The firm has branded itself as a talent management consultancy (see website)
The firm is a search firm that has broadened its product portfolio with a series of acquisitions including PDI, Global Novations, Lominger and FutureStep among others.
The vast majority of the Leadership and Talent Consulting practice revenue is driven by product related sales - mostly assessment (PDI) competency related (Lominger) and training (Global Novations)
The professionals coming from these acquired companies are highly educated and talented. They are equally limited in their experience with broader talent consulting let alone organization development experience or qualifications.
The marketing department is way out ahead of the groups actual capability touting the firm as the new kid in town
The leaders in charge of building a broader capability come from these product based companies as well and have not built a practice of this scale so it's really a mess
They are very good at recruiting you in emphasizing the opp to build the practice but you should ask about the following:
Governance - the CFO controls the practice and demonstrates a lack of experience building a consultancy. Remember that's in addition to being a public company.
Partnership - being a partner is a title only. The partners do not work together to build the practice, develop its people or define the practice's future.
Access to opportunities - even if you bring relationships you cannot avoid working with the mostly narrowly experienced people from the acquired organizations they have assigned as industry or client leads. These people tend to sell what they are familiar with and be threatened by new people with broader capability. There are few exceptions to this and considering all the search relationships very little green field to build a book of business. The search partner thing is what you would expect - highly variable 're understanding talent and preparing for a meeting with their clients can be a time consuming nightmare.
Sales target - Principles and Partners have a sales target of up to 2M/year which at first seems easy until you realize there is absolutely no leverage - few to no consultants to help unless you are selling products where you sell, others deliver and yet another group manages the project. They have lifted and installed the model from PDI. So you need to sell 2M per year, if so make a maybe 100k bonus on top of your 240k base and remember you deliver most of the work. If you are a product pusher and that turns your crank you are in much better shape. The system forces you to sell product - assessments, competency models, training rograms - you get the drill (2014 bonuses paid in June 2014 far below 100k target. I sold 1.8, delivered 90 percent of the work and got 30k and a promotion - huh?)
Integrity is the most significant issue - the firm literally does not use its own tools. There is no formal onboarding, almost all training is overview of product and how to sell it, hierarchal performance management, no assessment of leaders ( hardest one to stomach as they are literally impacting the careers of 1000s of professionals as they report assessment results to executives, CEOs and Board. Really concerning)
If you are considering this firm because of its potential that makes sense. If you think you can join as a new person and affect change against these practices brought by the acquired organizations and entrenched by the appointment of them at every point of market access and leadership - your mom is right, you really are amazing.
