Director, Resource Management

Korn Ferry

1d

About The Position

This role leads the strategic planning and deployment of talent across North America Assessment and Succession and Leadership Development engagements. The Director ensures consultants and professionals are effectively allocated across talent pools to meet client demand, maximize utilization, and support business growth. Acting as a key partner to business leaders and fee earners, the role uses data driven workforce planning to ensure the right people with the right skills are available at the right time and cost to support increasingly integrated client solutions. The role also oversees a North America based Resource Management team and works closely with Operations, Finance, and HR to drive proactive resourcing practices. Success requires strong influencing skills, emotional intelligence, data fluency, and problem solving in a fast paced, project driven environment. Optimizing consultant utilization, managing contingent labor spend, and embedding into talent discussions are core responsibilities, along with driving innovation and continuous improvement through process enhancements and the use of AI to improve efficiency and decision making.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in resource management, workforce planning or consulting operations.
• Experience within a professional services or consulting environment is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated leadership experience managing teams and senior stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of project economics, utilization, and revenue drivers.
• Strategic workforce planning and capacity modelling.
• Strong commercial and financial acumen.
• Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Influencing, negotiation, and conflict-management and stakeholder management at senior level.
• Excellent communication and executive presence.
• Ability to operate in a fast-paced, matrixed environment, working effectively under pressure and with short timelines/competing demands.
• Ability to work effectively across multiple geographies/cultures.
• Relevant bachelor’s degree.

Nice To Haves

• Experience within a professional services or consulting environment is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Demand Planning Develop and manage capacity planning through building robust demand plans based on business trends, current and anticipated pipeline of opportunities and anticipated planned growth of marquee accounts. Perform talent-related financial and business analytics requests as needed. Use/develop workforce planning tools to support forecasting, modelling, and operational action planning, including strategies to resolve staffing conflicts. Hold regular forecast review meetings with leaders, developing action plans to address resource requirements and gaps. Drive optimization of workforce structure (e.g. permanent, contingent, offshore etc) Forecast use and proposed cost of contingent workforce.
• Resource Allocation & Deployment Oversee end-to-end staffing of client engagements, ensuring alignment of skills, experience, and availability. Optimize utilization and billability while balancing employee development and engagement. Manage bench effectively and ensure timely redeployment of available resources. Resolve complex staffing conflicts and prioritize critical business needs.
• Stakeholder Engagement Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders (within assigned portfolio) on resourcing strategy and infuse productive resource planning and align practices into sales and delivery processes. Proactively partner with solution and market leaders to identify opportunities to optimize resourcing. Stay current in understanding the organizational matrix (solutions, markets, geographies, lines of business, internal functions) and be up to date on changes as they occur. Collaborate with KF Hire and Operations to align hiring plans with projected demand. Partner with key internal functions e.g. Operations to support revenue forecasting, margin improvements and cost management. Demonstrate strong commercial awareness when reporting to stakeholders: utilization, monitoring and investigating discrepancies between the data, and providing insight to the leadership teams, highlighting any potential concerns. Raise value adding business insights and supporting recommendations to leadership from reviewing RM and firm wider reports e.g. utilization reporting, forecast capacity and utilization, variance reporting, salesforce pipeline, and backlog.
• Operational Excellence & Governance Establish and maintain best-in-class resource management processes, tools, and governance frameworks encouraging consistency globally across the function. Track and report on key RM performance metrics (e.g., utilization, fill rates, bench time) Drive continuous improvement, including automation and system enhancements. Ensure data integrity and visibility across resource management platforms.
• Leadership & Team Development Lead, mentor, and develop a team within the global Resource Management function. Build capability and consistency in resource management practices across the organization. Foster a high-performance, collaborative, efficiency seeking, value adding and solutions-oriented team culture.
• Talent & Development Alignment Ensure staffing decisions align with individual development goals and career progression. Constantly evaluate the needs of the Firm, region, office, client, and consultant in determining the right resourcing strategy Ensure capability gaps are identified and provide input into learning and development strategies. Ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion objectives are met through equitable staffing practices. Help expose new or unknown talents to engagement teams, advocating for their capability to be successful in a new environment. Seek and provide feedback; maintain an ongoing feedback loop with consultants and people managers on performance. Utilize information to enhance development opportunities for consultants moving forward. Apply cultural intelligence to adjust staffing approach to the needs and cultural norms of countries.
• Digital & AI-Enabled Resource Management Champion the adoption of AI and advanced analytics to enhance resource planning, forecasting, and deployment decisions. Identify and support the implementation of AI-driven tools and automation to improve efficiency, accuracy, and scalability of resource management processes. Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and industry best practices to evolve the resource management function Partner with Technology and Data teams to embed predictive insights (e.g., demand forecasting, skills matching, utilization optimization) Support the drive of a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, leveraging AI to reduce manual effort and enhance decision quality

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees