In April, Keith Bevans was appointed global head of consultant recruiting at Bain & Company. Bevans, a Chicago-based partner in the firm's Global Performance Improvement Practice, will continue to advise clients while taking on his new role serving Bain's 50 offices and their talent pipelines. He will lead the overall strategic development and implementation of the firm's consultant recruiting initiatives, identifying and hiring talented candidates from the world's top business schools. "Recruiting individuals with extraordinary talent and business insight is essential to Bain, our culture and the clients we serve," says Bevans. "A career at Bain is unlike one you will find at any other strategy consulting firm." Bevans, who joined Bain & Company in 1996, sat down recently with Consulting to discuss his new role.
Consulting: Tell me a little bit about this new role…
Bevans: The goal of the role is to make sure that we are finding the most passionate and best talent we can find on the campuses where were recruit to ensure that throughout the entire process—from meeting them to getting to know them to getting them interested in Bain to ultimately getting them to join our team—that we are doing that as best we can globally across all of our offices.
Consulting: What do you see as some of your biggest challenges in this new role?
Bevans: The biggest challenge that I'm going to try to tackle is to make sure people know Bain as best as they can and know that this is a great place to come and start a career. It feels different to work here; the types of problems we deal with; the type of executives we work with and the types of companies they represent; and more importantly, the people they'll be working alongside everyday make the experience a great experience. Getting that message out to people on such a large scale is very complicated and difficult to do but we're up to the challenge. We hope to continue to attract the type of talent we have in the past and hopefully we'll be able to continue to grow as we have in the past.
Consulting: Obviously, Bain's culture is well documented, being named our best firm to work for 10 years running. How much does culture play a role in recruiting?
Bevans: I've talked to students across the country doing recruiting during my first 17 years at the firm, before this role, and by and large they all understand and appreciate that Bain is a great culture and the people who work here are great to work with. But I think the students who are really doing their homework will realize that we are the top firm to work for. Considering the types of clients we work with, the experiences that you get here really position you for long-term career success in either the private sector, and for a lot of alumni, the public sector. That's something students are getting to know us for and are attracted to us because of that.
Consulting: Do you find students already know a lot about Bain?
Bevans: With access to resources and technology, I think students come in with a lot of knowledge and expect us to either prove or disprove what they believe they already know about Bain. We're always really excited to get onto campus and talk to students about their career goals and share our stories, as well. The more we share with them the more attracted to Bain they become. They come in very educated but they still need to kick the tires a bit and see what we're all about.
Consulting: What type of person are you looking for at Bain?
Bevans: It's not that we're looking for one type of person. There are several different types of people at Bain. What I would say is the type of person that tends to be successful at Bain are really motivated and driven. They are passionate about life, passionate about work, passionate about the community. They really fit the apprenticeship model. They come to the firm, they embrace the culture, they open up their minds and they are willing to work hard. They are excited about the opportunities before them. To the extent that we can discern that in our interview process, we do. We tend to find the best talent that way.
Consulting: Is there a particular geography you're interested in?
Bevans: We're growing in all regions of the globe, and we need to find the best talent in all regions to continue to grow. My role truly is global in nature. Obviously, we recruit a lot of people in the top business schools in the U.S., but I'm really focused on making sure we're finding the best talent globally at all of the schools where we recruit. It's certainly a broad mandate but it's necessary for us to be able to continue to grow the way we need to.
Consulting: Is it more difficult to recruit globally?
Bevans: I think we look for the same type of skill sets and the same types of people globally. I think what varies is the strategy to find those people. In the U.S., it might be more business school focused; in parts of Europe, it might be more PhD focused; in other areas it might be more industry hire focused. At the end of the day, we're looking for people who are passionate, people who have the right analytical skill set, people that have the right interpersonal skills to be successful at the job. That part doesn't change.
Consulting: What's the outlook for hiring for the rest of the year?
Bevans: What I'm most excited about is the way that we've been growing over the last several years. Because of that, this role gets to be really exciting because we are going to be hiring a lot of people in every region. That's a big challenge, but it's also a really exciting time for the firm as we continue to build on the success of the past. I won't go into the specific numbers, but I can tell you that we're very bullish on hiring, and we can't wait to get on campus in the fall to talk to as many people as we can.
Consulting: What are Bain's differentiators from your top competitors?
Bevans: What I want to make sure students understand about Bain is that we hire the most talented people, the most passionate people, the most business-oriented people. We've been doing it for 40 years. I want them to understand that when they choose Bain, they are making the absolute best first step in their post-business-school career. When I think about the people I met back when I was just starting at the firm in the mid-1990s, they are executives at Fortune 500 companies or they've started successful businesses as entrepreneurs or they're in leadership roles at non-profits. When I look at the success they've had in various roles and industries and disciplines, the only conclusion I can reach is that Bain was their first step.
Consulting: Does that message of starting a career, rather than this is a place to spend your entire career, resonate with this generation?
Bevans: One of the things I've always liked about Bain is that people here have a lot of different passions outside of work and it's an environment where we openly talk about long-term career goals and try to work them into their Bain career. There are plenty of people who have been able to scratch an itch at Bain and then build a skill set to launch another career, taking the lesson they've learned at Bain with them. But to your point directly, students that come out today are looking for different things, maybe things that have a social impact or an impact on their community. That's something that we've been doing at Bain for a long time so it's not new. If anything, people are starting to realize that Bain, while it's a great place to do corporate work, it's also a great place to go to have a social impact.
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