A business growth consultancy helps clients find new customers, markets and revenue. Its own team of analysts and engagement leads must handle uneven projects, client pressure and the pull of better-known firms.
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Share your requirementsA business growth consultancy works with owners and management on sales strategy, market entry, pricing, channels, partnerships and new products. A principal or partner sells the engagement and holds the client relationship. Engagement leads run the project, analysts gather data, build models and prepare presentations, and sometimes sector specialists or associates are brought in for specific tasks. Projects last weeks or months and arrive in lumps, so a team can be overloaded in one quarter and idle in the next. Clients want visible results and are quick to blame the consultant if growth does not come. Analysts learn fast but often leave after two or three years for management programmes or industry roles. Related reading: HR for professional services. Because the output is advice, quality depends on the thinking of a few people, and the firm's own growth is held back by the same constraints it helps clients solve: hiring, utilisation, delegation and the founder's time.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in business growth consultants. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Projects start together, then stop, and staff are either overloaded or on the bench.
They have learnt the craft, and management programmes or industry roles beckon.
Growth depends on the client's own team, and blame lands on the advisers when numbers lag.
Engagement leads accept extra requests, hours rise and the fee does not.
Engagement leads cannot win or extend work, so the pipeline depends on a few people.
One team's deck is sharp, another's is thin, and the firm has no common review.
Associates are brought in without proper briefs or confidentiality terms.
The firm advises on growth but has no plan for hiring, roles or promotion in its own team.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Retention and Attrition Management; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a business growth consultants business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A view of live and expected projects against people for the next quarter, with a bench use plan.
A view of live and expected projects against people for the next quarter, with a bench use plan. Plan hiring through the recruitment process.
Analyst, senior analyst, engagement lead and principal, each with skills and expected output.
Analyst, senior analyst, engagement lead and principal, each with skills and expected output. Keep them in the documentation process.
A standard way to log extra requests, price them or decline them, so creep is visible.
A standard way to log extra requests, price them or decline them, so creep is visible.
A checklist and a senior review before anything goes to the client.
A checklist and a senior review before anything goes to the client. See performance management.
A learning plan, rotations across sectors and a view of the path to engagement lead.
A learning plan, rotations across sectors and a view of the path to engagement lead. See the learning process.
A brief, a confidentiality clause and payment terms, reviewed by a qualified professional.
A brief, a confidentiality clause and payment terms, reviewed by a qualified professional.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Hiring analysts and engagement leads when engagements stack up.
Clear expectations by level and a review of deliverable quality.
Analyst growth plans and rotations that slow early exits.
Role levels, engagement terms and associate briefs written down.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
How a D2C founder can decide which digital marketing work to hire for, which to buy from an agency, and which to split, with a worksheet and a five step plan.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Plan the pipeline a quarter ahead, keep a small flexible bench with useful internal work and use associates for peaks. Review monthly.
Give them a learning plan, exposure to clients earlier, a fair review and a clear route to lead. Ask them what they want before they decide to leave.
Define scope clearly, log requests and price or decline extras at the time. Train engagement leads to say no gracefully.
Introduce them in meetings, give them part of the client account over time and recognise them in reviews. Partners must let go gradually.
With a written brief, fee, confidentiality and conduct terms. Take advice from a qualified professional on the engagement nature.
We would look at utilisation, role levels and analyst retention. A role level note with a utilisation view is a likely opener. Scope, timing and fee are set out in writing afterwards.
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