1. Using the internet Internet for your consulting firm’s tto Attract Talent needs
About the author
Gautam Ghosh is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of the Imagence Partners, a niche
HR, OD and Social Media consulting firm based at Hyderabad, India. His blog can be found at
http://gauteg.blogspot.com and his Linkedin.com profile is http://www.linkedin.com/in/gautam
Currently in India there is a severe talent shortage going on for consulting talent. This shortage applies
not justwell beyond the substantial IT consulting area where IBM, HP, Capgemini, EDS, CSC, as well
as Indian IT firms like Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Satyam are planning to hire tens of thousands of
developers and analysts in 2007.
Even the sStrategic consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, and the Consulting practice of Deloitte &
Touche are all setting up offices in India to support the work of their client facing groups in the US and
other western countries. Even HR and Outsourcing firms like ADP and Hewitt are using India as a base
to provide data analysis and client solutions. Coupled with the fact that even investment banking firms
like UBS, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehmann Brothers have backend centres in India, one
gets to see how critical this talent crunch will be.
There are two challenges a consulting firm faces when trying to recruit and attract talent in such a
market. One is to effectively target the potential candidate, and secondly second, to use their branding
to attract such candidates.
Traditionally in India employers have used three distinct approaches to hiring people:
Using the campus recruitment method at premier technology and business schools to attract entry level
employees.
Advertising in national newspapers’ careers section to reach out to active jobseekers
Using executive search firms to recruit senior consultants and practice heads.

2. However, increasingly, more and more the focus is shifting from the “active jobseeker” to the “passive
jobseeker” in the younger generation of employees. This is because of various for these reasons:
Campus recruitment is a tough place to hire consultants for India. In the top 5 business schools in India
(namely the Indian Institutes of Management and XLRI Jamshedpur) students are looking for global
opportunities.
IT services firms are ramping up their domain knowledge capabilities (in the case of Infosys for
example, by a fully owned subsidiary called Infosys Consulting) and increasingly poaching talent both
from traditional industries as well as strategy consulting firms.
Younger generation of workers get most of their news from newer social media like blogs and other
sources like Yahoo and Google news than from newspapers.
Various consulting firms are therefore turning to newer social media and using newer approaches to
reach that elusive talent. Most consultants have a profile on a business networking site for example,
like Linkedin.com . However, such consultants seldom use the real power of lLinkedin to either recruit
fresh talent or to do due diligence and a referral check on a potential consultant for their firm.
Consultant recruiting groups in major consultancies are also slow to use the power of search engine
marketing to reach potential candidates. In India, for example, Accenture Careers is the rare example of
such an advertiser according to the Pinstorm –IAMAI report on search engine marketing.
Take a look at the following two graphs. The first one is the estimated expense of search engine
marketing by the highest spenders in the jobs section in India. Apart from Accenture, all the other
advertisers are job sites. However, the success of Accenture’s click-through is apparent in the second
graph. That, underscores underscoreing the fact that consulting firm’s own sites are much more
successful than a third third-party recruiting or job site to get interested candidates to click and apply.
To Consulting firms can make the candidate experience even better is to use other social media like
blogs of employees to communicate the experience of the workplace. One example of such an approach
is Deloitte Canada’s blogs (http://www.deloitteblogs.ca ) on their the company’s career site.

3. How would you rate your firm’s career sites? Would a potential candidate have to jump through hoops
to get to know more about your firm, your culture and the career path he or she has tomust go through?
If you had to apply to your firm again today would you do it based on your career site? What other
resources would you suggest to your HR and IT groups that would help a potential job seeker?
Graph : Accenture’s Success from Search Engine marketing
This is very well written, and the changes are mostly a matter of CN style.
Two suggestions: Could you add specific analysis of Accenture’s Careers Web site that differentiates it
from its competitors (as tips that other consultants can use).
I understand (but know nothing about specifics) that there are ways to use key words that are more
attractive to search engines – was this a part of your analysis? If so could you include it?
Also, if you’re selling your research report? If so, please include relevant info to go with your bio.
Thanks so much for your very quick turnaround. I’m excited about using the article in the February
issue.

5. Source: IAMAI-Pinstorm report on Search Engine Marketing in India, 2006.This report can be
downloaded free from the site http://www.pinstorm.com/iamai_report.php
Analysis of Accenture’s Search engine marketing
It is interesting to note that Accenture is using keyword searches for “McKinsey Jobs”on Google’s
India site to advertise it’s own website. Take a look at the following diagram .
This shows that Accenture is using highly targeted marketing for people who are searching for jobs
with the competition. However similar searches for keywords like “BCG Jobs”, “Bain Jobs”, “AT
Kearney Jobs”, “IBM Jobs” draws no such advertisements. My suggestion would be to also buy
keywords that are used by people not really looking for a job. For example if one is looking for
financial consultants, buying keywords like “cash flow analysis”, or “financial modeling” would be a
good way to advertise “Jobs in Financial Consulting” at your firm.
Coming to the actual careers site itself Accenture does a much better job than McKinsey. The search
for “McKinsey Careers India” throws up the global careers page for McKinsey
(http://www.mckinsey.com/aboutus/careers/) and might confuse the jobseeker who wants to apply
specifically in a territory. This information might be given later in another page, but if you targeting the
“passive jobseeker” that is a wrong strategy. Accenture by contrast takes one to the India careers page
(an analysis is given below)

6. Where Accenture errs is to provide a good landing page for the jobseeker and it’s India Careers site
(http://careers3.accenture.com/Careers/India/) needs you to click three times before one can submit a
resume. The “landing page” (the page where the person firm lands from the search engine) has to be
optimized. Right now a lot of clutter is seen on the right hand column and potential candidates are
likely to be confused about what to do then. At every additional click a firm risks losing a further
percentage of that traffic.
What is your firm doing to make the last mile easy for potential jobseekers?