Burton White, one of the founders of business and technology consulting firm Excella, feels like it’s 2002 all over again when it comes to the current talent pool.

“We started the company in 2002, right after 9/11, and a lot of people said, ‘You’re crazy! What are you doing starting a company now?’ And our view at the time was while it might be hard on the client side to find clients, we feel like we’re probably going to have access to a lot of great talent. Back then we took advantage of that and we hired a bunch of great people who were really the launching pad for our firm. So in a similar way now, if anything we see this a potential opportunity.”

And with the breadth of services the firm offers, solution strategy, project management, business analysis and application development among them, the opportunities are everywhere. “The engagements vary pretty significantly,” White says, adding financial success metrics are secondary to his primary concern: consultant and client satisfaction. “We’ve made a point of really focusing on a core philosophy: Take care of your clients; take care of your people; the rest takes care of itself.”

That focus on the soft skills rather than the hard numbers is especially apparent at performance review time, says partner Steve Cooper. “By emphasizing the more subjective aspects of performance instead of objective ratings, we express the most noteworthy aspects of an individual’s performance as it changes over the long term.”
Excella, which is based in McLean, Va., and has 52 consultants, was founded by three consultants, two of whom are ex-Arthur Andersen—White and Cooper. (Jeff Gallimore, meanwhile, had worked with White and Cooper worked at another firm.) The firm concentrates on being a local consultancy, and that means clients in both the public and private sector. Clients outside of the Washington D.C. metro area or clients who require a significant travel commitment aren’t a great fit for the firm, White says. “That’s because we as founders and many of our employees aren’t interested in travel.”

But what they are interested in is community service. The firm has made a longterm commitment to Homestretch, an organization that helps homeless families in Fairfax County, Va. “We decided a couple years ago to really substantially invest in service more than we had in the past, and we wanted to make sure that it was something that became a part of our culture and it really reflected our values,” White says. “One of our core values is building great long-term relationships, so we decided we would identify one organization that we would partner with and make a long term commitment to the organization.”

White says his goal is to have the work the firm does with the organization get truly embedded in Excella’s culture, to the point where employees do regular volunteering with Homestretch on their own. “We just believe that it’s an important part of our corporate responsibilities, and we think it’s something that’s rewarding for our employees.”

And Excella is looking for more employees who want a low-travel, high community involvement model—the firm is looking to add at least two more consultants to the roster by year’s end. “We’re always interested in growing like most companies, and our plan is to grow as much as we can. We’re still hiring right now. And if anything, the economy is just making us a little bit more careful about our hiring.”

And with a talent pool not unlike the one available in 2002, that shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.

—Jacqueline Durett

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