Should we hire the regional leader or the team first?

Almost always the leader first. The right regional leader shapes the team's profile, helps close the early hires, and sets the bar. We typically run the retained leadership search first and start mapping the team build in parallel so there is no dead time.

How long does a market entry build take?

A regional leadership search runs on an eight-week cadence. The first team hires behind the leader typically land within 38 days on average once the embedded headhunter is in place.

Which regions do you cover?

The UK, Europe, North America, APAC and MEA, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. Each region has dedicated headhunting expertise rather than a generalist desk.

Use case

Entering new markets faster

Last reviewed: November 2026

The short answer

Opening a new region means hiring a regional leader and their early team in parallel, usually with no local network, no employer brand and no inbound pipeline. The first three hires set the culture and the revenue trajectory. Embedded headhunting gives you a partner who already knows the local talent pool, headhunts the leader through a retained search, then builds the team behind them on subscription.

The situation

The product works at home and the board wants international revenue. You need a first regional leader who has opened this market before, then the early team around them: the first sellers, the first customer success hire, maybe a solutions engineer. You have no local network, no local employer brand, and job boards in a market where nobody knows you will not carry the weight.

The common failure mode is sequencing: hiring the team before the leader, or hiring the leader through a generalist agency that does not know the local pool. Either way, the market entry slips a quarter or two, and the first hires set a bar that is hard to raise later.

How Saiyō approaches it

Executive Search runs the regional leadership hire first: a discreet, retained search mapped against competitors already operating in the market, on an eight-week cadence with a 180-day replacement guarantee.
Once the leader is signed, RaaS embeds a headhunter to build the early team behind them, working from talent maps of companies your buyers already know.
Where you need pipeline quickly, CVaaS delivers curated, headhunted CVs into your ATS on a fixed-price sprint, without placement fees.
Throughout, you get honest read-backs on the local market: salary bands, notice periods, and where the talent actually sits.

Regional depth, not generic coverage

We hire across the UK, Europe, North America, APAC and MEA, and publish detailed regional hiring guides covering salary expectations, notice periods, visa and entity considerations, and the specific talent pools in each market. Market entry hiring is a local exercise, and the advice should be too.

When this is not the right answer

If you have not yet resolved your local entity, visa or employer-of-record setup, sort that first. We headhunt; we are not an EOR or immigration consultancy, and the search should not start until a candidate can actually be employed.
If the market entry is exploratory and headcount is not approved, a subscription is premature. A single retained search for the leader is the right-sized start.