Louisa Wong, founder of Bó Lè Associates, runs 18 offices across Asia and one in the US, but still regards her mum as priority number one.

"If my mother had to give one of us away, it would have been me," says Louisa Wong, founder and group managing director of the executive search firm Bó Lè Associates. That perhaps would have been a mistake.

Wong now heads and regularly visits a network of 19 offices spread across Asia (plus one in the US) and has recently entered into a partnership with a US$10 billion Japanese recruitment firm. She also likes to relax by regularly jetting off to one of her homes in Tuscany or Phuket. Despite all of this, she still finds time to have lunch with her mother every weekend, who returns the favour by making Wong a daily lunch box. She says: "My spare time is spent with my mother, that's like my second job." Perhaps realising that her mother might one day be reading this, she adds quickly: "Actually, that's my first job."

If looking after her mother is her first job, then Wong must have one of the most successful back-up careers in the territory. In 1996, ten years after starting her career in headhunting with the US firm Russell Reynolds in Hong Kong, Wong decided to branch out on her own and founded Bó Lè. In a bold statement of intent, she opened offices in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai simultaneously. Her focus on the mainland has been one of the key drivers behind Bó Lè's success and she now has nine offices there. This is in addition to her presence in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and, most recently, the US.

As we sit and talk over a drink amongst our comfortable surroundings at H One, the stylish IFC Mall-based restaurant, Wong tells me she was born in Kowloon City in Hong Kong in 1957. She was the daughter of parents who, like countless other refugees, had fled the mainland after the communist party took over in the early 1950s. She was born into a harsh refugee life, as the fifth of sixth children and the youngest girl, which led to her considering herself the least important member of the family.

It was this perceived position in her family which helped shape an academically successful childhood. She says: "I was not a critical part, but being in this unimportant position also allowed me to stay quiet and focused. I read a lot, I studied a lot—I think I was a nerd. Because of this I always graduated with the top students." She attended St Paul's Convent School, an independent girls' school and one of the top-ranked schools in Hong Kong, before moving to Canada with her brothers and studying nutrition at the University of Toronto.

For most students it takes four years to finish a four-year course. This is not how Wong got to be where she is today. She says: "I thought at the time, if you can finish school in two and a half years, why take four years?" So she did. She studied during her summers, she took night courses, and while everyone else still had over a year to go, Wong was happily collecting her graduation certificate. This mindset was also key to propelling her forwards as the head of Bó Lè years later.

She says: "I'm a tough boss, I have high standards. I'm very brutal when it comes to time. If you can do two things at a time, why do just one? If you can do ten hours a day, why do eight?"

At university Wong met her first boyfriend, who had a burning ambition to go to Harvard Business School. He told her that, as she was a nerd, she had to come with him to keep him in the library and on the right track. She agreed and they both applied—but she got in and he didn't. This didn't stop her from going and off she headed to Massachusetts to begin two of the toughest years of her life. She says: "I barely survived. Everybody else was much older and had business experience. They have a screening system where the bottom 15 per cent gets screened out, we call it ‘hitting the screen'. I barely managed to avoid hitting the screen. It was quite an experience going from the top of the class to the bottom. I learnt a lot about surviving and being humble. I also learnt that perhaps life was not so simple."

After graduating, she went to New York to work for JP Morgan, where she stayed two years. She ultimately left because "banking was too boring". She had a brief stint as a buyer for the famous Alexander's department store before returning to Hong Kong in 1986.

After applying for a job at Lane Crawford, in a bizarre twist her headhunter, from Russell Reynolds, suggested she came to work for them instead. The pay was better than Lane Crawford so she accepted and so began her career in headhunting.

She surprisingly doesn't remember the first person she placed, but there is one early success that she remembers well—recruiting herself. She says: "After two years I recruited myself and went to work for a textile company. It is not uncommon to be recruited by your own client, particularly early in your headhunting career when you still have contacts within your previous industry.

"A year later I rejoined Russell Reynolds, so I had gone through the classic experience of recruiting myself, going to the client and coming back. It reinforced that that was where I wanted to be."

Placing on average ten high-level candidates a year, Wong stayed with Russell Reynolds until she set up Bó Lè in 1996. Although she insists that she was not a visionary and did not foresee the extent of China's rise, she had seen the mainland's potential and had spent a year trying to convince Russell Reynolds' CFO and CEO that they should partner up with a mainland company and give it a shot. She believed that the executive search process could and should be successfully localised for the mainland. The fact that salaries were so low compared to Hong Kong, though, was a continual sticking point, as well as the highly complex local economics and marketplace.

It was not her company's lack of vision, however, that persuaded her to make the jump. She says: "Frankly, the reason I started the company was not because I believed China will be what China is today, but mostly personal. I got divorced, I had no children and I was bored. I had a lot of time on my hands and, after ten years, I could do the job with my eyes closed. I had no responsibility other than to myself so I was in a position to take a risk.

"I also had a belief in China. I went there and came across many people who had a similar kind of ambition and work ethic, and I thought, I'm Chinese, so why not?"

The company's intriguing name was inspired by the Tang Dynasty myth of Bó Lè, a man whose skill at judging horses was known throughout the land. He was able to select horses of exceptional strength and stamina, horses that could run 1,000 miles in a day. He could also nurture even the most unlikely-looking beasts into incredible steeds.

Wong says: "When I heard this I thought wow, this is exactly what a headhunter should be. I didn't want to just create ‘Louisa Wong and Company' because if you name a company after an individual, that company will always be limited by the limitations of that individual."

Bó Lè has grown steadily over the last 14 years, its initial staff of 20 growing to over 400 today. Of that launch team of 20, 18 of them are still with the company. Of the first 50 people to join the company, the majority have stayed loyal to Bó Lè. In an industry and an era where the average staff turnover is two to three years, the stability and loyalty of Bó Lè's employees has been one of the company's strengths. Another factor in Bó Lè's success has been its huge investment in technology. While most of its competitors are likely buy in software, Bó Lè has developed its own through in-house IT centres in Manila and Chengdu.

Wong's own abilities as a headhunter, of course, have also always been key. She says: "I think you have to have a natural instinct. I could always tell in a first meeting, even on the phone, whether the person in question was right.

"People have to like you too—there is a lot of trust and credibility at stake. Sometimes women are better at this—generally you see more women headhunters than men. In our company, 70 to 80 per cent of our employees are women. We are better at keeping our mouths shut and remaining discrete is important.

"I have to convince you as to why today you should leave your current job. The first approach to any candidate often results in a no, because if they are as good as you think they are, they tend to be happy and settled. A lot of what I call ‘the art of seduction' is to seduce you with opportunities that you must consider and also by giving you a pat on the back to say you can do it."

It would be remiss to sit down with one of Asia's leading recruitment specialists and not ask for any job-hunting tips (just for research of course, dear editor). Wong says: "Sometimes it's not so much about what is in your CV, it's about how connected you are, so you've got to be on LinkedIn, you've got to be anywhere that makes your name visible. Risk management is very hot today so, if you have that on your CV, you'll be searched for.