Accenture was contemplating about hiring 2000 management consultants in

India in the year of 2008.Understanding the distinct difference in skills between

management consultants and the IT professionals they were looking for
management consultants to support their existing team of consultants globally.
Accenture differentiates themselves from other MNCs in recruitment process.
Their innovative approach led to an effective talent acquisition. But this time
hiring a management consultant was different than hiring IT professionals, as the
consulting business requires a critical set of skills in the prospective candidate.
But their earlier practice was also going to help them a lot.
Challenges in front of them:

Attracting industry experts and new source of intellectual capital to

consulting
Maintaining the same in-depth recruiting process for highly qualified
candidates
Growing shortage of specialized labour
Intensified competition for Indias technical ,intellectual and managerial
talent
Rise of offshoring in India

In the late 1990s the increasing IT offshoring helped India to emerged as a

leading IT destination globally. Three underlying factors of this were availability
of a highly educated , English-speaking technical workforce; inexpensive ,quick
communication facilitated by internet penetration ;easy availability of skilled
Indian programmers.
The cloud of uncertainty was not far away, NASSCOM projected a shortfall of
software professionals, which was likely to exacerbate competition for Indias IT
talent.
A global delivery network:
In 2001,a scalable, flexible network, Global Deliver Network(GDN) was created
to deliver services in low cost economies to its clients in high cost economies at
a low market wage rate. Global Delivery Centers located across five continents
made it possible for them to execute client work from multiple locations. GDCs
were different in the way they operate than their previous international linkages
as they can serve globally, regardless of the location, and they and they also
focused solely on delivery rather both on deliver and client relationships.
The challenge of hiring:
Though they already had a brand recognition in the management
consulting market , but the recruitment pool they were targeting were
unaware about the brand. Also the interviewer dint have the
appropriate technical background to cultivate the best talent out of the
large talent pool that India offers. In-spite of their presence in the
management consulting domain in India for over two decades, the scale

and the complexities involved in the IT services forced them to begin

fro m the scratch.
Hiring at scale in India was required because of the surging demand from the
global clients, hence they planned to recruit staff ahead of demand.
The path changing 500/5 plan :
The unprecedented demand from the global clients force them to hire 500
professionals within 5 weeks.It was a major challenge as so far their average was
80-100 recruitment per month. But their access to global expertise help them to
take up the challenge.
1. 35 HR professionals from all over the world flew in to India
2. Cultivated 10 HR enthusiasts from a leading B School of India and started
live training to execute the 500/5 plan successfully .
3. Understanding the loop holes still existed in the recruitment process , they
created a new functional model based on supply chain management
principles.
4. But the model brought in the challenge of hammering down the flow of
CVs following a sine curve into a linear one.
5. They thought to break the recruitment model into multiple components.
6. This was successfully implemented and the target of 500/5 was achieved.
This success led them to believe that the existing traditional recruitment models
are not apt enough to deal with the rapid requirement of a large talent pool
acquisition. The new model comes out to be a great innovation.
Recruitment process

Candidate
Sourcing:

Candidate
management:

Screening of
candidates based
on CV submitted

Administering levelappropriate test to

candidates,
scheduling and
executing
interviews by
various HR and
Business managers

On Boarding

Capabilities

Maintaining a
constant relation
with the candidates
who received their
offers, to ensure
their joining and to
ensure they came
up to speed in their
new role

Focused on metrics,
processes,
compliance and
training- the pillar
for overall model

The recruitment process was ensured to be an engaging and personalised

experience by

Continuous support services were provided to the candidates throughout

the process to answer their queries.
Sharing of reports and facts of the company with the candidates prior to
the interview process for a better understanding of the company.
Gifting the new hires Accenture souvenirs and personalised cards to
welcome them.