Beyond CVs: Kepler’s Unique Approach to Recruiting

As the lead of Kepler Cannon's recruiting team, I initially expected my work to consist of creating a few slides and interviewing candidates who seemed good on paper. I didn’t expect it to land me an impromptu interview for the NY Post while desperately trying to catch a train to a career fair at Brown, nor require me and a coworker to act on camera for the another university's career services office for some sort of local TV promotional campaign--without the option for a second take. Of course, if I knew that these experiences lay waiting in the pipeline of my recruiting future, I would have volunteered for the role much faster.

The time that I’ve spent as part of the consultant-driven recruiting team at Kepler Cannon has been defined by experiences in nature that mirror the attributes of candidates that we look for: eccentric, centrally driven by off-the-cuff problem solving, and remarkably curious. Being on TV is also a plus, for those considering applying.

As part of this crew, I've had the privilege of working with a group of talented coworkers who, in addition to being great management consultants, are instinctively good at sniffing out the kind of talent that our firm is composed of. I’m proud to say that I’ve inherited a recruiting culture that shies away from the “check-the-box” strategy of qualifying candidates – we instead approach recruiting from the core tenet that our cohort can and should be a mosaic of unique stories and diverse minds.

We look for candidates with an approach to life that embraces curiosity and a different perspective to problem-solving. Those individuals best represent our firm, make the most adept consultants (in my opinion), and are the most fun to talk to. I cherish the times I’ve spent talking with a coworker about the history of the toothpick (surprisingly violent) or their time volunteering on an oyster boat (unsurprisingly violent) and adding more such people in our office is my greatest goal.

Being on this recruiting team means the chance to impact our firm on a personal level–our team decides the future face of the firm, and I’m glad to have an integral hand in accomplishing that. That said, the feeling of telling a candidate that we’ll be extending an offer to them is second-to-none. Putting so much time and effort into finding candidates that we want to work with makes that feeling of a “yes” so much more meaningful, especially when they come in for their first day of work and I can find out things they couldn’t tell me as an applicant. What was the real reason you were a minute late? Do you really do data analysis on your Saturdays? Do we truly share a mutual love of deep sea marlin fishing?

To learn more about the work and team at Kepler Cannon, head over to our website.