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An ambitious and tactically minded executive writing an application letter to secure a position with a global company could do worse than write, “I am an experienced professional with extensive technical and business expertise. I have valuable global experience, strong leadership capabilities, am innovative, creative and able to manage risk. I have the courage to challenge and am able to adjust quickly to internal and external change.”

It is people with these qualities that the 1,150 bosses from around the world, polled in the annual PricewaterhouseCoopers CEO survey, are collectively finding it most difficult to recruit, and in that order.

Challenge decisions 

Combined technical and business expertise are hardest to find globally with 67 per cent of CEOs reporting shortages.

Some 56 per cent report difficulties in finding people with the courage to challenge decisions while those with the ability to collaborate, or with language skills, are easier to find.

There are regional differences. Creativity and innovation, combined technical and business experience, the ability to change and the courage to challenge are most sought after in Asia Pacific.

Latin American CEOs hanker after employees with global experience, and the ability to manage and anticipate risk is most sought by bosses in Central and Eastern Europe.

Respondents from the UK are more likely to agree that competitive advantage is likely to come from improved customer service (84 per cent), the ability to change (83 per cent) and access and retention of key talent (81 per cent).

Established traits 

There is mixed news for people managers. Some 89 per cent of CEOs globally say that that people management issues are one of their top priorities, 67 per cent believe their time is best spent on the people agenda but only 43 per cent believe their HR department is equipped to deal with changes needed to compete for talent – this is as low as 34 per cent in the UK.

The skills hardest to find point to a potential increase in international demand for senior executives from mature economies such as the UK where challenging others, innovation and leadership are established traits among top personnel.

Michael Rendell, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that many of the world’s rapidly emerging markets were coming out of a manufacturing based model into one where services are more prominent.

This will mean a higher demand for management skills common in the mature economies of Western Europe and the US.

Volatile stock market 

Rendell explained that executives here would have multiple employment options internationally and their current employers may find they have to work increasingly hard to retain them.

“Right now, this situation is being compounded by volatile stock market performance which will lead some executives in larger UK organisations to question the value of their reward packages if they are substantially dependent share price performance,” he concluded.

Paul Harper, spokesman for the Association of Executive Recruiters, added that it was interesting to see that the courage to challenge is in high demand. He was convinced that this played to the strengths of UK executives.

“To challenge occurs naturally in the UK, it is part of the whole the whole mentality of working within companies and the experience of training in UK and US business schools,” Harper said.

Elsewhere in the survey, bosses worldwide cited lack of middle management motivation or engagement and lack of senior change management experience as critical barriers to change.

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• UK firms dogged by micro-managers

Related links

• PricewaterhouseCoopers