Moving target

People are the prime source of competitive advantage in management consultancy and recruitment issues usually get high priority. Indeed, directors and partners often devote considerable time to devising systems that align recruitment with business development strategies, thus ensuring a constant stream of new consultants with relevant qualifications and potential for further development.

But the calm and orderly progression painted above rarely survives intact when pitted against the reality of management consultancy as a profession.

In fact, the nature and culture of the business, not to mention the type of person that management consultancy attracts, create a series of potential problems for headhunters and recruiters. This does not mean that successful recruitment is impossible, more that one has to understand who and what you are dealing with.

Management consultancy is project-orientated. Projects can last for anything from six months to five years (over this and you may have unwittingly become part of an outsourcing programme). A major two-year contract is virtually certain to create a need for new consultants.

However, recruitment, especially at senior levels, means serious investment in terms of time and money. To justify it candidates must have the potential to add value to the company long after the original project is history.

Hence headhunters often find themselves trying to fulfil two very different sets of recruiting criteria; one that relates to the job in hand; and one that relates to a candidate’s long-term suitability. The latter can take some time to emerge, although expansive hand gestures are a sure sign that it is about to surface.

For example, I was asked to find a programme manager with a strong technical background and a firm managerial style. But the long-term agenda, divined over time from a few hints, was that this person also had to be under 35, an MBA from a “top five” business school, an entrepreneurial business developer and partnership material!

Happily, a satisfactory compromise was effected – but how many compromises are truly satisfactory in the long-term?

In a project-based environment where job security is low, candidates will market themselves and their skills aggressively. In management consultancy the ubiquity of jargon and the speed with which it degrades can make it difficult to identify genuine practitioners.

For example, a CV claiming “major BPR implementation experience” could simply mean that the candidate, whose greatest challenge has been reordering the typing pool layout, has read the latest opus from Mike Hammer or Tom Peters.

For management consultants, success ultimately depends on the amount of billable work done for clients. This often leads to a gulf in priority between billable activity and everything else.

Those consultants who concentrate on exclusively billable client work tend to acquire an aura of leading-edge credibility which is probably the closest they will ever get to being a rock star. No phrase is uttered with more hushed respect than “he’s so busy with clients he doesn’t have time for admin”.

This is a headhunter’s nightmare. Usually the decision-makers he needs to talk to are veterans of this culture and are rarely around. Even when they are they have little time or attention to devote to what they still consider as administrative activity. In fact, setting interviews for candidates within a month of reviewing the short-list can be considered a cause for celebration.

But getting candidates to interview is only the first hurdle. While in many respects, major consultancies are far removed from the original partnership concept, the decision-making process remains and getting a final decision can be like pulling hen’s teeth.

Unless a candidate has an Oxbridge 1st, a Harvard MBA, and an “S” on his chest, your client will automatically suggest that another partner needs to see him.

What this really means is “I’m not quite sure whether I want the responsibility for this now, so I’ll pass it on to someone else in the hope that he is feeling decisive.”

As a rule, three meetings and a board presentation can be classified as swift work, but nine or 10 meetings indicates serious unwillingness to take a decision.

During a recent assignment to find a partner for a large consultancy, one candidate had 11 interviews, two presentations, and then another two interviews. The whole process took 10 long months.

This often leads to the ludicrous scenario of the headhunter reassuring jaded candidates that yes, the consultancy concerned is a really sharp, dynamic and decisive organisation, but unfortunately everyone is so busy with clients that they have no time for making decisions about recruitment.

Consultancy culture also does itself a disservice by overemphasising the workaholic aspects of the job. Many companies have coined numeric formulas based on factors like days on client site and nights away from home, supposedly to show new recruits what they are letting themselves in for.

Unfortunately, such formulas often become perverted into virility symbols.

One consultant I met quipped that “in our firm, 321 stands for 3 failed marriages, 2 countries per week and 1 night at home per month.”

This creates a workaholic culture where long hours and visibility seem to be as important as getting the job done and eventually restricts the talent stream to clones who are prepared to put up with such miserable conditions.

Perhaps consultants should take their own advice to work smart rather than to work long. To quote one Big Six partner when faced with a junior putting in very long hours on a feasibility study for a potential bid, “Very impressive, but what on earth will you do when you’re working on a proper assignment?”

Some of my best friends are management consultants, but when a psychologist friend working in a related field characterised them as “insecure over-achievers” I had to concede that the description contained a grain of truth.

On the positive side, good consultants are superb at advising and motivating others, and solving problems that clients are unable to solve for themselves.

However, these skills are not an ideal fit with the messy business of running a company, even a large one, on a day-to-day basis.

Herein lies a conflict of aspirations. Most consultants, at some stage of their careers, want to be senior directors of a big corporation, with Cecil B DeMille-size projects and a cast of thousands under their control, but relatively few make the leap successfully.

Consultants presented with a chance to move in this direction should ask themselves whether they would really flourish in this very different and possibly uncongenial environment.

Successful recruitment needs clear briefing, timely decision-making, commitment and honesty from the clients. Consultants are exemplars of these qualities in their client work; they must also apply them to the business of finding tomorrow’s high-fliers.

Jeremy Cox is a partner at Merton Associates.