From PwC to Independent Consulting: Building Sustainable Recruitment Systems in the Age of AI

An exclusive interview with Melissa Kelly, Founder of MK Talent Advisory, by Roy Perlson, founder of Jobago.ai digital outplacement, on building sustainable recruitment systems, transitioning from corporate to entrepreneurship, and navigating AI's impact on talent acquisition.

Melissa Kelly, Founder of MK Talent Advisory

Background and Transition to Entrepreneurship

Question: Tell us about your background and what led you to start MK Talent Advisory.

Melissa Kelly: I've been in talent acquisition for 15 years now. I actually started in travel and tourism and worked my way through several a lot cheaper businesses before joining PwC. Last year, I took redundancy from PwC and started MK Talent Advisory in August, so I've been going for 15 months now.

I also made a big life change during lockdown. I moved from London to Norfolk, and I'm really enjoying the slower pace of life here. It's a lot cheaper too, which is definitely why I've stayed!

The business focuses on helping companies build internal recruitment capability so they can take control of their recruitment, get better hires, and not have to rely on agencies and agency fees. It's very much about building sustainable recruitment systems that work now and can scale into the future.

Question: When you left the corporate world of PwC, what was that transition like? What can you take from that tier one corporate environment that's practical for SMEs?

Melissa Kelly: You really do leave the comfort of the ‘Ritz Carlton’, as you put it. You leave behind structure and support, and you don't realise how privileged you are to have all these things when you're employed at a top-tier firm. When you leave, and it's gone, you realise how many hats you have to wear and how much you have to look after yourself.

But there are a huge number of positives to running your own business as well. The freedom to build what you want your career to look like and what you want your business to look like is really exciting because you don't have any red tape.

What I learned at PwC in a very high-quality, high-standard, high-professionalism environment was understanding how to scope work,  building frameworks, project management, client interactions, how engagements work, and risk management. Taking all of that learning means I've been able to hit the ground running with clients and know how to run an engagement, rather than going in completely blind.

Business Model and Client Acquisition

Question: You mentioned helping businesses build internal recruitment capability. What does that look like in practice?

Melissa Kelly: I help businesses identify what the right recruitment delivery model is for them. A lot of people think it's either build an in-house function or go out to agencies. Actually, you've got a number of different models that could work. You might want to use RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing). You might want to use MSP (managed service providers) - and there’s embedded talent and fractional talent teams now.

There are lots of different ways that you can execute recruitment outside of the traditional methods. We can power it using different technologies that can really help. So it's about thinking how you can do recruitment a bit differently, rather than just posting a job and waiting for an applicant.

Question: How do you get clients? This is probably the most important question for a small business. Is it word of mouth, selling, or networking?

Melissa Kelly: What I realised is, because I've been in big corporate and big enterprise businesses my whole career, I've only networked within my businesses. When I left PwC, my LinkedIn connections were about 1,700, and most of those were from travel, PwC, clients of PwC, and maybe some recruiters and candidates. My reputation when I left PwC and went out into the world as just Mel Kelly was zero, really.

What I've worked on over the last 15 months is building up my network. That is the most critical thing you can do as a business owner. You will learn so much from other business owners who are five years ahead of you, 10 steps ahead of you. They can help with referrals and all of that, but it takes time to build those relationships and build that trust.

I think anyone going from corporate to the real world needs to spend a lot of time building up a network. That doesn't always have to be your ideal client profile. It's important to build a community of people, other business owners around you in the same industry, to learn from. People are way more open to giving you their time than you'll realise.

Question: Practically, how do you do it? What's your LinkedIn activity like?

Melissa Kelly: I do all the things LinkedIn gurus tell you to do. Make sure you update your profile to be attractive to your ideal client profile. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn outreach because that's where most of my clients spend their time.

The content I create is based on the work that I do and the value I can add. I share free information, giving tips and advice. I used to run LinkedIn Lives and webinars where I would just do different subject matters and give all the information, practical steps, tips, and tools that people can use in their own businesses. I give out to hopefully attract in, and it allows you to show your expertise.

