The War for Talent: Do you need capability, extra capacity, or both? - 2021 Consulting Trends

At Movemeon, we are privileged enough to sit at the intersection of disruption in the consulting industry: Speaking with senior leaders in consulting firms of all sizes, as well as with thousands of ex and current consultants themselves. Over the course of Q4, we will share some of our insights and offer our view on some of the major trends shaping the industry. This week, we're taking a look at the current War for Talent and how 2021 was the perfect storm for consulting.

Request your free copy of 2021 Work & Pay Report, Understanding the Impact of Covid, here.

The war for talent in consulting is nothing new: In the last year alone, our work in the consulting space grew from 17% to over 40%.

Consulting demand has always been predicated on the need for additional capacity or capability. We hear time and again from consulting clients of all sizes that they simply don’t have enough people to staff their pipeline of work. We specialise in placing people with strategy consulting backgrounds. And sometimes clients want just that: a great strategist who can take a problem and figure out how to fix it, quickly.

But the pandemic has heightened the need to access expertise in high-growth areas such as supply chain, digital strategy and data analytics and we see this reflected in increasingly specific requirements from clients for very exact capabilities.

So what can you do when you’re faced with pressure on both these fronts and need to augment both capacity within your team, as well as plug capability gaps? Here are our top three tips:  

1. Think flexibly about your current workforce: If you’re lacking critical expertise or capabilities, can these be taught and your employees upsilled quickly? Not only can this plug any gaps but gives employees a clear progression path and will likely support retention
2. Consider freelance support: many consulting firms are putting in place virtual ‘benches’ to augment permanent teams from both a capacity and capability perspective. At Movemeon we’ve helped many firms put these in place - you can read about it here
3. Hire ahead of the curve: Don’t wait until you really need people. If the pipeline of work is there, the pipeline of talent needs to be there too. We don’t just support clients making specific placements. We can work with you to keep a talent pipeline open and allow access to a steady stream of exceptional candidates.

Whether you simply need more people, experts, or both, we can help. Get in touch with us here, we have offices in Europe (UK), APAC, and soon the US!

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