Growing Your Talent Base Intelligently
Companies in other industries rely on their talent to design, make, and sell their products. In a professional services firm, talent is the product. Unfortunately, the shelves are getting bare. In 2017, 65 percent of executives turned down lucrative business opportunities because they didn’t have enough people with the necessary skills.7
Talent drives professional services, which puts tremendous pressure on human resources to hire effectively in a highly competitive marketplace. CHROs can increase the productivity of recruiting departments by deploying cloud-based HR systems that
- Capture candidate information and match to job requirements automatically
- Tap into the power of social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram8
- Enhance the recruiting experience for candidates and hiring managers with anytime, anywhere mobile access
- Help comply with fair hiring practices and other regulations around the world
By unifying and streamlining the recruiting process, cloud-based HR systems increase productivity as well as success rates. As an example, the Baloise Group uses technology to find and hire top talent in the highly competitive insurance industry:
“[Our cloud-based HR system] has given us a significant hiring advantage. We can very effectively track candidates’ backgrounds, determine which factors can encourage or discourage candidates from completing application forms, and then communicate more easily with management about potential hires—all at a tremendously reduced cost.”
—Jonas Jatsch, Baloise Group
Talent-hungry firms are changing the way they find and land candidates. The traditional recruiting process with stacks of resumes and endless rounds of interviews wastes scarce HR resources and too often fails to land the right person—or anyone at all.
Recruiters in the services industry can take a lesson from Unilever. Dissatisfied with the results from onsite recruiting at a few selected college campuses, the global consumer goods giant is experimenting with new tools based on artificial intelligence, social media, and gaming. The results of this trial approach are encouraging: its applicant pool is more diverse now, and 4 out of 5 candidates who make it to the final round receive an offer.9
Figure 4: How Unilever Uses AI in Recruiting
(Source: Wanda Thibodeaux, “Unilever Is Ditching Resumes in Favor of Algorithm-Based Sorting,” Inc., June 2017.)Screening
Testing
Evaluating
Talent acquisition is top of mind in virtually every services firm, but there’s a problem: the talent may not want to be “acquired.” Seeking both rewarding careers and enjoyable lifestyles, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals are eschewing permanent positions in favor of more flexible arrangements. Even the terminology is in flux, as HR leaders replace references to “talent acquisition” with “talent access.”
By embracing an agile workforce, firms can maintain a relatively lean permanent staff and avoid the overhead associated with full-time employees. When large projects exceed in-house resources, contract labor is available to fill the gap. Ramp-up is faster because freelancers don’t need training—by definition, they already have the right skills. Executives understand these benefits. More than 81 percent consider the use of freelancers and contractors to be very important or critical.10
There are obstacles to this approach and most of them land right in the CHRO’s lap. For starters, finding the right contractors at the right time is a challenge. Digital talent platforms such as Monster.com and LinkedIn help considerably. Enterprises that used digital talent platforms increased their productivity by 9 percent.11
As another challenge, 34 percent of respondents cited cultural fit as a roadblock to leveraging on-demand talent.12 Beyond the usual qualifications evaluation, recruiters must determine if a prospect can or will adapt to the firm’s unique style of doing business—a daunting task.
Figure 5: Importance of Freelancers, Contractors, and Subcontractors
(Source: “Three Major Trends Disrupting the Professional Services Industry,” Consultancy.uk, March 2018.)Many large firms are witnessing the retirement of senior partners and founders, the so-called “rainmakers” whose expertise and drive sparked the organization’s rise to prominence. In many cases, their younger replacements lack the needed skills and experience—a sure formula for career and organizational failure.
The CHRO must mitigate these risks by nurturing promising young talent through mentoring and coaching programs and giving “stretch” assignments to address experience gaps. Keeping the leadership pipeline filled with skilled, motivated candidates ready for promotion is another imperative.
Training can play an important role, but traditional classroom training is expensive and eats up valuable billable time. Instead, emphasize continuous development via always-on mobile platforms and innovative learning methods. Development and training managers can leverage new knowledge acquisition models such as massive open online courses and open universities to diversify training catalogs with little financial investment.14
- “Three Major Trends Disrupting the Professional Services Industry,” Consultancy.uk, March 2018.
- Jim Davis, “Six Essential Networking Sites for Social Media Recruiting,” Recruiting Daily Advisor, February 2017.
- Wanda Thibodeaux, “Unilever Is Ditching Resumes in Favor of Algorithm-Based Sorting,” Inc., June 2017.
- “Three Major Trends Disrupting the Professional Services Industry,” Consultancy.uk, March 2018.
- “Reimagining Work 2020,” Catalant, April 2018.
- Ibid.
- Catherine Lynch, “How Global Professional Services Firms Are Overcoming the Challenge of Talent Management,” Digitalist, September 2017.