INTRODUCTION
Talent acquisition is on the minds of most management consulting firms in the Middle East right now. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the consulting sector in so many different ways; consequently, it has never been more critical to have the best team possible in place.
However, the challenges that the pandemic has thrown at us in recent months means that for many firms, filling their talent pipeline has been a puzzle – can you relate?
Having the best consultants/team in place and a talent pipeline full of exceptional consultants waiting to fill upcoming vacancies is an ideal scenario, and yes – it is possible. If your talent acquisition strategy and talent pipeline have dropped off your radar in recent months, this guide is for you.
Sujit Nair
Managing Director – Delverve Consulting Middle East
YOUR POST-COVID BUSINESS STRATEGY
For all management consulting firms, the biggest challenge right now is adapting your business strategy to a world changed by the pandemic when many industries are still recovering, and for some industries, it will be a significant time before things start to feel ‘normal’ again.
To come back stronger, consulting firms must first rethink their strategy for a post-pandemic world. Once you have outlined your business strategy and how your business is operating now compared to before the pandemic, it is time to think about how your hiring decisions need to change to serve your business, and this is where your talent pipeline comes in.
Let’s look at what the building blocks of your talent pipeline will include, starting with the importance of your post-Covid employer brand.
THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND IN THE COVID AGE
As your business strategy for our post-Covid world takes shape, you must then think about what this means in terms of your team of consultants. The world has been changed drastically by the pandemic, and there may still be changes to come. There will be no ‘going back to normal’ – it will be about adapting to our new environment, and as a respected management consulting firm, this means a few different things
SUPPORT SYSTEMS
Most consulting firms have introduced support measures and systems to protect their teams from Covid-19. Despite all of the destruction caused by the pandemic, there are positives to be drawn. One success story of this year is how firms have stepped up and looked out for their teams.
Never before has so much thought and emphasis been put on employee physical and mental wellbeing. This has been essential for protecting teams, but it has had the rewarding effect of increasing trust between the leadership and employees, which has ultimately strengthened teams.
A FLEXIBLE APPROACH
No one could have predicted that such a devastating event would have had a positive effect on some businesses, but everywhere you look, the pandemic has strengthened some teams.
Flexibility, remote working, a focus on wellbeing, and an enhanced team spirit from surviving a crisis have strengthened employer brands across the board.
How have you supported your team throughout the Covid-19 crisis?
Reflect on the systems you put in place, the changes you made to accommodate flexibility, the way you support teams both professionally and personally – all of these are the fundamentals of your post-Covid employer brand.
Communicating this to prospective candidates is an essential part of building your talent pipeline, which we will go through later in this guide. But before that, let’s think about the kind of candidates you need to be attracting to your post-pandemic consulting firm – will they be different from what you would typically seek to attract?
Let’s find out.
NEW MANAGEMENT CONSULTING CANDIDATE PROFILES
Closely tied to your employer brand is your ideal candidate profile – an avatar – of the ‘type’ of individual you know will work well in your team.
This goes deeper than just the consulting skills they need to possess; it includes their attitude, attributes, and personality type, and it can be hard to find the perfect match. As an experienced recruiter in the Middle East consulting space, I understand how crucial it is to find employees with the right consulting skills who will also fit into your organisation. When firms get this wrong, it leads to problems such as disruptions in the team, low morale and then ultimately having to re-hire for the same position, sometimes over and over.
When you come to make your next hires, first you must decide precisely what you are looking for – both the hard and soft skills and attributes and attitude. And now there is the added Covid dimension, too. Hiring in a post-pandemic world means thinking about what skills your employees will need for the challenges that lie ahead.
Some of the themes that we have seen firms increasingly look for include -
Digital and technical skills for an increasingly digital world
Cognitive skills to be able to navigate a challenging working landscape
Emotional intelligence, which will mean the ability to stay positive, to see past challenges and to support colleagues during difficult times
Adaptability and flexibility – and someone who approaches every task and situation with an open mind
Additionally, many consulting firms have changed their model recently – are you providing new or different services? If you know that you plan to introduce new areas or markets into your business, employing the talent with the best possible skills to allow your business to grow is essential.
Once you have your candidate profiles in place, it’s time to start building your talent pipeline – let’s look at how.
Building Your Pipeline
This section will look at the different elements you should consider and the strategies to build your post-Covid talent pipeline.
Communicating Your Value
When a prospective employee looks you up online – what do they find? An out of date website, no reviews and social media profiles that are only updated sporadically? Put yourself in a candidate’s position and think about how you would feel about wanting to come and work for a company that you can barely find any information about.
Candidates need to be able to visualise themselves working for your firm to push them to reach out to you and you can do this by having an excellent brand profile across various digital channels. Update your social media regularly, and not just with brand-promoting messages. The relationship between you and potential candidates needs to be mutually beneficial – share content and articles that they will find both engaging and valuable.
A Focus on Health and Safety
Health and safety are at the forefront of everyone’s minds right now, and candidates will not apply to places where they feel it might jeopardise their health. Keep your website up to date with a section about careers and include an update on your website and social media to show how you are handling the ongoing Covid crisis.
Social Proof
A crucial part of building your talent pipeline is your employee advocacy strategy and other social proof.
Do you have a section on your website dedicated to customer or client testimonials, reviews or employee advocacy?
In the age of online reviews and even more so since Covid struck, candidates want to know that you are a transparent employer whom they can trust. Employer review websites are on the rise – what does your reputation say about you? Are you a responsive employer which candidates can reach easily? Having a responsive H.R. team in place to build candidate relationships is a must for a successful talent pipeline.
