Team | Nelex

At home in the digital world.

With our agile, team-oriented approach, we are able to quickly find the right line-up for highly specific positions – always with your industry-specific needs in mind. Let's talk!

Digitality

For us, digitality does not mean that we neglect personal contact. The opposite is the case. In recruitment consulting, we digitise the processes and procedures that can be meaningfully digitised, which creates freedom for the important thing in our business: the personal interview.

INTERNATIONALITY

The world is growing together faster and faster. Distances are no longer obstacles. And most of our customers are international companies with a large presence in the DACH region and the BeNeLux countries or their headquarters or a large branch office in Germany.

This is the reason why we have positioned ourselves internationally from the beginning - with locations in Shanghai and Cape Town.

AGILITY

Agility is for us the highest form of adaptability of a company. This means that we as a company strive to anticipate things as early as possible. We do not just react to framework conditions, we also want to learn constantly. We are innovative and share our knowledge with you so you can benefit. Agility is an essential factor in all of this for maintaining competitiveness. Both yours and ours!

THE NELEX MANAGEMENT TEAM

The NELEX founding team consists of three experienced HR consultants
who have acquired their tools in various HR consulting firms.

KARSTEN BERGE, EXECUTIVE BOARD

Born 1963

Karsten Berge is a business graduate who studied business administration with a focus on strategic planning and marketing as well as business informatics at the University of Cologne, in London and in St. Etienne.
With about 30 years of experience in the IT and telecommunications industry, Berge has excellent contacts at the executive levels of major software and IT companies, consulting companies and many large and medium-sized companies in various industries.
He began his career as a consultant at the IT consulting firm Ploenzke, and later as an account manager at General Electric IS, before continuing his career as key account manager and sales manager in the large customer segment at o.tel.o. He then built up the German office of the US start-up company StorageNetworks – one of the first players in the SaaS area. Prior to founding SearchConsult in 2006, Berge was managing director of VIA net.works GmbH.
In 2006, Karsten Berge founded the recruitment consulting firm SearchConsult GmbH with a focus on the IT and digitalisation industry. With the firm’s clear focus on their own Ident and Research, SearchConsult quickly grew to 50 employees, making it one of the largest recruitment consulting firms. In 2015, Karsten Berge sold his shares as the majority shareholder to the listed Allgeier Group.
With NELEX AG, Berge and his team have already been awarded 5 stars several times by WirtschaftsWoche as the best HR consultancy in the categories "Digitalisation" and "IT" as well as "Consulting/Professional Services". In addition, NELEX has also been ranked several times as the top personnel service provider in the "Executive Search" category by FOCUS magazine.

ALEXANDER WOLFSCHAFFNER, Director

Born 1988

Alexander Wolfschaffner studied business administration in Salzburg, Austria from 2009 to 2012 with a focus on general management and leadership as well as human resources. He graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree.
His first and formative position was at SearchConsult from August 2012 to December 2018, where he quickly made a career and took on responsibility for the team at an early stage. As Principal, he led a team of executive search experts and gained deep expertise in the field of direct searches and strategic HR development.
Today, he uses his in-depth knowledge of executive searches to attract executives and specialists, drawing on a broad, resilient network of contacts.
His clients include various owner-managed companies as well as the upper-class of mid-sized companies in the software and IT sectors, management consultancy, mechanical and plant engineering, trade and e-commerce, chemical and process engineering and automotive suppliers.

LARS FRICKE, Director

Born 1984

Lars Fricke studied law and economics from 2006 to 2012 with a focus on business and labour law at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University in Greifswald.
From November 2012 until the end of 2015, he worked as a consultant for an owner-managed recruitment consultancy with a focus on retail and e-commerce.
In September 2015, Fricke then moved to SearchConsult as a senior consultant and team leader with a focus on retail and e-commerce in a senior position. By the end of 2018, he also took over the field of cyber security.
Lars Fricke has many years of relevant professional experience in the field of executive searches and direct searches with a focus on IT, technology and digitisation.
So he brings with him an extremely extensive and, above all, resilient candidate network in these areas. This applies in particular to executives and management roles.
His clients included a variety of owner-managed companies as well as the upper-class of mid-sized companies and groups from the trade and e-commerce sectors, management consultancy, IT, manufacturing and the automotive supply industry.

Melina Brandstetter. Associate Partner

Melina Brandstetter graduated from the International School of Management in Dortmund and the Bond University in Australia with a degree in Business Administration with a focus on Business Communication and Business Psychology.
Already during her studies she started at Kerkhoff Consulting, a medium-sized purchasing and supply chain management consultancy in corporate communications and business development.
In 2013, Brandstetter moved to an international recruitment consultancy as a consultant in the IT recruiting team. Within one year, she developed into a Senior Consultant and headed the IT team at the Düsseldorf location.
In August 2015, Ms. Brandstetter moved to SearchConsult and successfully supported the development of the SAP business unit. Most recently, as Principal and Team Leader, she was responsible for filling top-class positions in the upper midmarket.
Brandstetter has many years of relevant professional experience in executive search and direct search with a focus on IT, technology and digitization. She brings with her a resilient candidate network of IT executives and managers.
Her clients include companies from the larger midmarket in the retail, process industry and manufacturing, chemicals & pharmaceuticals sectors, as well as consulting firms.

Dr. Wolfgang Rothe, Associate Partner

Dr. Wolfgang Rothe looks back on several years of experience in the telecommunications, manufacturing and utilities industries, including at Mannesmann, Vodafone, AtosOrigin and Ista.
As CIO, he gained profound professional know-how and has since then built up a resilient network of international industry decision-makers.
Since 2008 Dr. Rothe has been active in executive search for specialists and executives and fills key positions in the IT, technology and digitalization environment.
Wolfgang Rothe completed his physics studies in Bonn and received his doctorate as Dr. rer. nat. at the RWTH in Aachen. During a doctoral period, he worked as a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research in Düsseldorf.
His clients include medium-sized companies, ICT service providers and consulting firms.

Stephan Lochner

Stephan Lochner has many years of relevant management, sales and project experience in personnel consulting and especially in executive search.
His career began in 1994 at a business consultancy, where he also learned about executive search from the ground up. He also gained experience in a media agency specialising in human resources. Further stations in the field of executive search were another management consultancy as well as a number of projects on a self-employed basis.
In 2010, he founded trovera GmbH together with a business partner.
Today, he uses his more than 25 years of experience in personnel consulting to recruit executives and technical specialists, drawing on a broad, resilient network of contacts.

Katja Kursawe

Katja Kursawe has been working in the field of IT, digitization and consulting for over 25 years.
Before she joined an international executive search consultancy in 2011 with a focus on executive search in IT, logistics and telecommunications, she worked as an office manager for an IT service provider after her studies and later moved to the project management of an international management consultancy.

AbdelIlah El Goubi

AbdelIlah El Goubi has many years of sound professional experience in executive search.
His consulting focus is on filling demanding management positions in the digital world with national and international companies.
His multiple language skills are also valuable.

OUR TEAM WORKS FOR YOU: