Midwest Competitor Staff Identification (3,000+ candidate database) - Global Accounting Firm

Because Human Resources is an organizational function comprised of eight or more disciplines, some of our most successful assignments have been outsourcing partnerships with a corporate Human Resources team that cannot spend the time and resources dedicated to talent research, recruiting, and selection that a specialist firm like Career Solutions Group, Inc. can.

One of our most successful large projects was with a global public accounting firm that asked us to construct a database of their competitors' talent in the Midwest. The project was so successful that it was later expanded and later updated. After four or five years, what had started as a 1,200 candidate interview record database had become a very extensive and detailed database of over 3,000 candidate interviews in metropolitan cities in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Michigan.



Using a standardized process for passive candidate research development, we identified all of our client's competitors staff personnel by discipline (tax, audit, or information systems) and by title (associate, senior, supervisor, manager, senior manager, director, partner). We developed a custom database for our client's project and created a layout to present the technical interview data we gathered. The database was searchable by fields or keywords and sortable in several options of report layouts. We also provided our client with the full database in a published three ring binder.



The published three ring binders became recruiting workbooks for our client's corporate recruiting team. Corporate recruiters could easily browse city by city through competitors' staff to target select potential candidates and to avoid candidates that could be too difficult to recruit.





In addition to gathering standard career history, education and compensation information, our staff took candidates through a detailed interview process with scripted options for tax, audit, and information systems options. We gathered industry specialization information, business entity experience (SEC public or C corp, S corp, or LLCs and partnerships).





Our question regarding "interest in a Big 5 firm" while simple, opened the door for corporate recruiters to follow up quickly with those expressing interest. Our staff gathered other key personal comments and information related to motivation for a career change.





Later when our client acquired one of its major competitors, our database information was used to determine the value of potentially incoming acquired staff due to the merger. Many less valuable staff were eliminated from the merger based upon this competitive intelligence provided to our client.