5 Recruitment Secrets of Management Consulting Firms

5 Recruitment Secrets of Management Consulting Firms

In management consulting, people are the business; clients pay millions of dollars to have management consultants diagnose problems and recommend solutions. With revenue and compliance at stake, hiring mistakes can be so costly that some firms favor caution over efficiency. But in today’s competitive marketplace for talent, effective recruiting in management consulting entails a multi-pronged approach that can be facilitated by the right technology. Let’s look at five ways successful management consulting firms are recruiting today.

1. Provide a great candidate experience

Candidates encounter ever-more efficient tools in their job search and are increasingly using AI: 45% of job seekers in a Canva survey reported using generative AI for their resumes. After experiencing the instant gratification of AI tools, imagine their dismay at encountering a job application that takes more than 30 minutes to complete due to poor resume parsing and extraneous questions.

KPMG Australia revamped its hiring process to eliminate 44 unnecessary questions and is using AI to streamline the hiring process.

“Recruitment can be a very reactive game. You’re often not given much time to build a strategy around what the market is telling you. So the ability to move quickly, and get to candidates before anybody else [does], is also driving those commercial outcomes.”

– Rob Dunderdale, Head of Talent Attraction at KPMG Australia, in HRM

Digitally savvy companies that want to attract the best of the best need to provide a smooth hiring experience that includes a simple application, streamlined interview scheduling, and frequent communications. Systems that are difficult to use leave candidates with the impression that they’ll be spending their time on the job fighting with technology rather than solving important problems that shape the future of business.

2. Use technology to create efficiency

Recruiters are tasked with identifying best-fit candidates, but that’s harder when they’re drowning in mundane tasks. At Deloitte Netherlands, recruiters encountered more than 200 manual data entry points in a typical candidate journey and spent up to 50% of their time on administrative tasks. By implementing SmartRecruiters and integrating it with third-party tools, Deloitte NL eliminated manual data entry.

KPMG Australia launched a multi-year program called Talent Attraction and Recruitment Reimagined (TARR), which included a chatbot, an AI screening tool, automation, and a shortened application. Together, TARR’s activities reduced the time to hire by 20%.

3. Tailor your employer brand to the changing workforce

The face of the workforce is changing, and talent acquisition has to change along with it. Market forces led Deloitte NL to expand its employer branding beyond campus recruiting and professional hires, the two traditional audiences for management consulting recruitment.

Contingent workers became the key to staffing its delivery centers and capitalized on a trend of Dutch workers moving away from traditional labor relationships with employers.

“We need to reposition ourselves as a talent acquisition team to stay relevant, not just for the permanent workforce but also for the other worker types,” said Eric Houwen, the former Head of Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding at Deloitte Netherlands in a Recruiting Future podcast. “We understand what skills and capabilities are needed to drive the business.”

4. Connect talent acquisition to talent development

The rigorous talent management standards used by many management consulting firms can be tied to talent acquisition. The Deloitte NL team built job-level talent standards into candidate scorecards within SmartRecruiters to ensure consistency in hiring.

KPMG Australia took a similar approach to interviewing and rebuilt its onboarding program to give new hires a better start. Within a year, staff turnover at the organization dropped roughly nine percentage points.

Hiring scorecards for each interviewer that are aligned with talent standards help teams make fair decisions that prioritize candidates’ skills and capabilities, potentially ensuring their long-term success with the organization. A well-designed onboarding program ensures that positive experiences during recruitment extend into the employee experience.

5. Leverage data for change readiness

Management consultants seek to understand problems by gathering information and analyzing data before recommending solutions. Recruitment analytics help your talent acquisition function take the same data-driven approach as the business.

Implement a reporting strategy that includes clear KPIs, actionable dashboards, and regularly scheduled metrics reviews. To get buy-in for new initiatives, try correlating costs with time spent on tasks or time in the hiring stages.

Deloitte NL developed recruitment ratios for campus and experienced hiring by analyzing historical and benchmark data. After presenting the data to senior leadership, the team is now equipped to procure the resources it needs whenever hiring targets increase. Because they now know the estimated recruiter capacity, they can more easily staff the recruiting department when the firm’s hiring goals increase.

Analytics are a foundational element for leading a management consulting firm forward in times of rapid change.

“We wouldn’t have been ready for this much change a year ago. We now have a solid foundation that we can build on.”

– Eric Houwen, former Head of Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding, Deloitte Netherlands