Hiring a Country Manager in Poland: what makes the search difficult?

Your Country Manager needs to understand Poland, lead a local team and work effectively with overseas headquarters. As your first hire in the country, they also need to open the market and win customers themselves. Putting those expectations in a job description is easier than establishing which experience proves they can do the work.

Country Manager: the title does not define the job

Headquarters wants someone to “run Poland”. To the regional leadership team, that may mean revenue growth. The local team needs decisions about people, customers and day-to-day problems. A candidate may expect control over the country's full profit and loss account. Resolve those differences before the first interview.

Start with the business the person will lead. Managing distributors requires different experience from building a direct sales team. Taking over an established operation differs from starting with no local support. The U.S. Commercial Service guide to distribution and sales in Poland describes several routes to customers and local partners. The hiring implication is practical: define the operating model before defining the candidate.

Write down the responsibilities, the decisions the person can make and the support headquarters will provide. Can they set prices, approve hires and control costs? Will they be accountable for margin while someone else controls discounts and purchasing?

Your first hire in Poland needs to be able to open the market

If the Country Manager will be your first employee in Poland, assess their go-to-market (GTM) experience: planning and executing entry into a new market. Having been part of an expansion says little on its own. Establish what they did personally before they had a local team, an established brand or inbound enquiries.

At this stage, you need someone willing to do the work themselves: choose the initial customer segment, test demand, make contact, run meetings and negotiate. Depending on the sales model, that may also mean finding a distributor, developing partnerships or working with HQ to adapt the offer. Hiring salespeople comes later. Someone first needs to establish what the company can sell in Poland and who will buy it.

Ask the candidate to walk you through a specific market launch:

• How did they select the first target customers, and which did they approach personally?
• Which meetings and negotiations did they lead, and what did the team or headquarters handle?
• Which assumptions about the offer, pricing or sales channel changed after customer conversations?
• How did they win the first sale, and what helped them win subsequent customers?
• When did they decide to hire a local team, and what justified that decision?

Look for evidence of independent execution with limited resources. Someone who grew a large, established operation may have excellent results. You still need to assess whether they can win the first customers without that support. Ask directly whether they want to keep doing that work themselves, rather than only managing it.

Headquarters also needs to specify the market-entry budget, available support and decisions that can be made locally. Being hands-on does not mean replacing legal, marketing, customer service and technical teams single-handedly.

Industry requirements can narrow the search too far

Experience in a particular segment may be essential because of the product, sales cycle or how customers make purchasing decisions. The difficulty comes when the brief also demands an identical job title, similar company size, one location and an established network. Each requirement sounds reasonable. Together, they can leave very few people to approach.

Before advertising, identify the employers where candidates could have gained the relevant experience. Separate knowledge needed on day one from knowledge someone could acquire. Look beyond competitor names to comparable customers, responsibilities and business decisions.

In one assignment described by our recruiter, the client's requirements limited the Polish search to four companies; a comparable German assignment involved three. These were individual briefs, not a measure of the Country Manager market. They illustrate why it helps to establish the available sources of candidates before launching a search.

If that exercise leaves a small group, you need a plan for approaching individuals and a credible reason for them to consider moving. Reposting the vacancy does not provide either. Our article on reaching passive candidates explains this part of the process.

Test English through the work the person will do

A Country Manager may be effective with Polish customers and a local team while rarely using English. Our recruiter encountered this in the Polish assignment: working mainly in Polish had left some candidates less comfortable communicating with an overseas headquarters.

That is an observation from one process, not a judgement about Polish managers. The U.S. Commercial Service business guide highlights the role of Polish in business communication. Local market knowledge and the ability to work with HQ in English therefore deserve separate assessment.

Rather than accepting “fluent English” on a CV, conduct part of the assessment in English. Ask the candidate to explain a budget variance, defend a proposed investment or discuss a disagreement between HQ and a local customer. These are suggested exercises to adapt to the actual role.

Assess whether they understand questions, explain risk precisely and justify a decision. An accent or a pause does not decide that. But if someone cannot communicate difficult news in the language used by headquarters, address the gap before hiring them.

Agree how confidentiality will work before making contact

If a search replaces an incumbent, disclosure can affect the team and customer relationships. Candidates also need to protect their position with their current employer. In a small sector, the description of the company or role may be enough to identify the client.

AESC's professional standards include protecting confidential client and candidate information. We suggest translating that principle into practical agreements:

• Who can see candidate names, and at which stage?
• When will the company name and full responsibilities be disclosed?
• How will interviews be arranged and calendar invitations labelled?
• Who may be approached for references, following agreement with the candidate?

Do not promise that nobody in a close professional network will work out what is happening. Restrict access to information and avoid having several uncoordinated intermediaries circulate the same brief. Confidentiality should shape how the search is run, not just appear in a sentence in the first message.

Separate a convincing presentation from management ability

A senior candidate may give an impressive account of business growth. You still need to establish their own contribution, the resources available to them and what they did when the plan stopped working.

OPM's structured interview guidance describes assessing relevant competencies through past behaviour or proposed responses to hypothetical situations, using common questions and assessment criteria. This provides a basis for comparing evidence rather than impressions.

For a Country Manager, ask about a specific decision: walking away from an unprofitable customer, changing the team or challenging an assumption at headquarters. What did the candidate know at the time? What options did they have? What did they decide personally? What happened, and what would they do differently today? Our recruiter also used that final question in the assignments described above.

Add a short exercise using fictional information. For example, revenue is growing, margin is falling and headquarters wants further expansion. Ask what information the candidate would seek and which decisions they would consider. Assess reasoning, priorities and awareness of risk. Do not turn the exercise into unpaid consulting on your company's actual strategy.

Headquarters must be ready to make the hire

Agree the compensation budget, bonus terms, decision-making authority, interview stages and final decision-maker before meeting candidates. Explain what the person will inherit: an established team, approved investment or only permission to explore the market.

If the final stage requires a visit to headquarters, establish the date, purpose, attendees and travel arrangements. In the German assignment our recruiter described, this included coordinating flights and rail connections to the client's UK headquarters. It is a small operational detail worth planning before asking a finalist to set aside the time.

In both assignments, clients had previously spent between 90 and 150 days searching internally and through advertisements. This is an observation from those cases, not an average hiring timeline or evidence that every company should immediately buy executive search. The practical lesson is to review a stalled process: what have you learned about the market, and what will you change?

Choose a recruitment partner according to the work you need: understanding the market, approaching leaders discreetly and assessing them properly. Our guide to the difference between headhunting and recruitment agencies explains what to examine before comparing proposals. Your Country Manager will have specific work to do. The hiring process should produce evidence that they can do it.