I also use automation tools. I use something called Dripify, which helps send out connection requests to my ideal client profile automatically. I create the list on Sales Navigator, download it, put it into Dripify, and that automatically sends invites. When people accept, you can set up a messaging sequence that goes out and hopefully starts a conversation. It can feel a little impersonal, though, so you need to play around with it.

LinkedIn messaging has worked best for me. Email marketing hasn't really worked for me to date. I'm going to be launching a website soon, which will help with SEO and professional proofreading.

Talent Acquisition at Scale: The PwC Example

Question: For someone reading this, how is a talent acquisition function structured in a large organisation like PwC?

Melissa Kelly: At PwC, we had about 100 people in the recruitment team, which included our RPO provider. That's basically a separate company that picks up a number of positions, usually higher volume, lower-level roles. Then you have the in-house PwC team, who look at experienced hires, from manager level and above, up to director level.

We were recruiting about 4,000 people a year across the network. When you're in large organisations, you generally have a team for everything. We had the experienced acquisition team, an RPO looking after junior hires, a separate employer brand team, and a separate contingent recruitment team.

The process covers everything from advertising the role all the way through to the hire and start. It's kicked off by roles being approved by HR, then we work with hiring managers to understand role requirements, person specifications, create job adverts, manage applications, book interviews, chase feedback, negotiate offers, and eventually get people through the front door.

All of this is powered by recruitment technology. ATS systems, applicant tracking systems, and assessment tools. The other layer is looking at your data and analytics to see how your team is performing in terms of quality, speed of hire, cost per hire, and using data and metrics to inform your decisions around where you attract candidates from and if you're losing candidates at certain stages.

AI's Impact on Recruitment

Question: There's a big discussion right now about candidates using ChatGPT and Claude to improve their CVs. Can ATS systems block this or use it against candidates?

Melissa Kelly: No. The answer is no. ATS systems can't identify whether something was written by AI. They won't be able to block someone who applies using AI. I don't think ATS tools are sophisticated enough to really know whether someone's used AI or not.

What a lot of companies are doing now, and what I'm recommending, is to be really clear on your careers page or even on the job advert itself about your expectations of a candidate using AI. Anyone can be naive to the fact that candidates are going to use AI. Most of us are using AI ourselves in our everyday lives. But what we need to be really clear on is that you might use AI to help write your CV, but at some point, we're going to meet, and we need you to be authentic. We need the CV to accurately reflect your skills and abilities.

The trouble now is that candidates are applying with AI, and they can apply while they're sleeping. You plug your CV in, and AI will go out and apply for jobs. AI is now matching keywords in job descriptions into a candidate's CV perfectly. You get a perfectly formed CV with all the keywords, so AI in ATS systems goes, 'This is a 10 out of 10 candidate because their skills matched 100%.' But what happens for recruitment teams is that now everyone is a 10 out of 10.

Because there are no real barriers to applying anymore, thanks to Easy Apply, we've made it really easy for people to apply. Well, now everyone can apply with the perfect CV generated by AI. The trouble for recruiters is identifying who the genuine candidates are.

I think we need to shift to adding a bit more friction again at the application stage, so it's harder for people to use AI, and it can show us who the genuinely skilled candidates are. We need other ways to assess people at that early stage, so we're getting qualified candidates in the pipeline.

Question: What's your view on automatic video interviews for first-stage candidate screening?

Melissa Kelly: I understand why people are attracted to using video interview tools. They serve a purpose in terms of filtering candidates quickly. But I personally don't think they're great from a candidate experience perspective because they're so impersonal.

I've actually done a couple of interviews in the last year, and I've done both types. One was a video interview where it asked questions, and I could record my answer and rerecord it if I didn't like it. The other was an AI video interview where I had an AI bot asking me questions.

