There are a lot of smart people in the world.

There are also a lot of smart people who have decided to become advisors.

These two facts are not entirely unrelated.

As more executives move into fractional, advisory, and consulting roles, companies have access to an extraordinary amount of experience. That is a very good thing.

It also creates a new challenge.

How do you know whom to hire?

Because finding someone with expertise is relatively easy. Finding someone who can take that expertise, apply it to your particular situation, work effectively with your team, challenge your thinking, and help you actually get something done?

That takes a little more work.

The right expert is not always the right advisor.

So before you get overly impressed by someone’s résumé, LinkedIn profile, or collection of very attractive PowerPoint slides, here are a few questions worth asking.

1. Have They Actually Solved a Problem Like Yours?

Experience matters.

But relevant experience matters more.

Someone can have 25 years of impressive industry experience without ever having dealt with the particular challenge sitting in front of you.

So I would worry less about whether someone has held exactly the right titles and more about what they have actually done.

Have they built something like this? Fixed something like this? Led an organization through a similar transition? Seen what happens when this particular strategy goes sideways?

There is tremendous value in pattern recognition.

An experienced advisor may not have encountered your exact situation before, but they should be able to recognize enough of the terrain to know where the potholes tend to be.

And ideally, they will point them out before you drive into one.

2. Are They Trying to Understand Your Problem, or Sell You Their Solution?

This is one of my favorites.

If you talk to a technology consultant and every road somehow leads to buying new technology, you may want to keep asking questions.

The same applies to outsourcing, organizational restructuring, new providers, new processes, and just about everything else.

Good advisors diagnose before they prescribe.

They ask questions. They listen. They are curious about why things work the way they do today, including the things everyone agrees are completely ridiculous but somehow have been done that way since 2017.

Most importantly, they are willing to conclude that the answer may not involve buying anything at all.

Sometimes you need a new solution. Sometimes you need to fix the one you already have. And sometimes the correct recommendation is:

Do nothing yet.

That may not be terribly exciting. It can also save you a fortune.

3. Will They Tell You When They Think You Are Wrong?

There is not much value in paying someone to professionally agree with you.

A good advisor should be willing to challenge assumptions, ask uncomfortable questions, and tell you when they see something differently.

That does not mean being argumentative for sport. Nobody needs that person in the meeting either.

It means having enough experience and confidence to say:

“I understand why you are looking at it that way. Here is what concerns me.”

That is where outside perspective becomes valuable.

People inside organizations inevitably develop shared assumptions. Some are correct. Some used to be correct. And some have simply been repeated so many times that everyone has stopped asking why.

A good advisor asks why.

Sometimes more than once.

4. Can They Work With the People Who Actually Have to Make This Happen?

Strategy is the fun part.

Implementation is where everyone’s personality shows up.

An advisor can develop a brilliant strategy, but if the people responsible for executing it do not understand it, believe in it, or know what they are supposed to do next, you have purchased a very expensive document.

Possibly with excellent graphics.

The best advisors can operate at multiple levels of an organization.

They can have the executive conversation about strategy, investment, and outcomes, then sit down with the people doing the work and understand what will actually happen on Monday morning.

Because eventually, Monday morning arrives.

That is usually where you find out whether the strategy was any good.

5. Do They Know What They Don’t Know?

This may be one of the most underrated qualities in an advisor.

No one is an expert in everything.

Workforce issues in particular have an annoying habit of crossing boundaries. A contingent workforce project can quickly involve technology, procurement, talent acquisition, finance, legal, supplier management, analytics, change management, and organizational design.

One person may understand several of those areas very well.

All of them? Probably not.

I have much more confidence in an advisor who can say:

“This part is outside my lane. I know who we should bring in.”

That is not admitting weakness.

That is exercising judgment.

It is also why I increasingly think companies should consider not only the advisor sitting across the table, but the network behind them.

Who can they call when the problem changes?

Because it usually does.

6. How Will You Know Whether the Engagement Worked?

This sounds obvious.

It is amazing how often it is not.

Before an engagement starts, everyone should understand what success looks like.

And I do not mean the deliverables.

“We completed the assessment” is a deliverable. “We identified \$2 million in addressable program leakage and built a plan to capture it” is an outcome.

“We developed a workforce strategy” is a deliverable. “Leadership now has a workforce strategy, priorities, ownership, and an execution plan” is an outcome.

There is a difference.

A good advisor should be comfortable defining that difference before the work begins.

7. Will They Leave You Smarter, or More Dependent?

This one matters to me.

The goal of consulting should not be to create an indefinite need for more consulting.

Yes, there are situations where companies need ongoing advisory support. But even then, good advisors should be transferring knowledge, strengthening internal capability, and helping the organization make better decisions on its own.

At some point, the advisor should be able to leave. And the wheels should remain attached to the vehicle.

If the solution only works while the consultant is standing next to it, I am not sure we have actually solved the problem.

And Yes, Chemistry Matters

I know. Very scientific.

But you are probably going to spend a fair amount of time with this person.

They may interview your employees, sit in executive meetings, challenge long-held assumptions, deliver uncomfortable findings, and occasionally point out that the thing everyone thought was the problem is not actually the problem.

You do not have to want to vacation together.

But you do need trust.

And chemistry does not mean choosing someone who thinks exactly like you.

In fact, the advisor who makes you slightly uncomfortable may be the one asking the question everyone inside the organization has learned not to ask.

What matters is whether you trust their intent, respect their judgment, and believe they can work effectively with the people who will ultimately make the change happen.

Look Beyond the Individual

This is one of the ideas behind the Consulting Consortium at Workforce Strategy Advisors.

WSA brings together independent advisors and specialists with different areas of workforce expertise. Sometimes a client needs one of us. Sometimes a challenge crosses several disciplines and it makes sense to bring in additional expertise.

The point is not to make the engagement bigger.

It is to make the expertise fit the problem.

And I think that is worth considering whenever you hire an outside advisor, whether that person comes through WSA or somewhere else.

Do not just ask: Is this person an expert?

Ask: Have they solved problems like mine? Will they challenge our thinking? Can they work with our people? Do they know where their own expertise ends? Can they bring in other expertise when we need it? Will we be better equipped when they leave?

There are plenty of experts out there.

The trick is finding the one who can help you solve the problem you actually have.

And occasionally help you discover that it was not the problem you had in the first place.