Chief Operating Officer

The Hiring Challenge in Advisory and Consulting Firms

Consulting firms are built to deliver client work, and most are structured accordingly: Partners face outward, operational infrastructure is informal, and the systems that hold everything together are usually whatever the founding team improvised at the start. A COO is brought in when that informality stops scaling, and the hire needs to understand how a consulting firm actually operates before they can improve it.

The Corporate COO Gap

Many strong COO candidates come from product or service businesses where operating infrastructure is more mature and the levers for improvement are more familiar. The adjustment to a professional services operating model, utilisation, recovery rates, project economics, Partner leverage, is steeper than it looks from the outside.

The Delivery-Only Gap

Other candidates have deep consulting delivery experience and understand how engagements work but have never owned the operating function itself: finance, people, systems, resourcing, the infrastructure that determines whether the firm is actually profitable at the margin each engagement produces.

Why Firms Mis-Hire

Some firms promote a trusted internal operator into a COO role without the structural and financial rigour the position demands at scale. Others hire a strong general-purpose COO from outside professional services, and the first twelve months are spent learning a business model they should have understood from day one.

The Movemeon Approach

Our network includes ex-consultants from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and other top-tier firms who have moved into COO and senior operating roles inside advisory and consulting firms, understanding both the client-facing model and the internal infrastructure required to make it work at scale.

Consulting Background, Applied to Internal Operations

These candidates bring the structured problem-solving built in consulting, applied to the internal operating challenges of a professional services firm: pricing and project economics, resourcing and utilisation, people and talent infrastructure, and the financial reporting a scaling firm's leadership and investors need.

What Strong Candidates Solve For

• Margins eroding as the firm scales without the infrastructure to manage project economics: building the visibility and discipline that keeps profitability intact across a growing project portfolio
• Resourcing decisions made informally, creating utilisation gaps and overload in the same firm simultaneously: establishing the resourcing function that balances capacity against demand
• Partner time consumed by internal operations rather than client relationships and BD: freeing up senior time by professionalising the back office
• People and talent infrastructure that hasn't kept pace with headcount growth: building the hiring, development, and retention capability a scaling consulting firm needs
• No single owner for the operating model as the firm grows: providing the leadership and accountability that holds internal infrastructure together as complexity increases

Built for the Permanent Mandate

Continuity Across Growth Stages

A permanent COO builds and refines the firm's operating model over successive growth phases, developing the institutional knowledge of what works at this specific business rather than importing a generic professional services playbook.

Partner and Leadership Fluency

Candidates are assessed on their ability to operate credibly with a Partner group that is used to autonomy, making operational improvements that feel enabling rather than constraining.

Why Advisory and Consulting Firms Choose Movemeon

Speed

A vetted network of 100,000+ ex-consultants and senior operating talent delivers shortlists in days, against the 8-12 weeks typical of retained search.

Discretion

COO appointments often require confidentiality, particularly when tied to a leadership restructure or a shift in the firm's operating model. Our process is built to operate within that constraint.

Start Your Search

Tell us about the operating gap you're trying to close, the Partner time you need to free up, or the infrastructure the firm needs to build, and we'll put forward candidates who've solved it before.