Annabel Nichols

Colin Cottell interviews Accenture’s UK recruitment director

Management consultants are those terribly clever people that descend on your organisation, then spend several months asking silly questions. After they leave, you end up paying them a lot of money for being told what you would have done anyway.

Okay, this might be a slightly jaundiced view of a highly successful industry that governments and major companies invariably seem to turn to in order to solve their most intractable problems. And unsurprisingly, it is not a view shared by Annabel Nichols, UK and Ireland recruitment director at Accenture, one of a number of well-known global consulting firms, along with the likes of Bain and Company, McKinsey and Company, and Capgemini.

To be fair to Accenture and many other consulting firms, it does more than just consulting. Accenture is also a major player in technology and in outsourcing/BPO (business process outsourcing). Among its clients are three quarters of the Fortune Global 500 companies. “I think the proof is in the pudding,” says Nichols. “We do transform businesses and make them more successful. I see that from the leaders and the calibre of people I work with, which is incredible.”

Nichols is speaking to Recruiter at Accenture’s London offices in the City, from where she leads a recruitment team responsible for hiring around “hundreds if not thousands” of staff a year she won’t be drawn on the exact number. While the bulk are experienced hires, Accenture is an important employer of graduates, hiring around 500 a year. In addition to staff in London, members of Nichols’ team are based in Ireland, Mumbai and at other locations in the UK. The team recruits at all levels right across Accenture’s workforce covering consulting, technology, outsourcing/BPO and support functions.

Secret of my success

I am surrounded by brilliant people, a platinum-plated team. Great leadership that gives me the autonomy to make things happen. I am good at delivery and managing people

You might perhaps expect a recruitment director to be effusive about the quality of staff in his/her organisation. However, Nichols, who joined the business when it was Andersen Consulting back in 1995, is the not the sort of person to hold back on her views. Indeed, she volunteers that she loves her boss, her job, Accenture, and that she is “really passionate about recruiting”.

And she is equally forthcoming about the vital role that recruitment must play in a firm, such as Accenture, where recruiting the right talent is the key differentiator between itself and its competitors. “As a people business, we don’t have a product; the thing that we sell is our people,” she says succinctly. It’s a fair point, but of course, Accenture is not unique in this. Indeed, the same is often said about recruitment agencies, for example.

But where Accenture is different, according to Nichols, is the central place that recruitment occupies in the firm. “Recruiting is a strategic priority for the firm, and what I do is a strategic and critical part of the business strategy,” she says. And so while many in-house recruiters complain they are marginalised by the business and not given the respect they deserve, Nichols says she has never experienced such problems. For Nichols, the fact that recruitment plays a pivotal role at Accenture comes from the top, from its senior leadership that recognise the function’s importance and support “the people agenda”.

“They [the Accenture leadership] are not sitting in their ivory towers telling me what to do; we are partners,” says Nichols. She reports directly to the UK and Ireland HR director, and has regular meetings and contacts with UK and Ireland country managers, as well as the managing directors of the technology and management consulting arms.

Among the frequent topics of discussion are the supply of and demand for staff, the growth of the business, the hot skills clients are demanding, attrition rates, and how many consultants are leaving projects and becoming available for deployment elsewhere. “All these factors feed into what I am asked to recruit for,” says Nichols. “I see myself at the coalface and fully involved in these discussions.”

Nichols’ philosophy

For me it’s about the candidate experience excellent candidate experience at every touch point

Nichols emphasises that rather than recruitment being seen in isolation, this is an holistic approach, in which it plays an integral part, along with HR, in Accenture’s supply chain. She says the importance of access to the Accenture’s senior executives has become especially apparent since her promotion from graduate recruitment manager in December last year. “I have much broader access to leaders, and greater insight to where the business is going,” she says.

Rather than recruitment being an afterthought, Nichols says she is in the enviable position of being able to look two or three years ahead. “I am on point to look at immediate needs, eg SAP or Oracle, so we can put a strategy in place to meet those needs, but I am also in a position that I know two or three years down the line where the business is headed.” Moreover, her ability to influence decision-making is enhanced by a 10-year people strategy, which, while apt for an organisation whose name is supposedly derived from ’Accent on the future,’ is an unheard of luxury for most recruiters.

