What Does Retained Search Mean for a Foreign Company With No US Network?

Philip Lamb
May 10
6 min read

Updated: Jun 9

Retained executive search foreign company US market entry no network 2026

More than 1,000 foreign companies establish US operations every year. Most of them arrive with a detailed capital plan, a permitted site, and a committed board. Almost none of them arrive with a reliable way to find, evaluate, and hire the senior American executives who will determine whether the investment works.

That is not a recruiting problem. It is a market access problem. And the companies that solve it quickly share one common decision: they engage a retained search firm before they need one.

In more than 30 years of placing executives for foreign companies expanding into the United States, the pattern is consistent. The companies that get the first hire right treat the search process as infrastructure -- the same way they treat the facility and the supply chain. The companies that get it wrong treat hiring as something that can be figured out after everything else is in place. By then, the pressure to fill the seat has already overridden the discipline to find the right person.

What Happened to TSMC in Arizona and What It Actually Means?

What happened to TSMC in Arizona is the clearest recent example of what no US network actually costs a foreign company at scale.

When TSMC announced its $40 billion Arizona investment in 2022, the company faced a hiring situation with no precedent in its history. No existing US workforce. No established relationships with American engineers or executives. No local credibility with the talent the project required. The results were documented in real time. TSMC's US Glassdoor approval rating from employees stood at 27 percent, compared to Intel's 85 percent. American candidates at scale passed on the opportunity. The company's working culture, training requirements, and management expectations did not translate to what US talent was willing to accept from an employer they had no prior relationship with. TSMC eventually brought in 500 workers from Taiwan on visas to keep the project moving and delayed mass production by more than a year.

The lesson is not that TSMC was a bad employer. The lesson is that without a US network, a foreign company cannot find the right candidates, cannot evaluate them accurately, and cannot earn their trust fast enough to close the hire. TSMC had the capital, the technology, and the global reputation. None of it substituted for local relationships.

According to the Center for American Progress, a failed executive hire costs a company up to 213 percent of that executive's annual salary once lost productivity, severance, recruiting restart costs, and team disruption are included. For a US general manager or country manager at a $200,000 base salary, that is a $426,000 mistake on a single search. For a foreign company with no existing US relationships, the probability of that mistake is significantly higher than it is for a domestic company with an industry network to draw on. The foreign company cannot verify references the way a local firm can. It cannot tell the difference between a candidate with genuine US market credibility and one who is simply available and willing to talk.

Why Are More Than 70 Percent of the Right US Candidates Invisible to Foreign Companies?

More than 70 percent of senior US executives are passive candidates, meaning they are not looking for a new role and will not respond to a job posting or a cold outreach from a company they do not recognize.

They move when someone they already trust reaches out directly. A former colleague. A previous boss. A recruiter who has placed them before and earned the right to call. That trust is built over time inside a market. It cannot be replicated from outside it.

A foreign company entering the US for the first time has none of those relationships. The executives they need are running operations, leading teams, and delivering results at companies that are also trying to keep them. They are not on job boards. They are not updating their LinkedIn profiles. They are not available through any process that begins with a posting or a database search.

The search firm's network becomes the client's network for the duration of the engagement. That is not a service add-on. It is the entire mechanism by which a foreign company gains access to candidates it would otherwise never reach. A firm that has placed general managers, CFOs, and VP-level operations leaders across manufacturing, energy, and industrial sectors in the United States for decades has the relationships required to reach those candidates and earn the first conversation on the client's behalf.

PRL International is a retained executive search firm serving Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, with a dedicated international practice placing senior US executives for foreign companies expanding into the American market across energy, manufacturing, aerospace, and industrial sectors.

What Does Retained Search Actually Provide That a Contingency Firm Cannot?

Retained search provides three things a contingency firm structurally cannot deliver for a foreign company with no US network: access, evaluation, and intelligence.

Access is the most obvious. A contingency firm posts the role and waits for applications. For a foreign company with no US brand recognition, that produces a candidate pool of people who were already looking -- which is exactly the pool that experienced senior executives are not in. A retained firm maps the market before the first call is made, identifies who is performing the role well at comparable companies right now, and builds a target list based on real intelligence rather than database searches. It reaches those candidates through existing relationships and earns the first conversation on the client's behalf.

Evaluation is less obvious but equally important. A search firm that knows the US market can tell a foreign client the difference between a candidate who is genuinely respected in their industry and one who interviews well but whose reputation does not hold up when the calls start. That judgment requires a network that took years to build. It cannot be assembled from outside the market in the weeks before an offer needs to go out.

Intelligence is the third element. The retained search process produces market knowledge the client did not have before it started. What the role actually pays in this market. What the competitive landscape looks like for the profile they need. What the candidates they are targeting care about when evaluating a foreign employer. That intelligence shapes the search and survives it -- the client finishes the engagement knowing the US executive market for their industry in a way they did not when they started.

Sun Tzu wrote: "The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought." The foreign companies that build strong US leadership teams do exactly that. They start the search before the pressure to fill the seat exists, gather the market intelligence before the first candidate is contacted, and make the calculations before the clock is running.

When Should a Foreign Company Start the Search for Its First US Executive?

A foreign company should start the search for its first US executive before it needs the person in the seat -- and the right timeline is earlier than most companies expect.

A retained search for a first US general manager or country manager takes 60 to 90 days when done correctly. That timeline requires starting before the facility opens, before the first customer meeting is scheduled, and before the board is asking why the position is still open. The companies that start the search six months before they need the hire make it well. The companies that start it when the pressure is already on make it fast and regret it later.

The other thing a well-run search provides is continuity. A retained firm that has placed the first US executive for a foreign client now knows that company's culture, leadership expectations, compensation philosophy, and the specific nuances of what works in their American operation. The second search takes less time and produces a better result because the groundwork was laid during the first one.

For companies expanding from Germany, Japan, or Italy specifically, the first hire is almost always a general manager or country manager with a background in cross-cultural operations -- someone who has built teams inside foreign-owned enterprises before and understands what it takes to establish an American culture inside a parent company that operates differently. That profile is narrow. Finding it requires a search process that starts early, maps the right market, and reaches candidates who are not looking.

For more on how retained search works for international companies entering the US market, read what our international executive search practice looks like and what questions you should ask a European company before accepting a US general manager role. For country-specific guidance, read how to hire senior leaders as a German company expanding into the United States, how to hire senior leaders as a Japanese company expanding into the United States, and how to hire senior leaders as an Italian company expanding into the United States. To understand what retained search actually looks like from the inside, read what retained executive search actually looks like and why it is not what most companies think.