LAB Staffing Manager - 6 month FTC

Boston Consulting Group is seeking a LAB Staffing Manager to manage staffing strategies and capacity across the LAB offices in London, Amsterdam, and Brussels.

What You'll Do

Staffing is a business-critical function at Boston Consulting Group, managing the overall people deployment strategy and capacity management within the 3 LAB offices. You will be a member of the LAB Staffing team and work closely with the LAB Staffing Team, PA nodes and fellow People Team colleagues.

This role is responsible for staffing case requests and reports into the LAB Staffing Director. Line management of one or more staffing specialists may form part of this role, subject to experience and team structure. You will also act as an escalation point for the areas you staff, escalating to the Staffing Director when appropriate.

Working closely with the LAB Staffing Team, you will help ensure LAB billability remains optimal in the practice areas you staff and strike the right balance between case requests, people development and preferences.

Please note: the precise set of PPPLs and A/C cohorts assigned to this role may evolve during the contract period. The successful candidate will be expected to embrace this flexibility as part of the role.

What will you do

• Work closely with the Practice Area Nodes, the LAB Staffing Team and the LAB Staffing Director to achieve optimum deployment of PPPLs and A/Cs across the LAB system
• Communicate daily with the relevant PA Nodes and the LAB Staffing Director to understand the pyramid situation and needs
• Act as a sparring partner to the PA Nodes and challenge staffing decisions when needed
• Manage freecap for your cohorts and assign them to proposals or other non-billable work, in line with agreed business priorities
• Manage staffing capacity, validate holidays and flex-time requests, and support and promote cross-office staffing when relevant
• Monitor billability in the practice areas you staff
• Understand PPPL and A/C needs to assign them to projects, overseeing the best match with their preferences and career ambitions
• Attend career development committee meetings for your cohorts
• Work closely with PA Nodes and CDC to understand the development needs of your cohorts, provide input to CDC meetings and help action development needs of your cohort
• Meet regularly with the PPPLs and A/Cs to understand their staffing and development needs, advise them of current cases, and understand their goals, preferences and expertise
• Establish and maintain relationships with senior stakeholders
• Understand their commercial priorities and client-specific needs
• Manage complex staffing escalations
• Collect and share the weekly staffing needs across PAs you staff
• Provide guidance to the Practice Areas on staffing, understanding experience, aspirations and circumstances, while balancing client, team and individual needs, and challenge the request, scope and team setup where needed
• Update and share the weekly pipeline with the staffing team, identifying priorities to help staffers make the right trade-offs
• Line management of 1–2 staffers may form part of the role
• Manage day-to-day staffing operations and individual performance
• Provide coaching and mentoring to staffing specialists
• Maintain accurate and up-to-date information in all people and staffing information systems
• Analyse and report key staffing metrics for LAB, local or PA leadership
• Lead ad hoc projects as required
• Work closely with broader People teams to manage exceptional staffing where relevant

You are good at

• Good understanding of the commercial context
• Technical understanding of the consulting industry and business, managing people resources and the nature of work done with clients
• A can-do attitude to problem-solving, with creative analytical skills and the ability to drive decision-making
• Future-facing and entrepreneurial thinking with the interpersonal skills to effectively drive change
• Clarity, tact and professionalism in communication, including presenting to and managing daily relationships with both senior stakeholders and peer teams across the BCG landscape
• Managing a set of stakeholders and collaborating with the pipeline team during staffing escalations, given differentiated priorities and the need to balance multiple business or individual trade-offs
• Readiness to work with teams across different offices, with proven consensus-building, leadership and change management skills
• Patience, integrity and sensitivity to listen to and deal with complex or confidential issues, while also independently taking an impartial stand where decisions require it
• Being well organized, accurate and able to plan ahead and manage a large number of initiatives in parallel
• Readiness to travel to system offices and other BCG offices when needed
• Proficiency in standard software used at BCG, including Excel, PowerPoint and Word

What You'll Bring

• 5+ years in staffing, in a professional services environment
• Numerate
• Confidence in the use of Word and Excel
• Knowledge of PowerPoint is ideal but not essential
• Experience of working with a database is ideal but not essential