For over 15 years WSN Consulting (WSN) has successfully helped its clients meet their resourcing and strategic needs across the Americas, UK and Europe. With a focus on strategically expanding its offering and coverage model, WSN has decided to build out its APAC presence by establishing headquarters in Sydney, Australia.

WSN have appointed Paul Sakr to lead operations in the region, who returns to Australia following a 7-year stint at WSN’s New York office. Paul is originally from Sydney, where he spent the first part of his career working in financial markets. Group CEO Alex Ciccotelli says ‘The appointment was a natural evolution for Paul within WSN given his experience and familiarity within APAC as well as his intricate knowledge of our operations globally’.

Over recent years, Australia has seen a steady increase in major institutions looking to build out their presence in APAC, something WSN is hoping to capitalise on. Paul Sakr comments ‘I think Australia’s stability in the region along with having a highly skilled and educated work force makes us an attractive option for organisations’. There are also economic factors at play ‘the relative strength of the US Dollar against the Australian is also seeing somewhat of a labor arbitrage particularly in our sector where our consultants and resources are more contingent and short term. At present, you can access like-for-like resources at an approximate 35% discount to a US based headcount’.

The ability to have a more holistic offering is where WSN sees a strategic advantage to some of its competitors in this space ‘a lot of our clients have global scale, being able to cater to their needs in each region as well as offer what we call round the clock support puts us in a unique place compared to other firms our size’ Alex Ciccotelli comments ‘we are also starting to see a change in our clients demands in the region, which was historically focused on Singapore and Hong Kong now moving to Australia’,

The benefits are not only to their clients. Internally they are also able to offer greater mobility opportunities to their staff. ‘Australians tend to be quite nomadic by nature, having the ability to offer staff access to our engagements in major hubs like New York and London has proven to be an effective selling point for high level talent both here and abroad’ says Paul.

There are certain resource types that lend themselves to global mobility. Traditionally, our bread and butter has always been execution-based staff like Project Managers, Business Analysts and PMOs, increasingly we’re seeing heightened demand for resources within the technology space, including Developers, Architects and Engineers. These specialised resources offer largely transferable skill sets between companies and can be huge assets as companies build out their own in-house technology capabilities and platforms and adopt transformation and data-focused projects’.

The world's workforce continues to become more global and intertwined with every year. Finding a competitive advantage amongst a global market is becoming more paramount to the success of businesses moving forward. Relatively untapped resource pools like Australia could be what helps these companies unlock greater growth and reach their goals more efficiently and at scale. Something WSN is banking on.

As the CEO, Jerry makes an effort to remain engaged and connected with the community while managing WSN’s DEI program. He still speaks regularly at HBCUs and continues to mentor many young men and women of various backgrounds across the financial sector. Jerry’s focus is to ensure his legacy will continue to increase access to minority talent and reward those who may not have had those opportunities without his continued impact.