Deloitte will hire 60 new staff in SA as it beefs up its business transformation expertise

Deloitte will be hiring from graduate to partner level as it seeks to stake a claim in South Australia’s growing defence, healthcare and resources sectors.

The Air Warfare Destroyer build in South Australia is just the start of a massive defence spend.

Deloitte plans to rapidly take on more than 60 new staff in its Adelaide-based consulting practice after hiring a partner away from rival Accenture.

Don Puckridge, who spent more than 23 years at Accenture working across consulting and complex program delivery has joined Adelaide’s Deloitte team which is looking to strengthen its consulting workforce from graduate to partner levels.

Deloitte South Australia managing partner Hendri Mentz, pictured, said there were several areas of strength in the SA economy which would drive a growth in workload for the local team, and they were looking to bring people on quickly.

“We’re looking at expanding our local consulting businesses very substantially,’’ Mr Mentz said.

“The industries we are looking at, we’ve been talking about them for some time - the obvious one that has the biggest impact for us is defence industry.

“Energy and gas is critical for us and healthcare is a very substantial sector.’’

Mr Mentz said the services the consulting team would aim to provide would be mainly focused around business transformation and the technology which goes along with that.

“Most of the technology implementations we work on today are about complete business transformation,’’ he said.

In terms of the skills Deloitte would be looking to hire in, there were traditional technology skills, data analytics, human capital skills “because we believe that at least 15 per cent of any of those business transformations is actually all about people”, and business analysis skills.

“So it’s substantially broader than just technology,’’ Mr Mentz said.

“I we look at the people we are not just going to recruit but are recruiting at the moment, a lot will be around the engineering skill sets.’’

Mr Mentz said staff would be recruited at all levels of experience, with Mr Puckridge joining as a partner recently and Deloitte looking to bring on a second partner soon.

“Apart from that you’re looking at about 60 professionals we will bring in, in the first phase.

“That will be across all levels, and we will be looking at the graduate level as well.’’

Mr Mentz said Deloitte had already attracted some people back to Adelaide from interstate, and would proactively be seeking to build on this momentum, Mr Mentz said.

“That’s something that we really want to drive.’’

Mr Mentz said the goal was to bring on the new team members by January to March next year.

Deloitte Australia managing partner, consulting, Ellen Derrick, said: “The Adelaide economy is bouncing back and, with greater investment in the region, particularly in the areas of infrastructure and defence industries, businesses in Adelaide are putting themselves on the map and increasingly requiring the range of professional services offered by Deloitte.’’

For further information about the new South Australian roles Deloitte can be contacted via its careers page at deloitte.com