Smart’s consulting firm scores top honors in Vault rankings

In Vault.com’s annual surveys of the best consulting firms in the nation, ghSMART & Company ranked at No. 1 in the highly competitive categories of client interaction, level of challenge, and overall satisfaction.

For its “Best Consulting Firms to Work For 2020” survey, Vault’s ranking methodology draws on feedback from thousands of full-time professional employees and interns at firms across the country.

Vault’s selection of ghSmart as the winner in three top categories notes the extremely high regard that survey respondents had about the firm’s positive ethos and supportive culture.

“While consultants at most firms are quick to lavish praise on the people they work with,” the Vault report says, “hearing one ghSMART insider describe their coworkers as the ‘most accomplished, good-hearted, and enjoyable team on the planet’ speaks volumes to the caliber of talent ghSMART hires.”

The management consulting firm was founded in 1995 by Geoff Smart (PhD, Psychology, ’98), who saw an opportunity to establish his firm as a leader in the then-emerging area of management assessment.

“We are aspiring to build the very best firm in the world. That goes for colleagues and for clients,” he said. “It’s not any one thing that makes ghSMART special; there are thousands of small things that give people the confidence that ghSMART will help them succeed.”

Smart is also the author and co-author of a number of highly acclaimed books on the principles of effective leadership and decision-making. These include Leadocracy: Hiring More Great Leaders (Like You) into Government; Power Score: Your Formula for Leadership Success; and Who, which describes the key strategies for successful hiring.

What Smart and co-author Randy Street write in Who may also explain the firm’s success in the latest Vault employee rankings. For them, company culture and employee satisfaction are critical to success. “In business,” they write, “you are who you hire.”