What A Difference an HR Professional Can Make

We’ve seen an increasing number of skilled HR professionals join private equity businesses. And what a difference they can make.  At PER we first meet them during a recruitment process. And from our perspective, having a well informed, organised coordinator for recruitment is a fantastic benefit.  But for the private equity team itself it can make a huge difference to the success of a recruitment programme. 

The HR professional can sit with the investment team to scope out the requirements, assess current team members for potential internal moves, beauty parade recruiters, ensure value for money in recruitment costs, promote the firm to candidates, participate in and coordinate the assessment process, manage remuneration negotiations and deliver a great induction programme for the successful candidate when they join.

And those are just the benefits in the recruitment process.  We’ve seen talented HR professionals play a major role in many facets of the business such as developing its people, improving the management skills of the senior team, enhancing internal communication, streamlining comp and benefits and driving some major organisational structural changes through.

So when does a private equity firm decide to add an HR professional to its team? Usually when the growth of the business has begun to highlight weaknesses in the organisational structure. Perhaps some key people have departed, succession issues are looming, there are too many people now for the business to be run informally by the founder and  everyone has a different job title and a different pay scale.

The costs of adding this key person are soon outweighed by the benefits if star performers are retained, recruitment costs are managed and the investment team’s time is optimised.

There is now a body of experienced HR professionals who understand private equity and its nuances and know how to make a difference.  And I don’t know of any team with an HR professional on board who would go back to the good old days when they did all that ‘people stuff’ themselves.