Recruitment Is Dead. Long Live Synthesis.

The best talent is never on the market.

Why I Stopped Hunting for Talent and Started Creating It

You've been through enough "strategic talent reviews" to know the drill. Shortlist, interview, reference check, repeat. Here's what nobody tells you: the moment you hire that perfect candidate, everything changes.

Your business shifts. Markets move. Tech disrupts. Politics explode. Suddenly yesterday's star hire becomes today's mismatch.

I've watched this happen from both sides. In my early China years, I saw global leaders parachuted into "perfect fit" roles. They crashed and burned on cultural landmines and shifting power structures. I've been the outsider, the fixer, the guy called in when beautifully designed teams fell apart.

The painful truth? Talent isn't found. It's built—across borders, disciplines, and through messy human experience.

The Old Way Is Broken

Multinationals don't fail because they can't find A-players. They fail because they keep hiring for yesterday's problems.

Traditional recruitment assumes you can define a static "role" and hunt for someone to fill it. But roles mutate faster than org charts can keep up.

Your world is chaos. Shifting alliances. Regulatory shocks. AI leaps. Generational warfare. What good is a "perfect" CFO when your supply chain just moved to Vietnam, your board is fighting over ESG, and competitors are poaching your data scientists with crypto and TikTok fame?

I've seen gorgeous org charts crash because we missed the human factor: mistrust, culture gaps, and fear.

That's not a recruitment problem. That's a synthesis problem.

What Synthesis Actually Means

Forget blending skills on a spreadsheet. Synthesis means building teams that learn, adapt, and rebuild themselves when the world shifts.

In my world, synthesis is daily work. Connecting dots that don't want to connect:

The French CEO who needs buy-in from Chinese plant managers. The AI engineer who can't read a P&L but spots market shifts before the board does. The ex-military officer who brings order to a fintech startup—not by barking orders, but by quietly mentoring twenty-somethings who've never failed.

Synthesis designs for emergence, not efficiency. It creates capability instead of just acquiring it.

What I'm Building Now

I'm not claiming I've solved this. Every week I discover new ways I'm getting it wrong.

But here's what I'm betting on:

DEX AI - An agentic platform that maps and activates capabilities across organizations and networks. Think of it as the nervous system for distributed teams. It surfaces patterns your org chart can't see.

CVFlow - Our structured talent pipeline. But more than that—a living process for tracking who's growing, learning, ready to leap. It manages journeys from sourcing to reinvention.

GEA (Global Executive Advisory) - A network, not a hierarchy. Independent advisors, operators, and executives collaborate and co-create. AI-powered but grounded in human judgment and cross-border empathy.

My Failures Matter More Than My Wins

Let me be honest. I've missed targets. Bet on wrong tech. Watched beautiful systems crash because I underestimated human nature. I tried being everything to everyone and ended up mediocre at most things.

The turning point? Realizing that being "caught in the middle" isn't weakness when the middle is where connections happen. Between East and West. Tech and humanity. Transaction and relationship.

My darkest moment taught me the most: the space between defined categories is where innovation lives.

Why This Matters to You

If you're running a business, sitting on a board, leading a team—you don't need another leadership insight from the latest business book.

You need someone who'll tell you:

The old rules are broken. Your competitors are already synthesizing talent while you're still recruiting it. The biggest risk isn't hiring wrong—building a system that can't adapt when the world changes.

And the world already changed while you were reading this.

I'm not here to impress you. I'm here to build with you. Learn, fail, try again—together.

Synthesis Is Practice, Not Product

Recruitment is dead. Synthesis is messy, human, ongoing.

Stop hunting for unicorns. Build the herd. Nurture the ecosystem. Create conditions for emergence.

That's what I work on every day—with you, not for you.

Let's stop searching for talent. Let's start creating it.

Ready to move beyond traditional recruitment? Let's talk about synthesis.

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Kangze (Kevin) Hong Founding Partner, LYC Partners | Founder, GEA & DEX AI APAC | Europe | Global “Building bridges where others see borders. Redefining executive search, leadership, and advisory—so you can thrive in the age of AI, uncertainty, and global opportunity.”