Relationship-based staffing from Malone fuels growth of IT department despite tough labor market
Executive Summary
This Fortune 500 company, like many organizations throughout the U.S., was struggling to find enough IT talent to complete its many critical initiatives. After unsuccessfully testing a number of staffing firms over the years to address their IT talent shortage, Malone has proven adept at finding the scarce talent they needed.
- Malone applies “extreme vetting” techniques to ensure candidates possess the necessary skills and are good cultural fits.
- Malone takes the time to keep this client apprised of IT labor market factors, including current supply, salaries, and candidate expectations.
- To date, Malone has placed a significant portion of this organization’s total IT staff with future needs anticipated to grow.
The Client
Large metals firm with 14,000 employees and 120,000 customers
Started almost 80 years ago as a small local distributor of steel bar, this company is now the largest metal service center in North America. They manage more than 70 distinct brands in more than 300 locations in 40 states and in more than a dozen countries. A Fortune 500 company with 14,000 employees and over 125,000 customers, this client claims a customer retention rate north of 90%. Their success, like Malone’s, is based on a commitment to quality, speed of service, and taking care of both their customers and employees.
The Challenge
Shortage of IT workers hampers initiatives
Finding high quality IT professionals is hard: there are too many IT job openings and too few qualified candidates. The imbalance means that some organizations struggle to find the talent they need to complete all their planned work. Even though this client is large with deep internal resources, they had turned much of their IT recruiting over to of a number of outside staffing agencies with varying degrees of success
The Approach
Malone proves it can find high quality IT candidates
Nearly five years ago, this client first turned to Malone to fill an opening for an ERP delivery manager. Shortly after Malone successfully filled this position, the firm’s CIO turned to Malone to fill a senior manager slot. Soon, a third hiring manager, having seen Malone’s success, requested their help filling another two openings. Today, this client’s needs run the gamut of IT specialties, including site support, help desk, server and networking engineering, systems engineering, business systems analysis, and project management.
Unlike many staffing organizations, Malone takes the time to understand their clients’ hiring challenges, their differentiators, their culture, and individual hiring manager’s needs. This allows Malone’s recruiters, each with an average of 10 years’ experience, to create specific, fact-based interview questions. Each candidate then sits for a minimum of two phone or in-person interviews before they’re presented to the client. For the client, this extreme vetting saves the hiring manager time because they’ll meet with fewer – but better qualified – candidates. The Malone method works well for both client and candidate. Too many other staffing firms take a “numbers based” approach to finding candidates. Their recruiting relies on simply matching keywords. It’s no surprise that this type of search turns up candidates mismatched for the job, frustrating candidate and client alike.
The Results
Malone cares about its clients’ success – and it shows
When this client initially shifted more work to Malone, it was about results. Now it’s about both results and the relationship. Malone takes the time to set realistic expectations about the current labor market and salaries – even if it’s not what the client would like to hear. Over time, this candor builds trust. Trust, coupled with responsiveness and high quality candidates, has set Malone apart.
- A relationship that started with a request from one manager for one opening has expanded to more than a dozen of the client’s internal managers now relying on Malone for both direct hires and contract positions.
- The time spent preparing for and conducting interviews results in better quality candidates.
- To date, Malone has placed a large portion of the total number of people in the firm’s IT organization.
- With upcoming initiatives around business intelligence and data warehousing, the client’s IT staffing needs and their reliance on Malone will continue to grow.
