Expanding Our Reach: Introducing Confisa International Group
In this interview with their CEO, Juan Carlos Jaramillo, we’ll introduce you to Confisa International Group and its team, meanwhile exploring their journey, and highlighting what they bring to the Talentor network.
Let’s dive into how this partnership is set to elevate our collective reach and impact in the Mexican, Latin American, and global markets!
Hola Juan! Bienvenido a Talentor! Our community is looking forward to knowing more about you, can you let us know a little bit about yourself?
Born in Mexico City and independent by 16, my journey has been shaped by diverse experiences across Mexico and the US, both academically and professionally. Growing up in the Executive Search industry—literally the same age as our family company—I began contributing during school holidays, igniting my passion for matching exceptional talent with unique organizations. Over the years, I’ve watched executives thrive, evolve, and lead in remarkable ways across global markets.
Beyond executive search, I’ve founded, invested in, and navigated successes and failures in international ventures, grounded in values like green causes, diversity, EEO, and leading by example. Today, I balance my professional life with being a dedicated dad, striving to instill timeless principles in my daughters amidst a rapidly changing, multicultural world.
Do you have hobbies you enjoy doing with your family that you would like to share with us?
I cherish walking my daughters to school each morning and creating memorable stories with them, balancing family time with a love for travel and unique experiences. Passionate about sports, I enjoy Padel Tennis, Pelota Vasca, running, cycling, and swimming. A fan of rock concerts and quality moments with friends, I also embrace my roles as an Executive Search Coach and a Spiritual & Metaphysics instructor.
Confisa International is a family company, what led your father to found it? And how do you feel leading the company now?
Back in 1985, my dad was young and wanted to create something where he could help both people and companies. Based on trust and his interpersonal skills, establishing an HR services company made total sense. He was positive delivering strong commitment and results would be key to success and this is how Confisa started!
A few cases locally turned into today’s successful projects in nearly 70 countries around the world.
Today the company operates as a boutique executive search company, making every customer and project a unique and highly valuable case to all of us. We like to bring a big effort to every project and achieve results most efficiently. After so many years, we are constantly finding ways to improve and apply improvement changes as soon as possible. The bottom line, the story is the same: we want to help and improve both people’s lives and companies’ performance and goals.
I am privileged to have the opportunity to lead a great and diverse group of talented people in the organization while keeping the same strong customer-oriented focus and work-balanced culture.
What are the biggest learnings from your career?
What advice would you give your younger self or any young person when starting their career?
To myself, I would say: Work within frameworks that allow giving and investing 10%+, protect your assets with financial responsibility, take measurable risks, and enjoy the journey!
To a young person, I would say: Start fearlessly, stay humble, invest in yourself, use your time wisely, and seek authentic paths to growth beyond routine.
You have spent your entire career in recruitment and executive search. What is your favorite thing about this industry?
In addition to A1 (to be passionate about fulfilling complex human talent needs for unique organizations and watching closely executives’ development and evolution throughout notorious retention and growth in multiple regions around the world), it is a great thing to enjoy the work in progress to achieve this; not only our activity brings business awareness, great relationship building and management, but also a lot of aspects that challenge us every single day to become better in our field and better as human beings.
What is your company´s USP for clients and candidates?
We deliver results with flexibility, adapting to market and industry conditions through scalable SLAs that ensure win-win outcomes. Our persistence, backed by a talented and diverse international workforce, sets us apart from others in the industry. Strong business relationship management has earned us long-term partnerships with international clients, while our proven track record and global network remain key strengths.
As Sid Barnes well said during the latest Talentor Summit 2024 in Warsaw: “they buy from us because of the way we make them feel”, and so they refer us to other businesses.
What is a typical profile that you recruit?
We specialize in recruiting mid- to top-management roles across diverse industries and regions, extending our expertise to Investor Search processes and B2B strategic connections that empower clients' entire business cycles. Our focus is on candidates who embody hard work and go the extra mile, ensuring they bring added value beyond qualifications, enriching organizations from the start.
Who is a typical client for you?
