Ismail Amla, North American CEO, says firm expects to grow between 30 and 70 percent
Global business and technology consulting firm Capco has been on a roll. The firm has grown from 100 consultants in 2009 to about 1,000 today. And they aren't slowing down. North America CEO Ismail Amla says he expects growth in 2014 alone to be between 30 and 70 percent. To keep up this blistering momentum, Capco has launched a recruiting drive across all business domains from New York to Chicago to Washington to Toronto. Known for its strong company culture, Amla says personality and entrepreneurial spirit weighs heavily into their image of an ideal recruit. He recently sat down with Consulting to discuss how recruiting, hiring and retaining top talent factors into the firm's overall plans.
Consulting: What is Capco looking for in a recruit?
Amla: We generally get two categories of recruits; one is from industry and has that deep brand focus. Probably 60 to 70 percent of our recruits are from industry, people who have been practitioners either in technology or financial services. The rest of our recruits are from consulting. Generally we find consultants working in the tier-1 consultancies who are looking to still do great work with great clients but are looking for a different culture to work in. We are hiring at all levels right from partner on through to associates, and we are hiring form all schools, technology and the art schools.
Consulting: How are you finding the quality of the talent pool overall?
Amla: Excellent, actually. Getting access to it in the time we need is a challenge. As long as we are targeting people who are performing above average or exceeding expectations, we will attract the right sort of talent. Then at the more junior levels we're finding it's a combination, there's a lot of raw talent out there. The additional filter we apply to that is around personality and the outlook people are taking regarding what sort of career they want. People who are more entrepreneurial, who are looking to engineer change at whatever level they may be at in their career, are the ones that will be more successful at Capco.
Consulting: What are some of the differentiators about Capco that make it attractive for recruits?
Amla: Well I guess if you compared it to Maslow's hierarchy of needs at least, we need to be giving compensation models, which are at least as attractive as they can get in industry or with competitors. We think we not only do that, but do a level of profit share and bonuses at all levels of the organization you probably wouldn't find in our competition. Everybody in that organization gets the benefit of Capco's success no matter what level you're at. Another differentiator is that Capco is almost an inverted pyramid.
We expect the people on the front lines to define our company's culture. We do a lot of crowdsourcing around corporate strategy and the crowd in this case is our employee workforce. The ability to get involved in defining what a company will look like, what its culture is, those are some of the things I think make a difference over our competitors in the market.
Consulting: What are clients demanding?
Amla: In the last six months we have had three large, global, tier-1 financial services organizations who have hired us on five-year engagements, each with over 100 people. The competition was long, it was hard, and it was against all our tier-1 competitors you'd expect. In the final analysis when we'd been awarded the work, in the top 3 reasons why they had given the work the first reason always seems to be culture, and the fact that we have a set of people who feel empowered to drive change and bring different DNA to the client organization.
As a result of the culture we're creating, it seems to be something the client has come to ask for. Something different from what they've had historically. Something that will engineer and push change in their own organization. Pretty much every organization we're talking to is going through massive transformation.
Consulting: What are some of the biggest areas of transformation clients are grappling with?
Amla: The first would be cost transformation. All the financial services organizations are seeing that returns are not what they were 10 years ago. Revenues are not what they were, so cost needs to be transformed in a radical way. We're getting involved in helping them think through how they do that cost transformation but also providing ways through outsourcing and chainsourcing and smartsourcing ways they can actually get structural change in their cost base.
Another would be digital. Digital and mobile have been around forever in the wider world, but in financial services the ability to get access to all the services through all the devices is just taking off. There's a huge focus on driving the organization to that platform and everything that goes with it.
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