If you're a corporate leader eager to hire young, talented strategy analysts from the world's top strategy consulting firms, I have some bad news for you. Luring them will be harder now than it has been in at least a decade. Supply and demand are seriously misaligned, and, as with so many other things, the recession is to blame.
The problem began in 2009, when the economy was in horrific shape and equity markets were frozen. The elite consulting firms--McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Booz & Co. and others--were selling far fewer growth-strategy consulting projects than before, so they needed fewer recruits fresh out of college than in previous years to handle the reduced workload.
Today money is flowing again, the economy is looking up, and suddenly the consulting firms don't have enough staff to keep pace with the demand for their services. In fact, the only constraint on their growth right now is a shortage of talent. The problem: Those consultants from the class of 2009, who typically commit to two to three years of work out of college, now have an unprecedented number of new job opportunities at their disposal. Their firms' solution: Retain them with unprecedented money and perks.
In normal times, a strategy analyst with two years of experience at a top-tier consulting firm would need to go back to school for an M.B.A. degree before he or she could rejoin a firm for a six-figure salary. Now the companies are promoting those same people into more advanced roles without the M.B.A. requirement--and bumping up their salaries in some cases all the way from $85,000 to $135,000. They are offering them transfers to offices of their choice around the world and six-month leaves, complete with benefits and stipends, to work for nonprofits or on other ventures. Meanwhile, top universities are hotly pursuing the same strategy analysts for their M.B.A. programs. And private-equity firms are dangling staggering compensation packages that can range up to $250,000 or $300,000 a year.
What is a corporation with more limited resources but a strong need for top-level talent to do in such a situation? Now we get to the good news. Money isn't everything for these up-and-coming strategists. In fact, on a list of their top five concerns, it's at the bottom.
What these rising superstars want more the anything is a chance to make a difference. They crave work that really matters, that's critical to the overall success of an organization. They want roles in which their expertise will significantly affect the top and bottom lines. So, if you're at a business looking to recruit these young hotshots, the most critical thing you can do is design jobs that give them a chance to make a mark the minute they walk in the door. They may be only 24 years old, but they often possess confidence and skills beyond their years.
That brings us to a second important trait they are seeking in corporate America: exposure at the highest levels of an organization. Rising strategists, to paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, very much want to be in the arena. They are eager to get in front of important people and succeed or fail in their presence. So it's not only the design of a job and its connection to the financials that they evaluate. They also look to be high enough on the food chain to get into executive board rooms, where they can make names for themselves, hone their skills and find strong mentors.
A third key thing corporations need to know about these strategy analysts: They aspire to be more than analysts. In the first couple of years of their careers, during their stints at consulting firms, they have spent 80% of their time preparing Excel and PowerPoint reports. They have become very comfortable with that kind of work, but being a desk jockey is no longer enough for them. Now they want roles in which they can frame larger strategic issues, design analyses and work cross-functionally to complete them, helping define and execute a broad strategy that goes well beyond just crunching numbers. Here again, corporations need to give young talent more responsibility and opportunities than they might ordinarily feel comfortable offering.
The fourth step in recruiting strategists will likely make some corporations even more uneasy. About 90% of them want to earn an M.B.A. They don't expect their employers to pay for it, but they do want time to study for the GMAT exam, and they want compelling written recommendations from bosses, and leadership opportunities that provide fodder for top-notch personal essays. What does all this mean for a business? Most likely that it will get two highly productive years out of these analysts before they leave for business school. It's important to understand that they may not be around for long, but that you'll still get more than your money's worth out of them while they are.
And that bring us to the fifth and final factor in recruiting star strategists: compensation. They know that a move to corporate America won't bring them the immediate payoff they'd get by climbing the ladder at a consulting firm or jumping to private equity. And they're OK with that, because they also know that the travel and hours in both those industries are brutal. Still, they expect a corporate job to pay well, considerably more than hiring managers sometimes expect. I've often worked with a big company that wanted to bring in a first-rate strategy analyst from McKinsey but budgeted only, say, $60,000. That won't get it done. These analysts are looking for $80,000 to $90,000 in base salary with bonuses that bump them to $100,000--and plenty of companies are willing to ante up.
Even with the supply of top-tier strategy analysts tighter than it's been in years, you can still land them in corporate America. Success requires a multi-pronged approach and aggressiveness. Most of all, it calls for embracing the culture of consulting firms, which recruit the best talent they can find but, in an improving job market that fuels constant churn, never get too attached to it.
Chad Oakley is the president of Charles Aris, Inc., a multinational executive search firm based in Greensboro, N.C. A former consultant with Bain & Company and Deloitte Consulting, he holds an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
Thanks to Chad Oakley / Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/2011/05/23/keys-to-landing-a-strategy-superstar.html?partner=alerts
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