Deloitte Consulting embarks on recruitment drive in Adelaide
A growing South Australian economy has seen Deloitte join the list of consultancies looking toward Adelaide, with the firm announcing plans to rapidly grow its local consulting team.
Big Four professional services firm Deloitte is embarking on a recruitment drive in South Australia with the aim of upping its local consulting practice numbers to greater than 60 in the coming months. The firm has been enthusiastically touting Adelaide’s potential for some time, forecasting in a series of 2017 reports that the South Australian economy could be worth as much as $134 billion by 2027, driven by 2 million people.
Deloitte said it will be looking to recruit both experienced consultants and graduates, and is also focused on retaining local talent and luring professionals back home. Already, the state appears to be reversing a decades-long ‘brain drain’, last year achieving positive net interstate migration for the first time in around 30 years. By comparison, in 2016 South Australia had a net loss of 7,700 people, with close to half aged between 20-34 years old.
“We are strongly focused on encouraging our local employees to remain in Adelaide to build their careers here, and for those who might have left the state, to return, bringing their professional experiences and insights with them,” said Hendri Mentz, managing partner of Deloitte South Australia. “Quite simply, younger people no longer need to move to bigger cities to develop rewarding and challenging careers.”
In an interview with local media, Mentz stated that the expanded consulting team in Adelaide would be focused on business transformations and related technology, with the defence industry followed by energy & gas and healthcare as those sectors which would have the most impact on business. As to potential hires, sought after skills include traditional technology skills, data analytics, and human capital skills, along with engineering.
Deloitte is now the third of the three largest professional services firms in Australia to announce a job creation agenda in SA in recent months, but all with varying angles. In September, Accenture announced an aerospace and defence technology hub to be built in Adelaide, creating 2,000 jobs over the next five years, while earlier this year PwC said it would establish an onshore delivery centre in the city, with 300 new positions.
Deloitte meanwhile says that the expansion of its Consulting practice is a reflection of the services required by clients in a growing economy. To support its own growth, the firm recently recruited Accenture veteran Don Puckridge as a Consulting partner. A graduate of the University of Adelaide, Puckridge spent altogether twenty-three and a half years with Accenture, most recently as a partner in its products, strategy and consulting practice.
“I am delighted to have been appointed for our business in Adelaide,” Puckridge said. “Here at Deloitte we have enormous confidence in the Adelaide market and its growth potential both for our firm and for our clients. With greater investment in the region, particularly in the areas of infrastructure and defence industry, the Adelaide economy is well and truly bouncing back and businesses are putting themselves on the map.”
