Working at Playing Hard to Get

To land a job at the relatively small consulting firm Marakon Assoc., candidates must demonstrate authentic intellectual curiosity, and navigate a series of challenging case interviews that might even include a bit of role-playing, says Lori Massad, chief talent officer and chief operating officer at Marakon. But once you're in, the company wants you to stay, and is willing to negotiate all sorts of flexible work options. The company, which employs about 200 consultants worldwide, is based in New York and London, with offices in Singapore, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Massad joined Marakon in February, 2004, as director of North American human resources and was promoted to CTO in December the same year. She took on the COO role in May, 2006. Before joining Marakon, Massad spent eight years at The Boston Consulting Group, where she became a senior manager on the consulting staff and also oversaw aspects of the firm's global recruiting, training, and development strategies. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School .

Massad recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Jeffrey Gangemi. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

How does your firm's small size affect you in the on-campus recruiting market?
We do very much a grassroots level of recruiting on campus. We conduct open presentations, but we'll also get the résumé books early on and do a targeted mailing and phone-call campaign, calling those students who we think would be a great fit at Marakon, just from some things we see on their résumé.

Do you have a group of target schools?
We have two types of targets and different strategies for each. We target Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, as well as Columbia Business School. At those target schools, we'll do traditional things like a presentation and big dinner.

At our non-core schools where we have alumni, we'll do small dinners to have our people identify candidates they think would be a good fit at Marakon.

Are you hiring more people this year than last, given the strong job market?
Our headcount is probably going to increase by about 10% per year. Last year, we hired about 25 MBAs in North America and 50 worldwide. When we hire MBAs for work in Singapore and Europe, we target London Business School, INSEAD , and IMD.

What strategies do you use to set yourselves apart?
Marakon mainly serves CEOs and their executive suite. We can sell the consistency of working with the very top level of executives in all projects. We were also founded on value-based management, which is a proprietary method of linking finance, strategy, and organization. That's a major selling point.

How do you help your consultants maintain a good quality of life?
We have something called the 10 and Two Program, where consultants can work 10 months out of the year and take two months off. About 20% to 25% of our consulting staff takes advantage of that program.

As a small firm, we'll get together with you and try to create a customized working model. Some people do a part-time model, and others do a no-travel model. We have something called a 50-50 model, where consultants do 50% firm work and 50% client work.

In North America, we've cut our attrition by 75% -- we attribute that to these new programs, which were introduced in 2004. We know that what we're selling to our clients is the tenure of our consultants. We put these programs in place to get the best talent and to make sure the best talent stays with us.

How many interviews do you require?
We have two rounds of interviews. Round one is a 30-minute résumé review and a 30-minute case interview. If you make it through that, then we go to round two, which is a 45-minute résumé review and two 45-minute case interviews.

There are three different types of case interview we'll give you in round two -- one is a client role-play, where we ask the candidate to play the consultant and have two people play the client. We may also have a numerical case study. And sometimes, we'll actually have a group exercise, where we'll give a group of candidates an exercise, and they'll work together to solve it while we observe them.

Any tips for either interview?
The most important thing is to be authentic, really to be yourself and not try to be who you think we want you to be. I want to hear from someone who is intellectually curious, but authentically intellectually curious. Think about the things you're passionate about and let that come through.

I'm also looking for your ability to form an independent point of view. I like to hear about an experience where you've gone against the grain or had to stick up for a point of view that's contrary to what other people believed. How did you build influence and commitment from other people to think the way you were thinking? A sense of humility is also really important.

In the case interview, remember that there's no right answer. When we develop these cases, we're trying to understand the way you think. You really want to make sure you structure the way you present your thinking, and to do that, you need to be very comfortable with silence. It's O.K. to be quiet for even five minutes -- we'll be patient.

And don't be afraid to ask questions. We're looking for that intellectual curiosity and are admittedly not giving all the information you'll need to even engage us in the problem, because we're very interested in the types of questions you're going to ask.

What kinds of training do you offer?
We have on-the-job training. We pair everyone who joins Marakon with a development coach who stays with you throughout your career.

We also have formal training -- every new hire gets about two weeks of formal training when he or she arrives. There's probably about one to two days of formal training per quarter after that. Each year, we also have a worldwide conference for all the consultants and associate consultants, where they get together and get a lot of practice training on developments that we've made in our own areas of expertise.