CLIENT: Premier strategy consulting firm

EXECUTIVES: Practice Leadership


BUSINESS UNIT: Human Capital Consulting

Executive Search Recruiting Challenge: Strategy Consulting Senior Expert of Human Capital

The Situation

Rice Cohen International partnered with a premier strategy consulting firm to help build their growing talent practice with a Senior Expert of Human Capital as a new Partner. The firm tended to develop people who were generalists or had more of a focus on Strategy. They recognized a need for outside talent with specific expertise surrounding human capital and talent management. Our client had been working with another search firm that did not specialize in the human capital space and they were getting the results they needed. It was at this point they came to Rice Cohen International knowing that our industry experience and network were unmatched.

Solution Implemented

We first partnered with our client to understand their hiring needs and the type of profile for the Partner Senior Expert of Human Capital they were looking for. After our initial talks our research team got to work producing a Search Assignment Profile and targeted company list. Due to the number of organizations the client had relationships with and was unable to recruit from the target list was much smaller than the typical 60-80 companies we compile.

Working from a very targeted company list we went on to identify each top human capital expert from consulting firms our client was able to recruit from in North America. Our executive consultants proactively reached out to every name on this list. Because this was our first time partnering with our client we scheduled a weekly call to present candidates throughout the process, in total 4 candidates were formally presented.

The Search Results

Following an initial round of interviews two of these four were ranked as ‘recommend to hire’ by the first 8 people they interviewed with. On the final interview one of the two received a ‘recommend to hire.’ Every single one of the 9 executives this individual interviewed with recommended he be hired as the new Partner, Senior Expert of Human Capital. This individual was truly our client’s ideal candidate and despite the large number of interviews an offer was extended and accepted within 70 days of the search start date.