In this video Adrian Chia, a senior leader at HRNetOne, shares his three‑decade career in executive search across Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Shanghai. He recounts relocating to each market, pioneering the Shanghai office, and founding the regional key‑account function that now spans seven directors. Adrian outlines HRNetOne’s six core values—doing the right thing, being genuine, continuous self‑improvement—and how these principles shape his client and candidate engagements. He describes the firm’s search methodology, which emphasizes honest advisory on talent‑market realities, deep industry specialization, and a mapping process that produces detailed market talent reports. A highlighted success story involves a Fortune 500 chemical client’s D&I mandate to place a female Vice President of Supply Chain; Adrian’s team mapped female talent across Asia and secured a qualified placement. He concludes by noting the evolving nature of roles in emerging industries and invites companies with hiring needs to contact him.
Chapters
I'm Adrian from HRNetOne, 3 decades in this organization where I relocated from Singapore to Taiwan in 2000, then to Hong Kong in 2004, which I finally landed in Shanghai in 2006 to pioneer the establishment of our Shanghai office. Having the passion to create group effect on the business front, I founded the regional key account function for HRNetGroup, which have 7 regional KA directors in the region today. My 30 years of executive search experience on C-suite and senior leadership roles are within the mainland China, Taipei, Hong Kong, and other Asian countries. Some of the recent positions I have successfully fulfilled are Asia President, Managing Director, CFO, CHRO, CTO, etc. As a consultant, joined HRNetOne in 1995 I believe our company's 6 core values are well aligned with my principles, which are doing the right thing, being genuine with people, and constantly improving myself. In fact, these foundations have helped me to passionately and sincerely engage with clients, customers, and even colleagues. As I'm dealing with people's career, I believe taking personal accountability to match their preferred job scope and company to work for. I don't treat them as a commodity. Likewise, I also will ensure our clients find the best suitably qualified candidates for the role they are hiring, but without our overpromising that there are such unicorns in the market. I use our unique search methodology of engage with the client, advising them on the reality of the talent landscape versus their expectations. I believe in our in-depth industry specializations have gelled us well to be the HR advisor for our clients and candidates. One of our fortunate Fortune 500 US chemical client assigned a challenge search assignment to us. Due to their D&I program, they needed to mandatorily hire a female talent for a male dominant supply chain VP role. We launched a mapping project to cover the entire Asia region just to sift out the female talents for them. From a methodical mapping process, it generated a comprehensive market talents report which gave the facts on the numbers of female candidates available in the market. In the end, I still managed to place a best suitable qualified female talent in their organization. The future roles and scope will shape out differently from the norms as newer industries will change it. Hence, my team and I will be ready and be there to service you as we also evolve with this transformation ahead of time. If your company has any hiring needs, Please feel free to contact me.
