Accenture’s War for Talent in India

HRM CASE ANALYSIS

Section D
Group 10

GAURAV SAINI 2011IPM031

PRIYANKA BHAGAT 2014PGP273
P. KARTHIK 2014PGP240
SIDHARTHMAHAJAN 2014PGP363
SOUMYADEEP CHAKRABORTY 2014PGP377
VAIDA HEMACHANDAR 2014PGP410
VATSALA ARORA 2011IPM118
Contents
Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 3
Problem Statement............................................................................................................................................ 4
Analysis .............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Alternatives ........................................................................................................................................................ 7
Recommendation............................................................................................................................................... 8
Implementation ................................................................................................................................................. 9

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Executive Summary

Accenture, with more than 180,000 employees and operations in 49 countries, generated 19.7 billion USD in
revenue with a market capitalization of 26.4 billion USD. Accenture diversified its offering in India from
consulting to IT services and BPO services since 2001. It had followed several HR practices to meet its ambitious
human resources requirements. It has moved from the decentralized HR structure to centralized structure to
achieve the operational effectiveness. They have extremely innovative in their human resources practices. They
have standardized the process of hiring of IT professionals. They have extremely successful in maintaining growth
without compromising qualities in these services. They have developed frameworks like PCMM (people
capability maturity model) to evolve the HR and overall business practices. The entire structure has been
developed keeping the people in the centre.

However, Accenture wanted to refocus on their consulting business and wanted to develop a global talent and
innovation network of consultants in India. It demanded hiring of 2000 consultant in one year. Consulting as a
job is extremely different in nature when compared to the IT jobs. Consultant need higher industry and domain
expertise compared to IT. Moreover, roles demanded not only industry specialists but also PhDs in economics,
statistics, social sciences etc. Since Accenture does not have experience of hiring in such high number of
consultants, it challenged the existing practices.

The report deals with the nuances of the existing HR and recruitment model of Accenture. It does a comparative
analysis of the skills of a consultant and an IT professional. It also investigates the similarities between the existing
system and that required for hiring consultants. It can be observed that some of the existing practices can be
directly incorporated while hiring the consultants. The report also offers alternatives to the existing one like
partnering with third party recruiters, developing standardized processes etc to cater the existing problem. Finally
it talks about the implementation plan so that one can roll out the plan.

Introduction

Since 2001, Accenture has primarily hired IT and BPO professionals. It is evident from that fact that it had 37000
employee strong IT arm. The number is extremely high considering it only started operation in 2001. Thus people
start recognizing Accenture India as an IT focused wing of Accenture.

In 2006, Accenture has again started focusing on its management consulting arm. There are trying to develop a
global talent and innovation network (GTIN) that will perform roles across functions, including customer
relationship management, finance and performance management etc. Thus they needed to hire 2000 management
consultant in a span of year. Consulting required specialized skills and industry expertise. Consulting demands
higher knowledge capital compared IT or other businesses. Thus people with PhDs in economics, mathematics,
statistics and social sciences need to be recruited.

Initially, the HR team was decentralized and was aligned to respective businesses i.e. management consulting, IT
and BPO. But when Accenture India worked with Accenture global HR it restructured its HR service delivery
model into three key components. The new HR service delivery model helped in controlling cost, growing head
counts and scale of deliverables in India. Centralized service increased the integration of HR processes and
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eliminated duplication. HR performance was measured through three sets of key metrics- recruiting, effectiveness
of core HR functions and employee engagement. These three elements gave positive impact on overall business;
as a result Accenture India was recorded as the highest engagement employer across any Accenture geographic
unit worldwide and scored significantly higher than the other Indian industry.

However, this hiring of 2000 management consultants pose unique set of challenges to Accenture like attracting
and finding the right candidates, scaling up the recruitment process. The scenario puts Jill Smart on the spot to
come with proper tangible solutions to solve the problem.

Problem Statement

To successfully hire 2000 management consultants in a year by attracting most diverse talent pool without
compromising on the quality?

