For up-and-coming HR professionals eyeing the C-suite, professional services firms aren’t a bad place to cut your teeth.

Of the top 10 companies where more than 16,400 current CHROs and CPOs worked prior to holding the top role, four—Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, and EY—are consulting firms, according to a data analysis provided to HR Brew by employment data provider Live Data Technologies.

After freelance or self-employed roles, a job at Accenture was the most common work experience for this cohort prior to entering the C-suite, with 0.64% of CHROs or CPOs spending time at the firm.

Accenture’s former CHRO, Jill Smart, can attest to this. Smart, who led HR at Accenture from 2004 to 2014, keeps in touch with some two dozen company alumni who went on to become CHROs or CPOs at other firms. Current and former Accenture staff say the nature of professional services work—where your product is people—helps prepare employees for top HR jobs elsewhere.

Keep reading here.—CV

Organizations made investments this year to give recruiters an efficient, simplified process for finding and hiring the best candidates. These investments are expected to continue shrinking the time it takes to fill requisitions, according to the new Employ Recruiter Nation Report, released today.

Employ, which offers popular ATS platforms such as JazzHR and Lever, surveyed more than 1,200 TA pros and recruiters during August and September and bolstered those survey insights with data from its more than 22,0000 customers across its ATS platforms.

“Businesses are really focused on making sure the hiring process is more flexible to alleviate stress and improve the candidate experience…speeding up the hiring process is the leading change here,” said Jennifer Purcell, Employ’s director of content marketing. “Employee customers saw a time to fill decrease by seven days in the last 12 months. It’s down from 48 days in 2023 to 41 days this year.”

Employ customer data reveals that nearly all industry segments represented in its platforms saw reductions in the time it takes to find and hire a new employee.

Keep reading here.—AD

New Disney CEO just dropped—but give it a few.

Disney said this week it would choose its next CFO in early 2026, a long-awaited indication that the media behemoth might finally be moving past its succession woes after current CEO Bob Iger retires.

After a messy succession attempt in 2022, it’s the first time Disney has publicly confirmed a timeline for Iger’s replacement.

Iger’s quest to name a successor hasn’t quite rivaled Logan Roy’s odyssey—but it hasn’t been especially pretty.

Keep reading on CFO Brew.—NP