| | As with many preceding
years, August 2006 can be
viewed as the "calm
before the storm" – for
those interested in
recruiting or being
recruited in the
management consultancy
space that is. Right
across Europe, havoc is
wreaked on interviewing
schedules as the
combination of partner
vacations and candidate
holidays force the
recruitment process to
grind to a halt.
But all that will
change in September.
Like a pressure cooker
gradually building up a
head of steam, a buoyant
consulting market cannot
tolerate more than a few
weeks of slower
recruitment activity.
Client demand is still
rising; staff defections
are an ever-present | |
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| | problem; headcount
targets continue to look
daunting; and staff
utilisation rates remain
sky high. We've seen it
in previous years and
we'll see it again this
year – the minute
everyone is back from the
holiday season,
recruitment teams will go
into overdrive as they
make that final push to
bring new blood into the
business before the
year-end.
"We're gearing up for
an exceptionally busy
September/ October/
November period,"
comments
Top-Consultant.com
director Tony Restell.
"There's an
interesting dynamic to
this consulting growth
spurt in that money
cannot be thrown at the
recruitment problem the | |
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| | same way it was during
the dot-com boom.
Consulting firms are
facing a dual squeeze. On
the one side, there's
continued pricing
pressure that means
margins aren't as healthy
as during the last boom;
and on the other side,
many firms are now
publicly listed and end
up prioritising the
short-term demands of the
investor community. Both
of these factors combine
to mean there's less
money in the pot for
recruitment and retention
– and so now more than
ever firms are looking to
get the best possible
return for their
recruitment spend. That
inevitably favours
businesses like ours that
are able to deliver
consulting hires at a
fraction of the expense | |
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| | of more traditional
channels," adds Restell.
However, recruitment
suppliers are also in
agreement that consulting
firms will have to
broaden their pools of
target candidates to
include executives that
have no prior experience
in consulting. With the
industry growing by more
than 10% per year, firms
have only two choices.
Firstly, to accept only
those with prior
consulting experience and
to hope that they are
better at poaching staff
from competitors than
those competitors are at
poaching from them. This
can work for individual
firms but not for the
industry as a whole. Or
secondly, to accept that
there are not enough
experienced consultants
to go round and to seek | |
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| | to broaden the pool of
consulting staff by
bringing professionals in
from the accounting,
banking and legal
professions and by
attracting high-flyers
from the public sector
into the profession.
Firms need to hire the
equivalent of 20% of
their current headcount
in the current year in
those markets that have
seen a modest return to
growth; and in the most
buoyant markets such as
the UK and the Middle
East, hiring targets
equivalent to 30% or more
of headcount are not
unusual.
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