CASE STUDY: DELOITTE
Finding and Developing Employee Talent at Deloitte
Recruiting and retaining talented employees is a challenge faced by all businesses, and many of
them go to extraordinary lengths to recruit the best and brightest as well as to retain talented
employees. How do companies go about doing this? Are these extraordinary efforts worth it? Do
these efforts have a demonstrable pay-off for the businesses that use them?
Consider Deloitte, a Big Four accounting firm. Deloitte is the brand under which
165,000 dedicated professionals in independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide
audits, consulting, financial advice, risk management, and tax services. These firms are members of
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.1 Deloitte uses a variety of approaches and techniques to recruit
talented people and ensure that their talents are effectively utilized within the company.
In England, for instance, Deloitte is one of many firms that benefits from an educational
initiative that is achieving extraordinary results in developing talented young people. The program,
known as Teach First, was launched in 2002 and is loosely modeled on the Teach for America
program in the United States. Teach First recruits top [university] graduates by offering them a
challenge: intensive training, full teacher certification, and the chance to help turn around a failing
schoolall within two years.2 Each year approximately 1,300 applicants compete for the 200
Teach First positions. Program participants are in the top 3 percent of their graduating classes, and
have degrees in finance, math, engineering, and philosophy.3
Teach First recruits highly talented young people by promising them the opportunity to
make a substantial impact within two years, which CEO Brett Wigdortz, says is a very powerful
message for young people. Wigdortz also observes that todays graduates want to make a
difference and have real leadership opportunities to prove themselves, and that they value social
responsibility.4 Teach First graduates demonstrate skills that often take years to learn on the job,
says Jo Owen, a former partner with the business consulting firm Accenture, and current director of
strategy for Teach First. Owen notes most graduates learn technical skills early in their business
careers, but these are not the skills that people must have in order to succeed in the long term.
Future leaders learn early on the tough lessons of managing people, leadership, initiative and
entrepreneurialism. The Teach First program helps graduates gain these lifetime skills, observes
Owen.5 All of these skills are ones that many businesses, including Deloitte, want in their
employees. And the Teach First experience is often a stepping-stone to another career, which
enables companies like Deloitte to benefit without making a substantial additional investment in
training and development.
Deloitte seeks out talented people in other ways as well. As an aid to identifying prospective
employees who have the potential to be successful, the accounting firm requires applicants to take a
verbal reasoning aptitude test. Sarah De Carteret, national graduate recruitment manager for the
U.S. offices of Deloitte, says that [v]erbal reasoning is hugely important because we are not
looking for bean counters.6 She adds that Deloitte employees perform a lot of advisory work that
requires writing reports and analyzing information.7 Screening prospective employees with testing
devices such as the verbal reasoning aptitude test helps to ensure that new hires have the requisite
skills for success.
Deloittes concern about employee talent is not just limited to the recruiting process. In its
U.S. locations, the firm has developed internal mechanisms for assessing the skills, interests,
knowledge, and career objectives of existing employees who are dissatisfied with their present
situation. The Deloitte Career Connections (DCC) program helps dissatisfied staff to figure out
1
About Deloitte, http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/section_home/0,1041,sid%253D2250,00.html (accessed June 18, 2009).
J. Felix, Teach Your Way to the Top, Director 60(2) (September 2006): 70.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid., 71
6
E. Keelan, Personal File: Psychometric TestsPsychokiller?, Accountancy (May 1, 2003): 1.
7
Ibid.
2
interests and skills that might be a better fit somewhere else in the organization.8 The DCC
program employs a variety of assessment tools, including an online Myers Briggs personality test,
[a] Strong Interest-type tool, and a values-based exercise to help staff consider strengths and
interests that may fit with their personalities.9 Subsequent to this thorough assessment, Deloitte
helps these employees to discover the most feasible way to address the sources of their
dissatisfaction and to accomplish their career objectives within the organization.
Has the DCC program benefitted the company? The most obvious impact has been on
developing and retaining talented employees, rather than having to recruit new employees. In
financial terms, DCC estimates that the firm has saved about $83.4 million, calculated with a
turnover cost of twice the average annual salary of $76,000.10
On balance then, do these various programs really help Deloitte in recruiting and retaining
people who are really the best and brightest?
This case was written by Michael K. McCuddy, The Louis S. and Mary L. Morgal Chair of
Christian Business Ethics and Professor of Management, College of Business Administration,
Valparaiso University.
Discussion Questions
1. Using the descriptions of different behaviors, attitudes, and abilities that Deloitte seems to deem
desirable in its applicants, describe the key personality characteristics that you think the
company is seeking in its employees? Explain the reasoning behind your answer.
2. How might the characteristics of the perceiver, the target, and the situation affect the social
perceptions that employers like Deloitte likely have regarding participants in the Teach First
program?
3. What attributions are prospective employers like Deloitte likely making regarding participants
in the Teach First program? Why are employers making these attributions?
4. How can the use of personality and vocational interest testing benefit Deloitte? What risks
might be associated with Deloittes use of these testing devices?
5. How might social perception and attribution processes factor into the operation of the Deloitte
Career Connections (DCC) program?
Anonymous, How Coaching Helps a Big Four Accounting Firm Retain Staff, HR Focus 83(1) (January 2006): 5.
Ibid.
10
Ibid., 6
9
