Unleashed

The episode delivers a useful real-time market narrative (4-phase cycle, sold-out firms, structural understaffing) and actionable PE business development tips, but it is padded with repetition, filler, and fairly surface-level observations that dilute the density across a 58-minute runtime.

“I have seen this for 23 years. When times are good for consulting, they over staff, and when times are bad, they over fire, if you will. And they find themselves in these weird, uh, states, uh, of limbo.”

“If you're going to hold it for seven years, you can't just take, you can't just keep taking cost out to improve the, the, the, you know, the, the margins you got. You actually have to grow this thing”

Most framing is conventional market commentary (AI augments rather than replaces, uncertainty hurts investment), but the overhire/overfire structural critique and the zombie funds observation offer genuine practitioner perspective not commonly articulated this crisply.

“It's kind of funny that, you know, they call themselves strategic, uh, consulting firms, but when it comes to staffing, uh, you know, they're actually not that strategic.”

“zombie funds are private equity firms that have effectively decided to not raise their next fund. So they're just, they're just going to own the portfolio companies that they own today until they sell those”

Chad Oakley is a genuine domain expert with 23 years in consulting-specific retained search, 1,600+ completed searches, and direct prior experience at Bain - he has done this at scale and speaks from real transactional data, not theory.

“since we started the practice 23 years ago, we've completed just over 1600 of those, uh, searches during that time”

“I started my career at Deloitte, uh, consulting. I uh, then went to get uh, my MBA at the Wharton School. And then I joined Bain Co.”

The episode earns points for compensation study data points (52% spread, 13% AI premium, 17pp energy uptick), two concrete AI use-case narratives, and PE structural mechanics; it loses points for rarely naming specific firms in examples and relying on estimated figures like '75% of consulting projects involve AI.'

“52%. That's the difference in compensation between former consultants in the 2020 MBA class and those in the 2023 MBA class”

“this particular consulting firm helped design an AI tool that reviewed and summarized all of their historical client interactions, right. All the conversations they had with them, historically analyzed that particular client's portfolio composition, their liquidity, debt exposure and what their financial goals were”

The host prepares reasonably well (cites McKinsey AI 2025 data, asks about declining areas and PE targeting tactics), but the format is a facilitated webinar with audience questions rather than a probing interview, and there is zero pushback or genuine challenge on any claim Chad makes.

“The McKinsey State of AI 2025 report classified only 6% of organizations as AI high performers... what questions, if any, do you and your colleagues ask candidates about how they're personally using AI”

“What are some areas that used to be in the top five or ten, but have actually declined in demand? So people who on this call who specialize in those areas might, you know, find that valuable to know”