The professional services talent model is breaking down—AI is to blame
Searchlight - Behind the Moves is a newsletter from Beecher Reagan Advisors—A premier retained executive search firm delivering transformational leadership to professional services, private equity, and digital & technology services.
Professional Services Trends and Insights
From Clark R. Beecher, Managing Partner & Co-Founder at Beecher Reagan Advisors
The professional services talent pyramid is collapsing from the bottom, and AI is forcing the collapse.
For decades, professional services firms have followed the traditional leverage model to deliver work and maximize profitability. The few Partners at the top sell the work and manage client relationships while teams of junior analysts carry out the day-to-day tasks. And it's worked. But it's not the 1960s anymore.
Since AI has entered the picture, that pyramid is collapsing at the base.
Let's say you want to do a market assessment to figure out where to open the next location of your bank. That work used to be done by a team of 5, and they'd come back in a few weeks and deliver the analysis. Well, now the same work can be done by one mid-level professional with AI in a couple of days.
So what we're seeing is that many of the larger firms are scaling back on on-campus recruiting and cutting back on junior-level talent investments. That's going to put immense pressure on the talent model because you'll end up with a future where fewer and fewer people are entering the pipeline the natural way to develop into tomorrow's leaders.
This pressure is going to create a couple of important shifts:
1) Hiring externally will become increasingly important.
Unless we can somehow automate the job of the partner or the sales executive (which I don't see happening right now), firms will still need to hire for that role. With fewer junior people entering the talent funnel and developing into future partners, finding the capabilities needed to drive growth will have to come from direct admit hires.
2) Spend on junior talent needs to shift to more senior levels.
Firms have traditionally invested heavily in on-campus recruiting to get people as they complete their undergrad or finish an MBA program. If we're ok with AI and technology doing the work that many of these junior people typically do, then firms need to move that spend to the middle and more senior levels of the organization.
Those mid-level people need to be developed in the right capability areas, and they need to be prepared to become the future sales and go-to-market leaders.
The reality is that many middle-market firms are better positioned to deal with these shifts because they've been running a model based on more experienced talent all along. Their junior people already have 10 years of service in consulting or professional/business services.
On the other hand, the top 20% of firms, which built their business on the traditional talent model, are more vulnerable to the impact of these shifts and have further to go to align with where we're headed.
The firms that will win are the ones that embrace technology, invest in developing the capabilities needed to maximize it, and position their mid-level talent to become their future go-to-market leaders.
-> Send me a message if you'd like to discuss what this means for your firm.
News We're Paying Attention To
Wipfli Secures Strategic Investment from New Mountain Capital
Wipfli, a top 20 U.S. accounting and advisory firm, has sold a minority stake to New Mountain Capital in a deal valuing the firm at over $1 billion, with plans to use the investment to accelerate growth and expansion.
Why it matters: This transaction signals the continued flow of private equity into the accounting sector, providing mid‑market firms with the capital to scale aggressively while reshaping competition, leadership demands, and M&A dynamics across the profession.
Inflection Point - The Stories Behind the Moves
The Mandate: Scaling to $100M
A high-growth professional services firm set out to double revenue from $50M to $100M, moving from referral-driven sales process to a structured, scalable go-to-market model. Beecher Reagan was engaged to recruit a Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer with proven success leading both functions and scaling beyond $100M.
Our challenge was to identify and recruit proven commercial executives motivated to join an entrepreneurial firm and bet on themselves to earn a meaningful wealth creation opportunity. Candidates needed prior C-suite experience, having led both sales and marketing through a hands-on, “player-coach” approach. From a targeted slate of eight executives, three advanced to final interviews.
The selected leader brought a track record of transforming sales and marketing into high-performance engines and is now driving the processes, talent, and market focus to position the firm for its next stage of growth.
Beecher Reagan Advisors is a premier Retained Executive Search Firm, delivering transformational talent to Professional Services, Private Equity, and Digital & Technology services. Looking for the right candidate to drive your next stage of growth? Get in touch with a Beecher Reagan Partner today.
