You versus the professional services firm: part 1 - branding
- Summary:
- The war for talent is back on – yet job seekers/job holders in the consulting/integrator space may think they’re caught in a time warp.
Let's be clear. The economy is definitely different and evolving. The US workforce now has the employment upper hand and woe to businesses that still think they call the shots. Even if the economy for services hasn’t rebounded in your part of the world but you’re looking for a new/first job in the services space, you might want to heed the cautions in this piece.
You can really see which service firms have an evolved, nuanced approach to modern workforces by how they look at some basic functions and processes.
Branding
Consulting and Integration firms believe that businesses hire the company not the team. The reality is that while prospective clients may shortlist to a few firms, they do, in fact, hire the team. Service buyers today look at the LinkedIn profiles of the people being pitched for a project. It is now routine for recruiters to have a LinkedIn account for that purpose. Recruiters might do a cursory Google search on these individuals, too. Discerning service buyers will pay a premium price to get a great team of people rather than just a bunch of non-differentiated individuals.
So, if the individuals within the team are really important, shouldn’t an employer care about developing the sub-brands of each service person within the organization? You’d think so, but, more often you would be wrong. Many consulting and integration firms don’t do this for a variety of reasons. For example, they might:
- Lack the ability to help an individual build their brand
- Prefer employees NOT have an externally recognized brand as it might make these people visible to competitors, recruiters, etc.
- Want to make the firm’s brand the be-all brand for everything
All of those reasons are problematic and probably unsustainable. Here are just a few reasons why:
- Service buyers don’t want an un-differentiated team. They want people who have written the book on: a particular methodology, a security practice, evolving standards, process design, etc. Clients don’t have the time, money or patience to craft a lump of clay into someone who might be more chargeable on their next client assignment. They want the best people for the task at hand. If you think your service firm is fielding a differentiated team (e.g., because you only “hire the best people”), then why does your firm have such a tough time defending its billing rates? When prospective clients see nothing compelling to differentiate one integrator from another, they look at billing rates as a potential difference.
- Many people go into consulting to have a career not just to be a life-long product configurator. How can someone have a career when they have no personal brand and remain virtually anonymous? If these are professional employees, aren’t they supposed to continue to grow and develop? Smart employers see their workforce as assets that should grow commensurate with their increasing responsibilities and personal balance sheet. Smart employers support their employee’s efforts to grow and enhance their personal brand. It’s a win-win as the employee gains external recognition and new skills while simultaneously, the employer can justify ever-greater billing rates. If the employer is creating a great work environment while offering market salary and career development opportunities, then their fear of losing talented people is unwarranted. However, employers that negate efforts by employees to possess an externally recognizable career/resume are not great employers.
- If “people are our most important asset”, how come no one knows anyone at your firm? It’s funny how many times service firms use that tired old chestnut but no one can identify a single important asset/person. Think about it, how could a firm of 300,000 service professionals not have a single well-known thought leader? If someone at that company is supposed to be an expert on commercial banking, then why don’t we see numerous mentions of them speaking at different banking events or having written compelling thought leadership pieces? I remain unconvinced that just because someone sold a handful of jobs in a given industry, doesn’t mean they are a thought leader, although they could be a great sales person.
- Internal/operational executives within a service firm are not the same as a thought leader. Clients don’t hire the CEO of a large service firm to run their local engagement. Moreover, these clients don’t see this person as a thought leader either. No, they want people across all other levels of the service firm to be intimately familiar with their industry, technology, etc. It is these people that prospective clients want to see ‘proof’ of their thought leadership.
- Branding is not binary. The service firm can have a successful brand and so, too, can the individual employees/executives have their brands. Yes, this takes a bit more time and effort for the firm to manage but the results can be great (more on that below).
Which service firms permit great employee branding? There are several clues job seekers should look for including:
Thought Leadership
- Does the firm’s website identify a number of thought leadership pieces and their authors? Are these current? Are they of particular relevance to clients and prospective clients?
- Does the firm’s thought leadership material reflect the insights that specific people, project teams and research initiatives have identified? Or, is it a generic compilation of buzzwords and acronyms written by faceless, anonymous people (or worse, by the firm’s marketing or PR group)?
- Does the firm name the individuals who created this material? Or, does it allow other firm personnel to be listed on the thought leadership materials even though they did not write or produce the material? Was the thought leadership material ghost-written by others (e.g., subordinates) but an executive put their name on it?
- Did the firm take the entire credit for the work and the true creators of it are left unknown?
Public Speaking
- Does the firm restrict all but the top executives from public speaking gigs?
- Does the firm acknowledge the various forums at which its employees speak?
- How influential are some of these speakers and the events at which they speak? It’s one thing for someone to give the breakfast talk at the local Chamber of Commerce meeting. It’s quite different to give the opening keynote at the SAP Sapphire event.
Press Mentions
- Who speaks for the firm? Can a junior staffer do so if they really know their stuff on a particular issue?
- Is the CEO the only one ever quoted in the press?
Social Media Interference
- Can employees blog?
- Must employees get all content pre-approved? How long do approvals usually take (minutes or months)?
- Do the firm’s subject matter experts chair discussion groups/forums on social media?
- Are the firm’s key influencers active in Twitter?