Firm Snapshot: Katzenbach Partners, LLC

If McKinsey & Company or one of its blue-chip rivals — say, Bain & Company or Boston Consulting Group — boasted that it had recently received resumes from 13.5 percent of Harvard's senior class, 15 percent of Princeton's, and 10.5 percent of Yale's, informed observers of the consulting profession might nod their heads and quickly strike it up to the ability of the profession's premier firms to attract top graduates.

But when the consulting firm making such a boast currently has only 81 employees (53 are consultants) and operates from only two offices — New York and Houston — the same observers might likely query, "What gives?" It's a question that has no one correct answer, but has become increasingly asked as Katzenbach Partners LLC continues to flex its campus recruitment muscle, and win favor with a growing list of clients.

"They have what I think is an amazing ability to have junior people jump in and contribute at a very high level and work pretty much in lock-step — both with the client organization and with their own senior leadership," says Bob Orr, vice president of worldwide organizational effectiveness at Pfizer. Orr's words quickly zero-in on the perennial weak knees of the consulting profession, the joint that connects old talent with new. Here's where KPL's innovation lies, according to Orr, who views KPL's maturing competitive advantage as a cultural one.