessment tools.

Finally, in the projects we conduct with our partners abroad, we acquire new industry skills, thanks also to our Practice Groups, and we learn to integrate our working method with that of our partners, thus becoming more agile and flexible, qualities that today are essential for success in any sector!