How Barrick built a leadership team from zero in Pakistan's remote desert

Building a $9 billion mine from scratch is hard enough. Building one in Pakistan’s remote desert, with no local mining talent and extreme security risks, is a near-impossible task. That’s exactly what Barrick Gold faced with their Reko Diq copper-gold project. They had to build an entire management team from zero, and do it fast.

Despite the obstacles, Barrick found a way. They successfully placed dozens of senior management roles under a new General Manager, creating the leadership team needed to set up one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper-gold projects.

Their challenge: a difficult project to recruit for

The location was a hard sell

To get to Reko Diq you have to fly to Karachi, then drive for hours through the desert to the camp. Once there, you face sandstorms, freezing winters, 50°C summers, and other challenges related to remote mine sites. Most experienced mining executives would look at these conditions and decide to pass.

The business had to sell the opportunity on something other than lifestyle and salary. Instead, they focused on the scale of the project, the career impact, and the chance to build something significant from scratch.

Pakistan had limited mining talent

Pakistan has very few mining operations and no large-scale ones so Barrick couldn’t source experienced people locally. They knew they’d have to bring in experienced leaders from overseas, which would mean convincing people to relocate or accept long rotations in an unfamiliar country.

And naturally they had to get the management team in place first before they could hire anyone else.

“They needed people who understood, through the construction phase, what would be required on the other side when it moves into operation in coming years,” explains Nathan de Jong, APAC Regional Manager at Globe 24-7. “So they needed to bring those people on early to get the right result when they started operating.”

Talent acquisition had to be run externally

Barrick’s people were focused on construction planning and regulatory approvals. They didn’t have the HR systems or bandwidth to run hundreds of executive searches across multiple countries and technical specialties. So they wanted someone else to handle recruitment while the rest of the team focused on building the mine, so they reached out to Globe to assist.

Our recommendations

Barrick knew they needed a completely different approach to talent acquisition for this challenging environment. Working with our senior recruiters, they developed a strategy that could overcome the location barriers and attract top-tier international talent.

1. Use an RPO model

Rather than adding people inside the business mid-project, we recommended that they outsource the entire recruitment process to a dedicated Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) team. This approach would provide top-tier international expertise, end-to-end ownership, clear accountability, and consistent processes while allowing Barrick’s teams to focus on project development.

“They went out to the market for RPO partners, and as a result, decided to outsource everything to us as a package which lowered their costs overall. They wanted to still be involved but to have one provider manage the work. It needed to be someone they could trust, who had strong experience in this space to manage the whole process, because they didn’t have time, capacity, or systems.”

2. Deploy only senior recruiters

Given the complexity of the roles, we recommended they deploy only the most senior and experienced recruiters. “You couldn’t have a junior recruiter, or even a mid-range recruiter on this job. Even if they had mining experience, it would be really challenging,” Nathan emphasises. “We had to put our most senior and experienced recruiters on this piece of work. It was a very challenging project.”

3. Source globally with persistence

The search required international reach, so we recommended an exhaustive search across Europe, the UK, Australia, Africa and the United States. This global approach would give the business access to a wide range of qualified candidates, though it would demand extensive, high-volume headhunting.

4. Develop a compelling Employer Value Proposition

Nathan points out that for this type of project, posting job ads just doesn’t cut it. You need a clear EVP. “Candidates want to know why they should join Barrick and this project. What the advantages are. Is it career, experience, exposure?” he says. With this approach, the team would have to consult with hiring managers to extract those unique selling points and sell them professionally through conversations and headhunting.

5. Provide continuous market intelligence

To support good decision-making, we recommended they set up ongoing market intelligence reporting. Regular feedback on brand perception, compensation benchmarks, and candidate concerns would equip stakeholders with evidence to address any problems and possibly modify their offering.

6. Salary benchmarking

Finally, we suggested that they run a salary benchmarking project so they would have access to current detailed data on benchmark base salary, cash allowances, employment conditions and benefits, along with analysis and recommendations.

How they did it

Barrick agreed with our recommendations and moved quickly from strategy to kick-off, handing our RPO team full responsibility to build out the leadership layer.

Staffed only by senior mining recruiters with years of experience working on similar projects, we took full ownership of the process, from sourcing and shortlists through to interviews, reports, and final placement.

We ran a global search, reaching out to people in Europe, the UK, Australia, Africa, and the United States. As Nathan de Jong recalls, “We were literally talking to hundreds and hundreds of people just to get a shortlist of four or five. The sheer volume of headhunting, shortlisting, and communication was massive.”

Constant feedback kept Barrick informed on how the market viewed its brand, rosters, and compensation packages. This gave their HR team the evidence they needed to make adjustments on the fly. For example, modify rosters or salaries based on market feedback.

Weekly reports, agreed SLAs, and frank discussions about what was and wasn’t working kept the process moving, with both sides ready to pivot when conditions demanded it.

Results: 20+ senior management hires

By the end of the campaign, Barrick had a brand new senior management layer to lead Reko Diq. We helped them fill more than 20 leadership and technical roles, setting them up to start project construction with confidence. As recruitment continues, we’re well on our way to filling 30+ management roles so the business has an experienced leadership team ready to take the world-class copper-gold project forward.

“For Reko Diq we currently handle the full recruitment process end-to-end. We’ve taken this burden off our client’s hands, keep them informed with weekly meetings and reports, and regularly discuss market feedback,” Nathan concludes.

The Reko Diq experience proves that location and conditions don’t have to be deal-breakers for attracting top talent. With the right strategy, specialist expertise, and willingness to adapt, mining companies can build world-class teams anywhere.