Chief People Officer

Client:
Position:
Sector:
As a close ally to the newly appointed CEO of our consulting client, we were quickly enlisted to support several hires that would shape his leadership team to deliver the next phase of growth for the world-class Chief People Officer (CPO). The CPO would serve as a strategic confidant of the CEO and act as an agent of change to ensure the culture and DNA of the organisation, and the people agenda, aligned to facilitate purposeful growth at pace.
Our client has a clear human-centric purpose to the work it delivers, but would need a clear people strategy to shape the business to better reflect the challenges faced by a diverse audience. The successful candidate must understand how to create and land strategies successfully and obtain buy-in across the consulting business with its many varied, successful, and intellectual stakeholders across multiple markets and geographies. Ultimately, they must find a way to be a proactive ally for the leadership and Partner group, whilst being able to use sound judgement to prioritise the most effective levers to drive growth and promote a progressive culture.
It was expected that the successful candidate would intuitively understand the management consulting world, as well as the personalities and business drivers incumbent in an organisation like our clients. Accordingly, our focus for the search activity was very targeted, approaching individuals with a proven track-record in shaping the people agenda for consulting businesses on a global scale. Ultimately, the search resulted in the acquisition of a CPO who had both held senior HR leadership and strategy roles, but also spent her early career as a Partner in a strategy consulting firm. By capturing the unique facets of this individual, our client was able to deliver against all dimensions of the role with someone who knew how to succeed and manage the landscape in a complex consulting business.