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Episode 37: Richard Longstreet – The Hiring Data Doesn’t Match the Headlines
John's guest this episode is Richard Longstreet, the founder of Tarka Talent – a specialist recruitment firm working with consulting businesses across the UK and the US. Tarka places experienced hires across the consulting market and produces an annual salary survey that tracks what consulting firms are actually doing when it comes to hiring.
What has this year’s survey found? To start with, entry-level hiring has nearly doubled in this year's survey, despite widespread assumptions that AI is reshaping the junior end of consulting. And the most in-demand role right now is what Richard calls the “experienced practitioner” – someone in the five-to-nine-year range who’s a safe pair of hands for running projects and owing client relationships.
Beyond those statistics, Richard and John discuss:
- Why consulting clients have become more demanding buyers of the services they commission – and what that pressure means for the highly leveraged delivery models that larger firms are built around.
- Senior hires: why director and practice lead appointments only succeed about 50% of the time, what firms consistently get wrong in the first year with those hires, and what a realistic timeline for success looks like.
- What AI is and isn't yet changing in how consulting firms hire – including how to run an honest interview process – and which parts of the market are furthest ahead.
- The research Richard is running across the sector right now and what he keeps finding in early interviews: confident views about AI reshaping consulting, but surprisingly few practical examples of it already doing so.
- Richard's own experience of growing Tarka too fast, and what being more deliberate about building a business actually means.
If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and hiring decisions are on your mind, Richard's data and experience make for a useful conversation.
Please follow Unlocking Value to get early access to future conversations.
Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth
Guest: Richard Longstreet, Founder of Tarka Talent
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By Garwood GrowthJohn's guest this episode is Richard Longstreet, the founder of Tarka Talent – a specialist recruitment firm working with consulting businesses across the UK and the US. Tarka places experienced hires across the consulting market and produces an annual salary survey that tracks what consulting firms are actually doing when it comes to hiring.
What has this year’s survey found? To start with, entry-level hiring has nearly doubled in this year's survey, despite widespread assumptions that AI is reshaping the junior end of consulting. And the most in-demand role right now is what Richard calls the “experienced practitioner” – someone in the five-to-nine-year range who’s a safe pair of hands for running projects and owing client relationships.
Beyond those statistics, Richard and John discuss:
- Why consulting clients have become more demanding buyers of the services they commission – and what that pressure means for the highly leveraged delivery models that larger firms are built around.
- Senior hires: why director and practice lead appointments only succeed about 50% of the time, what firms consistently get wrong in the first year with those hires, and what a realistic timeline for success looks like.
- What AI is and isn't yet changing in how consulting firms hire – including how to run an honest interview process – and which parts of the market are furthest ahead.
- The research Richard is running across the sector right now and what he keeps finding in early interviews: confident views about AI reshaping consulting, but surprisingly few practical examples of it already doing so.
- Richard's own experience of growing Tarka too fast, and what being more deliberate about building a business actually means.
If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and hiring decisions are on your mind, Richard's data and experience make for a useful conversation.
Please follow Unlocking Value to get early access to future conversations.
Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth
Guest: Richard Longstreet, Founder of Tarka Talent