Category: Company/CXO/Founder/Recruiter
How to decide if this consulting firm is the right establishment for your talent/recruitment needs
As a founder, CXO or internal recruiter, once you’ve decided that you’d seek external support for your talent needs, it is important to be thorough in how to select the right consulting form to partner with. Collaborating with an unreliable consulting firm can become an expensive and time consuming affair with no positive results as such.
Competencies that you need to look for can be broadly divided into two categories:
1. General Competencies – Typical skills and attitude that is required to be successful in the consulting industry.
2. Sector Specific Expertise – Domain knowledge and market-related insights that wold be gained by operating in a specific sector.
Within Geneal Competencies, foremost would be Customer Focus. A recruiter/service provider should exhibit the right attitude which is required to understand, analyse and deliver as per the customers’ needs. A recruiter who invests time and energy in understaing your requirements is genuinely interested in your success.
Customer Focus is usually followed by Responsiblity and Ownership. Any undertaken project should be looked at and delivered with utmost sincerity. Bringing a role to closure by taking its complete ownership is a win-win situation for both the parties. Though it is not practically possible to judge this at the onset of the conversation, but one way to evaluate would be to gather feedback from their clientele.
Agility is also a trait which should not be neglected. In this VUCA world, the ability of the consultant to think quickly and respond to the changing situation plays a significant role.
Last but not the least is Candidate Management. Developing rapport with the candidates, keeping them informed, giving them insights and to be able to sell the organization and the role actually contributes to employer branding and a positive candidate experience.
Sector Sepcific Expertise is usually ganied by operating with multiple clients in the same sector. There are some consulting firms which caters to only some specific industries or have divided their teams in different sectors and these teams are usually led by domain experts. In our experience, a consulting firm who has handled 2-3 clients in a specific sector can do justice to a significant percentage of roles in that sector. For only very niche roles, you’re required to collaborate with these sector specific firms.
Hoping that next time when you are on the lookout for a talent consulting firm, you’d be better equipped to find the right fit.
Author: Mitali