The Gathering Storm

What may appear to consulting industry outsiders as a minor innovation remains a highly controversial, even subversive concept within a profession known to be highly guarded when it comes to the appearance it presents to clients. Simply stated: The golden rule of staffing at Booz is no longer to send clients the most experienced people available. Instead, the firm's new golden rule is to send people who view a specific engagement as valuable in their own career development. Experience, of course, is still heavily weighted, but the flip-flop in prioritizing has made Booz a true trailblazer.
"We actually feel like if you look at the career development needs [of consultants] first, and then look at the client's needs, where they match up you'll get better answers overall," explains Deanne Aguirre, Booz-Allen's chief personnel officer. To help validate its approach, Aguirre says the firm recently completed an independent audit of its clients that revealed a client satisfaction rating of 99 percent.
"What's key is that we have found no decline in the quality of work with our clients. So we know that [the new approach] is not an issue and, of course, we continue to survey them," notes Aguirre, who says while Booz's technology arm built the applications entirely in-house, the firm paid its own consultants full billing rates to complete the project's strategy component.

A Respite Before the Next Big Battle

Most industry pundits prefer to think of the business world's latest chapter as a period of time that's notable only for what it follows and for what it precedes: the collapse of the dot-coms and the rise of New Economy incumbent businesses. However, for those who sit entrenched along the front lines of the industrial world's Talent Wars, the span of time we now reside in is often identified as a pivotal chapter — one that will be remembered as a turning point for the profession. It's a time when consultancies, given the decline of their most fervent talent rivals, are enjoying a respite where they are being given a choice to rest on their laurels or advance ahead into the uncharted talent waters of the New Economy.

It's the same choice now faced by many of the consulting world's incumbent clients, but nowhere, perhaps, are a profession's evolving workforce policies seemingly more in step with the enabling powers of the Web than in consulting. Here, in the caverns of strategic advisory, a recent push to offer workers greater individual empowerment and career choice seems custom-tailored to leverage Internet technologies that only a year ago remained in their infancy.
"For the first time in history, there is an efficient market for experienced talent. It used to be that you might see an ad in the newspaper or you might get a call from a headhunter. Now, everybody is in play 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because of the Internet and all of the sorts of recruiting activity it affords," says Arthur Andersen partner and vice president of human resources Dennis Reigle.
"Even if you forget about the economic need for talent, there is a push factor here that keeps people moving, and I'm more concerned about that, frankly, than I am about competitors having a slightly better compensation package or maybe a different client list," says Reigle.
It was this same concern, perhaps, that recently led four of the industry's top strategy firms — McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and Booz — to begin sharing industry employment opportunities and on-line postings as part of an effort to augment the career transition services they currently offer their consultants. While career transition services have long been a perk enjoyed by consultants within the top firms, the move toward a shared career transition capability could empower the profession with an on-line placement vehicle unmatched by any other industry sector.
What's more, it's expected to be an appealing job perk for those consultants who have entered the profession with skill-building on their minds and, unlike many of their predecessors and peers, are not smitten with the idea of becoming a partner.

The Fruits of Individual Empowerment

Mercer Management Consulting partner Nicole Gardner believes the changes underway within the profession's workforce are now largely reflective of the outlook shared by such people.
"People who come into consulting now, are thinking much more about skill-building and, sort of, [their] own brand enhancement … and much less around the kind of work mode we used to have in this industry. … We're looking at a more longitudinal model of talent management, with people coming in and out of the firm repeatedly in their careers," says Gardner, who recently joined 12 other top human capital professionals at a roundtable convened by Consulting magazine (see roundtable discussion, page 24).

Christine Dedrick, a partner with Marakon Associates, also believes that the outlook of younger recruits has changed.
"The younger ones coming in are against hierarchy, against authority. 'Give me a sense of community, give me a sense of being my own person, controlling my own destiny,' [is what we hear]," she explains. To better suit those needs, consultancies have escalated efforts to make their internal career opportunities more transparent.
"The most important thing that we learned through this dot-com craze [is] that we have the opportunities in-house. The consulting firms have a variety of opportunities. But what we weren't doing was selling those to our own employees," said KPMG's director of recruiting, Sean Huurman. He pointed out that not unlike Booz, Bain, CGEY, and a roster of other consulting firms, KPMG is now aggressively leveraging the Web to make its career opportunities transparent within the firm.
Huurman continued: "If we were some of these other industries, including high-tech companies, I'd be more worried. Because they have single slots, where we have multiple opportunities for a single individual."

Shortening the Path to Partner at Booz

More than helping to showcase internal and external career opportunities, the Web at certain firms has become part of a greater effort to streamline the path to partner — a path which, if shortened, could ultimately result in more partners. But more partners means more "revenue producers," who could quickly expand a firm's fortunes.
Back at Booz, while a Web-based staffing application is programmed to prioritize career development needs over client needs, a second application dubbed "Career Development Passport" now helps consultants assess their own career development needs.
"The system actually helps develop professionals to be "partner-ready" as fast as possible … and we're monitoring this to see if our time-to-partner is shortened. Now, obviously this is going to take some years for us to measure, but clearly this is how we'll grow," explains Booz's Aguirre, who notes that the firm now estimates it's able to offer consultants their first-choice assignment 40 percent of the time without adversely impacting client satisfaction. 

After career development needs and client needs, the next heavily weighted criteria within Booz's staffing strategy are the work/life concerns of individual consultants. Nowhere, perhaps, is the new solution's impact more visible. Twelve months after Booz consultants began entering their work/life concerns into the system, their numbers working locally have grown from one third of the firm's overall consulting workforce to two thirds, according to Aguirre.
"Before we had put the system in place, we'd sell a big piece of business to a Los Angeles-based media company and staff the job from New York, even though we had some very qualified associates in L.A. and San Francisco. But because all the partners happen to choose to live in New York, they didn't know about these people," says Aguirre,  who believes that the firm's greater emphasis on the work/life travel concerns of its people is responsible for the most visible changes to firm's staffing strategies.

Making Career Opportunities Transparent

"I think that we as a profession have matured tremendously in a short period of time," said Ken Tress, vice president of human resources for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "The dot-coms and the labor shortage have made us better employers…" Together, they forced us to reinvent ourselves, and put pressure on us as employers to begin offering the opportunities and the choices for people who don't want to be managed in the traditional fashion of a standard career-pathing program — because they can go anywhere. …"

As consultancies gear up for the Talent Wars' next big battle, Tress's optimism is shared by most of CGEY's rivals, who are now busy altering their staffing strategies by making their menu of career opportunities far more accessible.
Having already completed a number of strategy-related projects in both commercial and government sectors, Booz's Neibel says that technology implementation experience is now what he's after. This month, using the firm's staffing tool, he plans to self-nominate himself for one of the firm's global e-business implementation projects. For him, consulting is now the profession where opportunities and consultants both do the knocking.

Sidebar: PowerPoints:

• As more firms work to make their staffing strategies more attuned to the individual career development needs of their consultants, consulting firms are reprioritizing how they answer the needs of their people and clients.

• As the Web establishes a new and efficient market for experienced talent, consultancies are working to make their own career opportunities more visible and accessible to their people.

• More than helping to showcase internal and external career opportunities, the Web at certain firms has become part of a greater effort to streamline the path to partner — a path which, if shortened, could ultimately result in more partners.