Analysis

Accenture has already built a centralized HR structure to support the HR operations in India. Thus far they have
been extremely successful in meeting the requirement in the IT Services and BPO arms. They have risen to the
occasion and developed system that has enabled them to meet the needs. IT services structure has evolved
specially over the years and it manages 37000 employees. However, the current problem is a little different. They
need to hire 2000 management consultants in a year’s span. The number itself might not seem very daunting but
the there are a few challenges,

a) Building Accenture as a brand that is focused in management consulting. The reason is of particular
importance since it has done major hiring only in IT Services and BPO. People have started having the
perception that it is an IT focused company.
b) All the structure that has been developed like functional recruitment model are primarily developed
keeping IT in mind. These industrial hiring systems are designed primarily for IT sector, these cannot be
directly replicated for management consulting.
c) The number of hiring is not very high. However getting quality applicants for the roles might be a little
difficult.
d) As a company, Accenture was unsure of the channels to reach out to these future employees. This is
primarily because the backgrounds of these people are extremely diverse. Thus they may not use the
traditional channel that is used by the IT professionals.
e) Positioning the company attractively so that it can compete with the other competitors to get these people
on board.

Each of these problems can be addressed using different existing HR strategies of Accenture and redeveloping a
few to solve the existing problem.

The typical job description of a management consultant who would be working in the global talent and innovation
network (GTIN) is:
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 a) Solve major business problems of the clients i.e. big corporate, start ups or NGOs
b) Support the client teams with the research and analysis
c) Perform functional roles across domains spanning from customer relationship management, finance and
performance management to talent and organizational performance
d) Travel to the client site for interactions and problem solving
e) Create new revenue opportunities for the consultants in the field by using research and analytics to develop
new models and other content
f) Develop fresh ideas to expand the businesses of Accenture Consulting

Since the job requirement is not the only factor. We need to investigate the typical skill requirement for the same,
so that one can comment about the exact fit for the role,

a) Require great research and analytical skills

b) Need to be a great communicator
c) Need to have in depth knowhow of a particular industry and / PhDs in either economics, statistics, social
sciences etc
d) Openness to travel to new geographies in order to solve major client problems

The existing model is analyzed in order to adapt the model to the needs of the management consultants.

Component Recruiting Practises Good practises as per Additional need Lacked as per
Process Step recruiting guide for management recruitment
Involved consulting hire guide
Candidate  Anticipate  Mapping  Continuous  Larger pool  Relied on
Sourcing the Need business evaluation of talent size, that too generic
 Specify the demand pool of industry competency
Job  Planning  Analysis of future specialists model
 Develop  Optimize supply needs  Realistic  Limited pool
the Pool through various  Succession plan articulation  Looked for
recruitment  Sills requirement of talent only external
channels for organisation needs candidates
 Initial Screening  Defined demand of  Brand appeal  No large pool
 Resume job to of candidates
validation  Specified relevant interviewers
 Hiring profiles skills
o Skill-set  Identified team the
o Responsibility candidate need to
level work with
o Location of  Tapped external
work partners
 Sourcing team
evaluation:
o Deadline
o Cost
o Conversion
rate metrics
Candidate  Assess the  Engaged with  Throughout  Focus on  Using a
Management candidate candidate engagement with highly preset
the candidate sophisticated
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  Close the throughout the  Interviewer skill set evaluation
Deal process Feedback (functional criteria
 Assessment on involvement skills)  Included too
present  Not swayed by  More many steps
evaluation extraneous factors integrity into  Not included
criteria  Not looked hiring process top
 Three endlessly  Enriched stakeholders
interviews:  Not used wrong process in candidate
o HR interviewers  Few tweaks assessment
o Technical  Reference checks would not be  Failed to
o Final  Structured enough involve C-
 Additional steps interviews level in
on case basis  Well trained, high discussions
calibre interviewers  Not ensured
 Showed compensatio
commitment to n is fair to
candidate’s success other
 Demonstrated employees
active support for
candidate’s interest
 Involved hiring
manager
personally, and not
only the HR
On-boarding  Integrate  Smooth  Ensured selected  No lead time  Not using
the New transition till candidate did not for training veteran top
Comer candidate came continue  To be treated performers
on board prospecting for as ‘plug and as mentors
 Building a alternative play’ 
deeper employers.  More cross
connection with  Structured on- cultural
the candidate board process teaming
 Buddy Program  Multiple touch
 Gave point with the
information to candidate like
help them phone, e-mail,
become buddy program
productive  Made sure new
 Background comer checked
checks of regularly with
candidates mentor and HR
 Provided adequate
support and
monitoring
 Not treated new
hire as a ‘plug and
play’