Once you have all these elements in place to attract great candidates, your recruitment process will now work to secure your talent pipeline.
So next, let’s look at how your recruitment process can strengthen your talent pipeline.
YOUR RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Your recruitment process typically forms the central part of your talent pipeline, as this is where you get to communicate directly with the candidates that will end up joining your team either now or in the future. This generally happens with a specialist consulting recruiting partner like Delverve Consulting, skilled at building talent pipelines for our clients.
The Job Description
Many firms re-use the same job descriptions, or in some cases, there isn’t a job description at all, but this is not advised in standard times, let alone in your post-pandemic talent acquisition strategy. Think about what you want to communicate to candidates right now and what you can offer them.
Demonstrate your adaptability and agility as a leader, highlight a focus on training and most importantly – provide clarity over the role. In our post-pandemic world, many roles are changing, and management consulting roles that have historically been the same for many years might now have added extra dimensions.
Will your consulting team need to have additional digital skills?
Are you looking for consultants to actively focus on business development to grow your company or expand into a new niche?
Are you looking for consultants who are generalists instead of sector specialists ( or vice versa)?
Think about what your ideal candidate profile will now need to look like – they might be very different from what you were looking for this time two years ago.
THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
Next, it’s time for your post-pandemic interview process, which for many organisations now includes video interview stages.
Having a robust video interview process will show candidates that you are an employer who is up to date with technology, able to provide flexible and remote working arrangements and is proactive. It also allows you to screen a higher number of candidates with a minimum amount of disruption. It shows candidates that you are serious about health and safety, and it gives you extra insight into the candidate and their suitability for the role in question.
Video interviews are not a replacement for in-person interviews, but they will allow you to make more informed hiring decisions.
CANDIDATE AFTERCARE
This is one of the most crucial parts of your talent pipeline and gets overlooked most often. The best candidate for any role can often be the one you are already in contact with, someone who has been following your company for a while, is aware of your brand and ethos, and has a genuine interest in your business.
As a specialist management consulting recruitment company, we often have candidates approach us because they want to work with a specific company. But all too often, candidates who apply for roles in your company and are not successful are left to distance themselves and become detached from your pipeline, despite being precious candidates.
It is more important than ever to keep in contact with unsuccessful candidates; you never know when you will need that great Healthcare, Transport or Financial Services Consultant.
Use the following strategies to keep great candidates in your talent pipeline -
Use content to keep them engaged – if candidates follow you on social media, sharing valuable industry content to help their career will position your company not just as a potential employer but also as an industry leader who can help them develop their careers.
Keep a priority list of candidates – for candidates who very narrowly miss out on roles, keep in contact with these more frequently. LinkedIn is a great way to stay in contact both professionally but with a human touch too. Like and share their content, send messages and encourage communication and collaboration within your management consulting community to keep your talent pipeline engaged.
Keep in contact regularly – time is of the essence in our post-Covid world, and things in the management consulting sector seem to be happening at an accelerated pace. Don’t leave it months between sending emails, and you can keep it casual – checking in to see how their job hunt is going or to see if they’ve decided to stay in their current role will build trust, and candidates will appreciate this.
There is a lot to consider when building your talent pipeline, and for some firms who have gone through significant changes over the past few months, creating a talent pipeline will mean starting from scratch – no easy feat.
Finally, let’s look at why working with a specialist management consulting recruiter is the fastest and easiest way to build a talent pipeline now.
Working with a Recruiter to Build Your Talent Pipeline
Working with a dedicated management consulting recruiter is still the easiest and fastest way to build a talent pipeline, as we can act as an intermediary between you and the talent you want. Many stages outlined in this guide get overlooked by employers, and the main reason for this is time.
Over the past few months, as Management Consulting firms adapted to the challenges presented by Covid, many significantly reduced the amount of time they spent on recruitment and building their talent pipelines; some stopped altogether
Of course, it is understandable that during times of crisis, consulting firms will focus on the day-to-day running of the business, but taking your mind off your talent acquisition strategy doesn’t mean that it goes away. Consulting firms still need to focus on the growth of their organisation and the strength of their team, even during the pandemic. In fact, a pandemic is a time when there needs to be more of a focus than ever on the talent within your team.
Despite being otherwise excellent employers, this gives candidates a negative impression of certain companies simply because they haven’t had the time to nurture relationships with them and leaving the trail to go cold.
When you work with a dedicated management consulting recruiter to build your talent pipeline, we will be able to provide the following -
We will work with your company to create a recruitment plan according to your business strategy – not just for the projects you have in place, but for unexpected vacancies too. There is no better source when you need talent in a fast-changing environment than a specialist consulting recruiter.
We will help you design and build roles/ job descriptions for your organisation and help narrow down exactly what you need using our consulting recruitment expertise and candidate knowledge.
We will create candidate profiles to match your roles so you are clear on what you are looking for.
We will source the talent to match both the role and the candidate specification for – no more wondering who will apply to your roles and if they will be suitable.
We dedicate time each week to keeping in contact with potential candidates and building a relationship that works behind the scenes to ensure you not only have the right talent in the right roles now when it is most critical, but also to fill future vacancies seamlessly.
No consulting firm wants to think about their top talent leaving, especially now during the pandemic, but it is something that needs to be planned and accounted for. Employers who fail to build a robust talent pipeline will struggle to attract and retain top talent during what is the most business-critical period most of us will go through in our lifetimes.
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