Harder Than You’d Think: Hiring an HR Systems Consultant to Help Schools

In July 2015, Marcia Aaron, KIPP LA’s CEO began combing her personal networks for recommendations on HR Systems consultants.

The initial outreach yielded no likely prospects. KIPP LA was too small a customer for the large consulting firms, traditional education consultants did not have expertise in HR systems technology and the project was too complicated for a newly-minted MBA or other “athlete” with strong project management skills. Some anecdotes:

• One of the large strategy consulting firms made a multi-million dollar proposal for the project, which was way beyond KIPP LA’s price range.
• Another large systems integration consulting firm would not even bid for the work, saying the organization was too small.
• A medium-sized HR consulting firm with education experience had lost its only employee with HR systems / technology expertise.
• Well-connected partner organizations like Charter School Growth Fund had difficulty finding any quality referrals whatsoever.

Finally, one of the large organizations who passed on the project referred KIPP LA to the Leadership Advisory Group (LAG) based out of Orange County, CA. LAG has three practice areas: Talent Management, HR Systems Technology, and Leadership Development.

KIPP LA focused on three areas when interviewing LAG.

The Right Expertise. LAG’s overlapping expertise in HR technology, HR business process design and strategy, and general change management was very appealing. Consultants that swing too far towards the technology side may guide their customers towards suboptimal solutions because they are focused on tech implementation, not helping their customers step back and design their ideal HR processes. Conversely, a poor technology systems implementation can sink an organization. LAG seemed to offer a good combination of technology expertise, business / strategy expertise and change management support.

KIPP LA shared its Internal Systems Task Force work with LAG during the interview process and immediately received valuable feedback.

Mission-Driven Partner. LAG was founded by Irene Ortiz-Glass who ran Global Talent Management for SAP, a multinational enterprise software company, and, before that, Irene was a senior partner in Korn/Ferry International’s Leadership and Talent Consulting practice. Irene is also of Mexican descent, and like many of KIPP LA’s students, grew up in East Los Angeles. “Irene is very mission-aligned,” says Marcia Aaron. “It’s really important that our partners embrace our mission and understand the passion that fuels our service to students.”

No Conflicts of Interest. When negotiating the contract with LAG, it was important to Marcia, a former business executive, that LAG does not receive any “kickbacks” from software vendors or implementation partners.

It took 3 months for KIPP LA to find Leadership Advisory Group (LAG) and negotiate a contract (signed October 24, 2015 and approved by the KIPP LA Board on December 3, 2015).

LAG wrapped up most of its work with KIPP LA by Summer 2016 in what turned out to be, from KIPP LA ‘s perspective, a very successful engagement.

However, KIPP LA was also extremely lucky because LAG was its only viable option during the HR systems consultant search and LAG ended up 1) doing exceptional work and 2) was unusually mission-aligned.

There is clearly room in the education sector for more high-quality HR / Talent consultants like Leadership Advisory Group based on KIPP LA’s experiences.