I didn't like either of those things because they just felt super impersonal, especially for the roles I was applying for, which were more senior roles. There's a lack of context on both sides. I've had no opportunity to ask the employer any questions about the role or clarify anything about the job description. Everything's based on my assumptions, and I can't clarify any points before I answer.

It goes very one way and is very impersonal. A lot of people feel uncomfortable doing it, don't feel any connection to the business, and so maybe won't want to proceed. I think it's taking a really human process and function of recruitment and dehumanising it. Everyone wants to have a conversation with someone about a job, especially mid-career. At least I want to speak to a recruiter before I'm interviewed. I want to ask some questions about this job first.

When that's taken away from you, it doesn't feel like you're interviewing at a very people-focused business. Whilst we need to be optimising the front end of our recruitment processes because we have AI-enabled candidates, I don't think trying to fix the problem with more AI or more technology is necessarily the right fix. There are other steps that can be taken through assessment and conversation, especially at mid to senior level.

Interview Best Practices

Question: When people actually get to the interview stage, what really matters in these conversations? What works well, and what works against a candidate?

Melissa Kelly: It sounds really cliche, but authenticity and just being yourself are so powerful. I think people underestimate how powerful it is just to go in and be yourself.

I do think it's important to understand that different people have different needs and will perform differently in certain environments. I'm not actually the best interviewee in the world, even though I work in recruitment. When I've done interviews, I walk out and think that was awful.

I think it's really important that candidates go in and be themselves, but also just be really clear on what skills they have now, what they'll develop in the future, and what transferable skills they have. Not just thinking about what you've done before, but how you can transfer your skills or what your potential is, and what the company's going to get from you coming into the business.

The other side of it is that some candidates aren't going to perform as well as others, and I think interviewers need to be trained on how to recruit properly. They should all be trained in interview skills, how to ask open questions, not leading ones. They need to understand their own unconscious bias and be able to identify that it can show up in an interview. They might have an affinity bias with someone, and the decisions they make could be based on whether they like this person or have the same interests rather than skills.

It's really important that hiring teams are trained and interview properly so that candidates can feel confident they're going to be treated fairly within an interview environment.

Question: Do you provide this kind of training?

Melissa Kelly: Definitely. I've done a lot of upskilling with hiring managers before, around unconscious bias, but also providing them with the tools and resources they need. There are so many businesses I've gone into where interviewers don't even have interview guides that are specific to the role they're interviewing for. They haven't sat down and said, 'What are the skills we're actually looking for here that we're looking for in every single candidate?'

It has to be consistent across the board. Everyone needs to be given the same opportunity.

What you find is that interviewers go in and just see where the conversation goes, ask a few questions, and then they try to compare. But you're comparing apples and oranges.

Part of what I do in my business is help upskill hiring managers and create the templates, the competencies, the scoring criteria, and the benchmarks that they should be assessing candidates against. Not going on whether or not they liked them or gut feel. That's a sure way of hiring the wrong person and also potentially discriminating against someone based on their biases.

Managing Declined Candidates and Silver Medalists

Question: Have you ever done anything to mitigate the pain of saying no to candidates who've been through multiple interviews but weren't selected?

Melissa Kelly: Absolutely. There are so many times when you've got two fantastic candidates going head to head at the end of the process. First and foremost, it's really important that you gather objective, constructive feedback that you give to that candidate to help them in their next role or their next opportunity, or if they were going to reapply.

The ideal scenario is that anyone who has interviewed at your business should walk away feeling like, 'I'm going to go back in six months because I really want to work there,' because their experience has been so great. That's the lasting impression you want to make on a candidate.

Generally, when you are down to the last few, those who get declined, but are actually still very strong, get called ‘Silver Medalists’. What we do with those candidates is we'll put them in a silver medalist talent pool for the role, the function, the sector, whatever way you're recruiting. Silver medalists' talent pools are great because if another similar role comes out with the same skill set or a similar skill set, you can reach out to them to say, 'We've got another role open. We'd love you to come back and reapply.'