We work with well-structured mid to large-sized corporations that have a clear understanding of their talent needs, including the challenges and conditions surrounding their job openings. Our ideal clients value seamless communication with HR, hiring managers, and teams, and come to us for various scenarios like growth, market entry, key talent replacement, M&A, spin-offs, or operational decentralization.
What is one thing you would recommend to companies that not just want to recruit great talents, but also retain them?
To establish a consistent framework that aligns expectations with talent onboarding, growth, and permanence, fostering continuous culture improvement, prioritizing well-being, and building a balanced, communicative, and dynamic workforce consistent with the company branding.
Moving on now to the location you represent in Talentor, Mexico, what would you highlight from the Mexican market to our partners, clients and candidates?
- Nearshoring Trends and Manufacturing Considerations for many of Talentor’s current or potential customers: Manufacturing Costs Remain Competitive, Solid Infrastructure and Logistics, Easier to Find a Building, Competitive Employee Benefits.
One of the most common surprises is that a lot of foreign companies are unaware of Mexican talent potential and hard-working skills.
• The Bank of Mexico (Banxico) has been actively managing monetary policy to combat inflationary pressures while fostering economic growth (with core inflation hovering between 3.7% and 3.9% year-on-year as of late 2024).
• Tight Labor Market: A robust labor market continues to exert upward pressure on wages, contributing to persistent inflation in the services sector. The unemployment rate remains low, suggesting that while wage growth supports consumer spending, it also complicates the inflation outlook.
• Government Policies: The current administration, under President Claudia Sheinbaum, is expected to adopt a more investment-friendly approach compared to her predecessor. This includes enhancing infrastructure and supporting private sector involvement in real estate development, which could further stimulate the market.
What are the most frequent intercultural problems? What's the biggest cultural misunderstanding that you've seen? What did you learn from working interculturally?
Conducting executive search projects for multiple positions and even some that were specifically oriented to act as a bridge between more than 2 different organizational cultures, requires specific skills, experience, and proven track record in most cases, but the local general business culture has tended to be adaptative, flexible, and collaborative so there are typically high chances to succeed. At most cases, external management styles require guidelines to better manage and lead to optimal performance in the region. Hence, a lot of the Latam regional HQs reside in Mexico due to some of these factors and common lean management.
What is something that a foreign company would never guess about the Mexican labor market?
• Thursdays or Fridays outside lunch times could never get to an end. However, this happens when agreements, sales closings, and common understanding occur.
• It is a huge country so the labour market conditions, culture, pace, and talent availability will certainly differ drastically from one place to the other.
Mexico has become in many regions a location where foreign workers would like to relocate to, something that was not close to being considered 10 years ago.
• When corporations have a well-defined KPI frameworks, agile methodologies, best practices adapted to the city and country, they will most likely strive and succeed. Non-supervised or well-structured organizations along with poor management can lead to really negative performance and big disappointments.
Why did you decide to join the Talentor network? And what do you think is great about being part of an international network / the Talentor network?
We decided to join the Talentor network for its strong global presence, supportive management and team, valuable resources/ materials/ efforts, and a business community dedicated to collaboration and delivering results, all driven by our shared vision since our first conversation with Gertraud Eregger from Talentor International.
It is great to be part of an active community where most firms are seeking to grow, improve, learn, and help each other on the way.
It is great to belong to an international network such as Talentor because you have good local coverage, it becomes an exchange network where everyone can contribute, and it also helps to achieve greater deals (regional, global).
Thank you Juan for this very complete interview, we loved getting to know you, your company, and market a lot better!
Without any doubt, Juan was a key player in our network in 2024, since his first approach to our network and partners at the Talentor Partner Meeting in Vienna, then at the Talentor Summit 2024 in Warsaw, and now!
Here we share a brief interview we did with Juan at the Talentor Partner Meeting 2024 while he was in the process of joining officially the #TalentorCommunity! Since then we have shared many great moments and we are happy to introduce him more in depth to our community! We are sure many positive collaborations await for us all!
If you want more information or to contact Confisa International Group click here.
