BACKGROUND
Our client, a leading consultancy based in Italy, brought eg.1 in to identify and attract a Partner-level candidate to lead its newly created Strategy, Digital & Design practice.
THE CLIENT’S CHALLENGE
This new practice required a leader to bring together over 100 consultants from across different backgrounds (customer strategy, customer experience and design), to integrate these teams into one seamless proposition and take this to tier one clients in the Italian market.
This person will ultimately be responsible for position the company as the number one Creative Digital Consultancy in the Italian market to help advise clients on their digital marketing, user experience and various technology platforms.
OUR APPROACH
Based on eg.1’s deep understanding of the consulting landscape we went beyond the ‘traditional route’ to explore all talent options across strategy and business transformation, digital, design and technology consultancies, agencies and services companies. Our client’s unique integrated offering meant a ‘like-for-like’ lifting of key talent from direct competitors would not work.
Our approach was to focus on the impact, experience and skills that candidates had built over the course of their careers, rather than trying to find the ‘perfect’ candidate who ‘ticked all the boxes’ in one role and had the agility to operate across these.
DELIVERY
eg.1 explored all talent options in the market, and delivered a comprehensive, diverse shortlist of candidates, which included: strategy consulting alumni in digital and e-commerce companies; current and former practice leaders in tech companies; advertising alumni in boutique strategy firms; and independent consultants.
Additionally, we leveraged The GC Index®, our proprietary tool that identifies and measures ways of making business impact, to identify the shortlisted candidates most suited to our client’s business. In our case, leading a team with highly diverse backgrounds and skillsets would be crucial to the role. We therefore prioritised candidates with a strong “Playmaker” score, which measures the ability to get the best from others in support of agreed objectives.
RESULT
Our client ultimately hired a female CEO from a European innovation and design firm. She brought a stand-out blend of strategy, branding and communications experience, and has also led a large-scale internal integration within her previous company, a skillset crucial to our client’s ambitions.
The strategy and design practice was entirely new for our Client, and candidates were unaware of our Client’s scale. Therefore, as part of this engagement, eg.1 not only provided the Client with the successful individual, we also elevated our client’s brand to demonstrate the ambition and depth of capability.