Why Cap Nord?
Volatility, accelerating change, proliferating disruption: leaders now operate in a world where the old points of reference no longer suffice.
In an environment where economic, geopolitical and technological certainties can be overturned overnight, organisations must learn to move forward amid uncertainty.
Explorers have always known this. When conditions deteriorate, when the fog sets in and landmarks disappear, only one reliable direction remains: north. North is not a destination. It is a point of reference. A bearing that lets you move forward despite uncertainty.
Stay the course.
Cap Nord Partners was born from this conviction: the lasting performance of an organisation does not rest on its strategy, its technologies or its financial assets alone. It rests above all on the quality of the women and men who lead it, drive it and transform it.
Raphaël Rémond did not find this conviction in a management book. He learned it elsewhere — high in the mountains, alongside elite soldiers trained at the École Militaire de Haute Montagne in Chamonix.
There, they don't teach individual performance. They teach collective commitment. Rigorous preparation. Trust in the team. The ability to read the terrain, to adapt the plan without losing sight of the goal.
In the mountains as in business, conditions change. The terrain shifts. The unexpected arises. What makes the difference is not having avoided the obstacle. It's having chosen the right people to face it.
Before that, there was a passion for exploration — nurtured since adolescence by the tales of great adventurers, by months of night work in a cheddar factory in Scotland, seasons with hunter-farmers in New Zealand, a trek across Iceland, and six months across South-East Asia interviewing people working to preserve biodiversity in six countries.
Jungle, high mountains, marshland: territories sometimes cut off from the world, in contact with local people whose life stories were entirely their own — men and women who were never destined to cross paths with a future headhunter, and who nonetheless taught him what matters most. A person's intelligence is not measured by their record on paper, but by their ability to find a way through where conditions seem least favourable. A conviction that still shapes the way he assesses candidates today.
The compass has always pointed north — its one cardinal reference. Not because north is a destination — but because it is the absolute bearing that lets you locate yourself, find your direction and move forward with clarity.
That is Cap Nord. Setting the course. Identifying the people able to hold it over time, whatever the turbulence.
Partners, because this profession only makes sense through relationships. With our clients, with candidates, and between ourselves.
Ours is the story of two generations united by a single vision.
On one side, more than forty years devoted to developing the people of major international groups — building multicultural organisations, leading large-scale transformations, growing teams across the world.
On the other, experience built at the heart of recruitment, transformation and leadership challenges, with a conviction forged in the mountains and the wild open spaces.
Two perspectives. The same exacting standards. A complementary pairing unlike any other in the market.
Forty years building organisations that last.
Jean-Yves Rémond has devoted his professional life to Human Resources with rare intensity — not as a support function, but as the beating heart of the company. Family and work: two values that have guided every one of his decisions.
For more than eleven years as Group HR Director of the Lactalis Group, he experienced from within one of the most remarkable family-owned ventures in French industry. Under the leadership of Emmanuel Besnier — a reserved leader and the central figure of a company wholly owned by his family — Lactalis doubled in size in ten years, driven by an international acquisition strategy carried out at the pace of a group ten times its size.
What that means in practice: integrating local companies across many countries to build a multi-local group. Drawing out a shared DNA without erasing the cultures and strengths specific to each entity. Supporting leaders, structuring organisations, fostering convergence while preserving what makes each one distinctive. A venture that led to the creation of the world leader in its sector, today generating tens of billions of euros in revenue. Thousands of interviews. Hundreds of recruitments. An understanding of women, men and organisational dynamics forged at the heart of transformation and growth.
Working in the shadow of such a leader teaches resilience. You have to be willing to fight to change things, to persuade rather than impose, and to stay the course when decisions are hard.
Today, Jean-Yves Rémond wants to keep feeling that same drive in this work. No longer from inside a large group, but by offering a step back, an outside perspective, to the executives and HR directors who need it. Passing on what you've learned by living it, not by theorising.
One conviction: the right candidate is not always the best candidate.
There is, no doubt, something hereditary in all of this. Growing up between two complementary views of human nature naturally leads one to wonder what drives people, their motivations, their choices and the dynamics at play in human relationships. Raphaël Rémond did not turn to recruitment by default. It was a natural fit.
Raphaël Rémond built his conviction in the field, in radically different environments — the peaks above Chamonix, Scottish factories, New Zealand farms, Icelandic glaciers. Everywhere, the same lesson: what makes a team strong is the alignment between the individuals within it and the environment in which they operate.
That is the conviction he brought to recruitment. Not the search for the best candidate on paper — but the search for the right candidate for this specific environment, this culture, this moment in the company's life. A DNA. A dynamic. A course to hold.
His path took him from strategy consulting firms to the transformation functions of major industrial and technology groups, and, along the way, building a corporate practice alongside his first mentor. At every stage, the same approach: understand the organisation before understanding the role. Identify the person before validating the profile.
The complementarity with Jean-Yves is not a family coincidence. It is a natural fit built over years of conversations, of disagreements, of shared views on what high-level recruitment should be: rigorous, honest, grounded in the reality of organisations.
Building a business together, father and son — that too is Cap Nord Partners.
“We don't look for the best talent. We look for the right people, for the right organisations, at the right time.”
Talk with us