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 Capabilities  Applied  Developed  Develop  Not
technology to software dashboard different removing
the recruitment  Innovated process evaluation bad hires
process improvements criteria of within the
 Evaluation  Broke down the candidate first year
metrics: hiring process managers  Not
o Demand  Evaluation of  Focus on identified
fulfilment candidate efficiency and
o Quality of the managers more than rewarded
person hired  Met the changing speed in excellent
o Cost per need of growing recruiting interviewers
person hired business  Need  Not holding
o Delivery cycle  Offered efficiency accurate assessors
time and speed with forecasting accountable
o People hired flexibility for different for the
monthly per  Not hanging on to skill sets quality of
recruiter bad hires their
o Candidate  Regularly reviewed evaluations
surveys scores recruitment
practises

The realization of a robust process maturity framework for internal HR processes to ensure better experience to
employees and clients, Accenture adopted the PCMM model. The people capability maturity model’s main
objectives were to enhance human capital capabilities so as to influence business outcome. This resulted in a
culture of continuous improvement within the workgroup, the unit and the organization. PCMM showed positive
impact on business as well as changed the evaluation criteria for tracking the success of a business. It is easy to
implement in the place where every employee work together or in a location that operates with consistency every
day but it will be quite challenging for the employees who move around to different locations such as in
management consulting. However in this case, the challenge is reduced as GTIN does not demand much travel.

Alternatives

In their quest to hire 2000 management consultant Accenture can consider the following options

a) Developing their existing recruitment model to hire management consulting and taking help from internal
network of Accenture

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 As the required skill sets of management consultants is entirely different from earlier talent pool.
Accenture needs to modify their existing model which is based on supply chain model. However, it may
not have to device a totally new strategy. Accenture can modify the IT strategy to fit the needs of the
consulting hiring. As Accenture is a global organization present in 89 countries, it can definitely reach out
to its global counterparts to understand the problem better. Moreover, Accenture India can follow the best
practices followed by them.
Since the recruitment period is not very long. They need to start the process at the soonest. This process
might turn out to be costly but it will help Accenture India in developing capability which will be useful
for them in future. Thus they need to extract the practices that are applicable to the consulting and apply
them accordingly. The structure might not change at all. The execution might change a little.

b) Developing/following the standard procedure which is used by other management consulting firms

This option might speed up the process of hiring of management consultants which is critical for Accenture
to meet. But totally following the competitors might not at all be apt for Accenture. As it has always been
a people focused company; thus blindly following the competitors might not be sustainable one.
Moreover, the cultural aspect will be totally ignored in that case.

c) Standardized hiring process similar to IT

Standardization of hiring management consultant is extremely difficult to achieve. As the skill possessed
by the consultants differ in greatly. Unlike IT that deals primarily with functional skills, consulting
demands skills of differ dimension. Moreover it also demands higher intellectual capital. Thus
standardizing the entire process might not be achievable. However some of hiring processes such as
interviews (case interviews) can be standardized.

d) Outsourcing entire process to third party talent management consulting

This option can be chosen under a conservative approach if Accenture feels uncomfortable about scaling
up their hiring procedure for 2000 management consultant within a span of 1 year. This method will
require high commitment from Accenture and third party for correct hiring, which may create hurdles for
the company by increasing the time involved in coordinating among them.

Recommendation

On analyzing the pros and cons of the above alternatives we recommend that Accenture should go with the first
option. It is the best alternative available to them and they can also leverage their existing strengths in order to
achieve their target. They are already level 5 PCMM certified which will be useful while modifying their existing
recruitment procedure. Apart from this it can also take help from its internal network which will bring a huge
amount of value addition in the process. Developing in house capability of recruitment will also increase the
confidence of various clients of Accenture.
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In addition to this, they can take help of external recruitment agencies for scouting and attracting the best talent
pool for the role. Because achieving all at once including the scale might be extremely difficult to achieve. Once
the process is robustly developed they can use the same for future hiring.

Implementation

At Accenture one of the first step should be to get away with their image of “IT & BPO off shoring company”,
Accenture strategy is one of the coveted firms in the consulting domain they should properly communicate this
message. Vehicles used for this would be entirely different from what they used for IT and BPO recruitment.
They should focus on selling Accenture as a brand and consulting domain job.

Next major steps should be the search of right interviewers who can identify and recommend the potential
candidates. Accenture can approach its external talent pool or its clients for this purpose. After this they can target
best B- School in the country namely IIM’s and few others who possess the best brains of the country. Apart from
this it should also focus on attitude, relevant skills and industry work experience. They might also use employees
to spread positive word of mouth regarding the company.

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