Company Overview

A publicly traded consulting and research firm, the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) provides best-practices research to businesses and their top executives on a subscription basis. Members pay an average yearly fee of $36,000 for access to CEB’s library of close to 300,000 research reports The firm boasts a 92–percent renewal rate.

Research is centered on the management strategies of companies and the trends affecting specific industries. Reports are available to employees of member organizations. In fiscal 2005 alone, CEB published 230 book-length reports, and its member companies ordered more than 630,000 copies.

What are they all reading about? An operations director could log on to find what problems might arise from a major systems-integration project; or a PR director could read about how a scandal affects an organization and learn detailed ways of dealing with those repercussions.

Initiated in 1993 as part of the Advisory Board Company, CEB spun off in 1997 and has recently started building a traditional management consulting team. This new arm of the firm advises member companies on how to improve their businesses by putting CEB research findings into practice. “We’re a small yet growing part of the practice,” says a consultant who works in the new division. “We’re already really, really busy.”

CEB continues to chalk up solid numbers, growing at a 25-percent clip or better every year of late. Insiders speculate that a reason for the firm’s healthy balance sheet may be its strategy of charging firms an annual fee rather than working on a project basis the way other consulting firms do. This one-time fee creates a predictable cost structure for clients and a stable revenue stream for CEB.

Despite its announcement that 2007 sales wouldn’t keep pace with the previous year’s, CEB opened additional offices in Chicago and San Francisco.

INSIDER SCOOP

Office Space
Typical consulting drawbacks such as endless travel and living out of a hotel don’t apply to CEB. The firm’s consultants traditionally travel only 10 to 20 percent of the time, and most of their work is based out of the Washington, D.C., office. CEB consultants get to implement complex ideas, but they don’t have to spend 16 hours a day doing it. “At CEB, they’re innovating consulting and making it fun," an insider told us. "For someone like me who’s been around consulting for a while, this is really exciting.” 
 
Casual Friday Every Day
Because of its emphasis on research over traditional hands-on consulting, not a lot of clients roll through the D.C. office. Consequently, blue jeans and T-shirts can be found any day of the week. But CEB people know when they have to step it up: “When we visit client sites, we dress very professionally,” says one insider—so you might need a suit or two.
 
Rack ’Em
Video games and pool tables can be found in the CEB offices, but employees tend to save their quarters for the end of the workday. Although staffers like to have fun, they take their jobs very seriously. “We’re a young company with young people,” says one insider. “We definitely live the ‘work hard, play hard’ lifestyle.”
 
Getting Hired
Recruiters say that getting hired at CEB comes down to three key attributes: strong analytical and intellectual abilities, solid verbal and written communication skills, and a service-oriented mindset. For good measure, familiarize yourself with CEB’s unique business model before sitting down with the interviewer.

College grads, MBAs, and experienced hires can apply for positions in the research, member education, and marketing departments. “Although a candidate should have a good idea about what he or she wants, we pretty much determine where the recruit is best suited,” says one insider. But once you’re in, it’s relatively easy to move around. Although CEB won’t release specific hiring goals, it’s in “an incredible and very active growth mode,” an insider notes. Rising nearly 40 percent in 2005, CEB’s headcount reached 2,000 by the summer of 2006 and currently stands at nearly 2,300.

Opportunities for Undergraduates
Undergraduates enter the firm through the research and sales departments. They can determine their own career path and move between departments until they find a fit. Insiders report that people burn out quickly in these entry-level research positions. Within a year, most either advance out of research or leave the company; happily, more people advance than leave.

Advanced degrees aren’t required to move up at CEB, although college grads tend to explore graduate school opportunities after a few years; they may even qualify for the CEB Scholars Program, which sponsors fulltime study at business schools.

Interviews include the typical case/fit questions. The first round is on campus. On its website, the company lists nearly 30 schools from which it recruits. They include Ivy League schools and universities in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Opportunities for MBAs
MBAs enter the firm at a higher level than undergraduates. They serve as research consultants, sales and marketing directors, or associate directors in content delivery. The interview process is similar to that for undergraduates, with a little more focus on the candidate’s area of interest. The company recruits from top regional schools and top-ten programs. It also accepts applications on its website.
 
Opportunities for Midcareer Candidates
Midcareer hires enter the firm at all levels, although they usually take senior positions. CEB uses several recruiting methods to find experienced hires, including headhunters, job sites, its own website, and employee referrals. The interview process for midcareer hires is more extensive than for undergrads and MBAs, since the roles they generally fill are higher up in the organization.

“Our ideal midcareer person is someone who came from a top-tier undergraduate institution, received an MBA from a top school, and has three to eight years of experience on top of that,” a recruitment insider says.