Talent pooling and managing talent pools properly are not done as well as they should be in businesses. But certainly for silver medalists, you could cut your recruitment time in half if you manage that pool in the right way and you nurture those people. The time they dedicated in the first instance, you know they're good. They're going to be good somewhere else. So look after them properly in the talent pool.

Referrals and Diversity

Question: What about referrals? Is this something you use extensively?

Melissa Kelly: I think referrals are a really critical part of any strategy around recruitment. Although you should always have different channels to attract candidates from. Referrals are a great one because most companies have referral processes and policies where the employee will get some cash or something as a thank you for referring someone into the business if they're successful.

People usually know people who are a bit like themselves. People like referrals because if you're successful in your business, then you'll probably know other people who are similar-minded and of a similar skill level.

But my caution with referrals is that if you're only employing people who are like the people you already have employed, then you're not going to have a very diverse workforce. That's why I say referrals are a critical part of a multichannel strategy, because what you don't want to do is just go through referrals and keep getting the same type of person over and over again. We need diverse pools to make sure that we are reaching underrepresented groups, that we have programmes and structures in place that improve diversity. You need a multichannel recruitment approach.

Key Takeaways

• Network building is essential for business success: Transitioning from corporate to independent consulting requires deliberately building a network beyond your previous employer. People are more willing to help than you might expect.

• Transferable corporate skills are valuable: High-quality frameworks from tier one firms (client scoping, project management, risk management) can be applied to SME clients and provide a strong foundation for independent consulting.

• LinkedIn is powerful for B2B client acquisition: Combine organic content (tips, webinars, LinkedIn Lives) with automation tools (Sales Navigator, Dripify) for systematic outreach, but maintain authenticity in messaging.

• AI is overwhelming recruitment systems: Easy Apply combined with AI-generated CVs creates perfect keyword matches, making it nearly impossible to distinguish genuine candidates. The solution is adding strategic friction and alternative assessments, not more AI.

• Video interviews damage candidate experience: Automated and AI bot interviews dehumanise the process, especially for mid-senior roles. Maintain human interaction in early stages to preserve candidate connection and employer brand.

• Structured interviews reduce bias: Hiring managers need training, role-specific interview guides, competency frameworks, and scoring criteria to ensure fair, consistent evaluation and avoid discrimination risks.

• Silver medalist talent pools cut recruitment time: Maintaining relationships with high-quality declined finalists and organising them into talent pools can halve future recruitment time for similar roles.

• Referrals need balance for diversity: Referral programmes are valuable but must be part of a multichannel strategy. Over-reliance on referrals replicates existing workforce demographics and reduces diversity.

• Multiple recruitment delivery models exist: Beyond in-house teams or agencies, companies can use RPO, MSPs, embedded/fractional teams, and technology enablement to build sustainable systems.

• Data drives TA effectiveness: Track quality of hire, speed of hire, cost per hire, and funnel conversion rates to make evidence-based decisions about recruitment strategy and demonstrate value to leadership.

About Melissa Kelly

Melissa Kelly is the Founder of MK Talent Advisory, bringing 15 years of talent acquisition expertise to help businesses build sustainable internal recruitment capabilities. After a successful career at PwC and other major organisations, she founded her consultancy in August 2024 to help companies reduce agency dependency, improve hiring quality, and design recruitment systems that scale.

Based in Norfolk, Melissa specialises in recruitment operating model design, hiring manager training, talent pooling strategies, and technology enablement. Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn or visit her MK Talent Advisory to learn more about building effective recruitment systems for your business.

Subscribe to Melissa’s LinkedIn Newsletter.

Watch her past LinkedIn Events.

Follow her on YouTube where she shares invaluable insights on talent strategy.

Mel’s recent interview on the Recruiter Enablement YouTube channel by Adam Gordon:

Mel Kelly, MK Talent Advisory, on the 'IMPACT' framework for talent acquisition