As an integral part of Accenture’s workforce planning model, this helps to identify future trends, she explains. For example, what are the technologies of the future? “This enables me to start to plan three years down the line. If somebody is going to need a new technology I have never heard of, I can start thinking about it and looking into the market.”

While Nichols is keen to highlight the strategic importance and long-term nature of recruitment in Accenture, her team is busy on a dizzying array of initiatives covering both the experienced and the graduate markets. One key aspect Nichols highlights is the importance of early engagement with candidates. “The earlier we can engage with candidates the better, so we can start to build relationships with them,” she says.
For experienced hires, her team looks to engage with passive candidates 18-24 months before they are ready to leave their jobs. And while traditional approaches, such as print advertising and recruitment events are used, social media plays an increasing role. One initiative is a sophisticated algorithm that picks out potential candidates from the recruiting team’s LinkedIn networks.

For entry level and graduates, this engagement can begin at school, with a large number of school leavers spending their gap years at Accenture, for example. For those at university, there are internships and industrial placements. “It’s an aggressive market and some of the resources we are looking for are scarce. The more you can engage early with them, differentiate yourself from the competition and communicate with them that will stand you in good stead,” says Nichols.

Her team invest a significant time and effort into keeping candidates warm and in beginning the onboarding process. For graduates, this includes: keeping in touch calls every couple of months; invitations to events, where they can network with recently joined graduates and other Accenture staff, including members of Accenture’s leadership team. Looking ahead, Nichols says staff referrals are likely to become more important because of their low cost and the quality of candidates. “There is a global drive to recruit 40% of staff in this way,” she adds. Seeking out previously untapped channels of people that might not have thought of consulting as a career is another regular tactic. For example, 30 accountants were invited to a recent event, where they met members of the leadership team, resulting in a number of offers.

Boot Camp, an initiative launched at the end of 2009, was designed to help graduates understand more about consulting. A 48-hour event, it seeks to replicate the consulting environment, even down to a real live client. “It’s an experience that they would not get anywhere else outside business,” says Nichols. Four out of five of those graduates attending join the firm, she says.

Nichols herself joined the HR graduate scheme of what was then Andersen Consulting back in 1995 or “before the dinosaurs “as she puts it. And after the new company’s IPO (independent public offering) she joined the newly-created Accenture in 2001. “I knew HR was the career I wanted to pursue,” she says. And it wasn’t long before she found her niche. “Recruiting was very much my sweet spot. I enjoyed it and it played to my strengths.” She adds that the culture within consulting, in particular, which values asking questions and challenging the status quo, is also one in which she feels at home and indeed empowered.

Throughout the interview Nichols comes across as genuinely enthusiastic, excited and committed, not only to recruitment but also to Accenture. Indeed, she adds, it is the people side of the business that is the reason why she is still with Accenture after 15 years. This has allowed her, for example, to have three periods of nine months’ paid maternity leave.

So has she ever considered switching to the agency side? “I think it would take something monumental to make me consider leaving Accenture. Accenture ticks too may boxes for me,” she says.

For as long as Nichols continues to receive the support from the top of Accenture and to reap the rewards of its long-term strategic approach to recruitment, those boxes look likely to stay ticked for a good while yet.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

BA Hons, Archaeology, Cardiff University

1995-98 Accenture, HR graduate, a variety of HR roles

1998-2000 Accenture, graduate recruitment team, responsible for recruiting graduates from universities in the North

2000-02 Accenture, university sourcing manager and MBA

2002-04 Accenture, UK graduate recruitment manager

2005-07 Accenture, diversity manager (including two lots of maternity leave)

2008-10 Accenture, UK graduate recruitment manager

2010 Accenture, UK and Ireland recruitment director

Company Profile

  • Number of employees worldwide 223,000
  • Net revenue $21.55bn (£13.55bn)
  • Headquarters in Dublin
  • Offices and operations in more than 200 cities in 53 countries
  • Clients include more than three quarters of the Fortune Global 500
  • Accenture has three business areas:

- Consulting - Technology - Outsourcing/BPO

  • Company slogan: ’High performance. Delivered’

 

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