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.

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.

Medical Device Competitor Staff Identification - Cardiovascular Device Manufacturer

While recruiting process outsourcing and executive search are Career Solutions Group's focus, we find that sometimes the value of our service is different from our client's perspective.

Take for example what started as a recruitment process outsourcing project for Guidant Corporation (now part of Boston Scientific) and became what we call a "Competitive Talent Assessment".

As with most of our large outsourced recruiting projects, we developed a custom database for the assignment based upon our client's specifications and requirements.

For Guidant whose corporate offices were right across Monument Circle from our office, they asked us to first develop a database of just the names and titles of the sales people at their primary direct competitors, concentrating on the eastern half of the US. We built a database of over 500 salespeople from Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Biotronic, Cook, St Jude, J&J Cordis, and some other smaller players.

Guidant instructed our team of recruiters to work quickly (probably since they knew what would happen in a short time).





When Guidant executives in Guidant Sales Corporation began reviewing the preliminary results of our database, they were surprised and excited. Our staff wasn't just gathering recruiting information and interest, we were gathering extremely valuable competitive information.

In addition to gathering standard candidate interview information about career history and education, we were interviewing Guidant's competitors about the specific products that they worked with (stents, guide wires, pacemakers, balloons, etc.), the number of years they had worked with each product, and whether they were certified or trained in those specific products.





However in a good percentage of the 450 total interviews, we were getting very detailed specifics from competitor sales people about their total sales volume in a particular hospital, sometimes broken down by product, sales volume by hospital or clinic in each territory, what the sales person volume had been over the past three years, and where they currently ranked against their peers.

Within a few weeks, our staff had interviewed hundreds of Guidant's competitors and details from the interviews populated the new competitor database. Medtronic and Boston Scientific's legal departments contacted Guidant's legal department when news started circulating of a retained recruiting firm on Monument Circle in Indianapolis interviewing hundreds of their employees. Their contention? They told Guidant to tell their contracted agent, Career Solutions, that we were unlawfully using their voice mail systems. Seemed a little bizarre. But, Guidant said to wrap up the project.





We delivered the finished product in several software versions and in hard copy in a three ring binder. Guidant's HR team was able to quickly recruit several key competitors over to their team as a result of the project.

We later learned the true value of the information that we had gathered from Guidant's competitors and the strategic value of our initiative. Specific competitive information was distributed internally to Guidant staff who could best utilize it. Guidant stock was trading in the $20s at the time, well below CEO Ron Dollen's comments that it should be near $100 per share. Our competitive talent assessment project was one in a series of salvos shot at higher priced competitors sending the message that Guidant intended to grow aggressively regarless of Wall Street's belief that not having a drug eluding stent would kill the company.

It did not take long for the market and the competitors to react. Through a fierce bidding war, complicated by some product recalls, Guidant was sold for $76 per share months after completion of our project.

IN-sourcing: Bringing Specialized Talent To Indiana - Clean Tech Power Generation

Prior to Coal Gasification becoming a household term during the Presidential debates, Career Solutions Group developed a custom recruiting solution for a state-of-the-art facility processing raw coal into Syngas. Our staff worked in a retained search agreement with joint venture partners Conoco Phillips E-Gas Gasification in Houston and Wabash Valley Power in Indianapolis to develop a talent acquisition and selection strategy which included custom research of passive and active candidates, systematized interviewing practices, and a detailed selection process.

This gasification facility had been built as a Department of Energy project and had unique, high tolerance processing technology. The technical management team determined that the local labor market did not have the highly trained, advanced technology technicians needed to operate the facility's equipment. Therefore, our talent recruitment and sourcing strategy required relocation of all candidates to Indiana.



Being unable to attract desireable highly trained technicians from across the US to Indiana and faced with a time-critical start up of the plant, our custom recruiting solution used unique research methodology to identify sources of passive candidates. Our staff then target recruited over 200 highly skilled technicians who had completed the desired technical curriculum to be trained to run gasification process technology.



From these 200+ potential candidates, our staff successfully recruited and referred 47 qualified candidates within a five month period. After working with the technical management interviewing team to determine the desired finalist candidates, our staff took finalists through a detailed talent selection process focused on behavioral qualifications. Eleven candidates were relocated, mostly from warmer climates like Florida, Georgia, and Southern California to Indiana. More than two years after completion of this project ten of the eleven are still at the facility.
This cutting edge facility has since been converted from coal gasification to petroleum coke gasification which converts a waste product from the oil refining process into synthetic natural gas. The plant is gaining international attention with this use of a waste product to generate energy.





In addition to our recruitment of Operating Technicians, we successfully filled Reliability Engineering positions at the plant.
Career Solutions Group's Permanent Placement Service is a project based, passive candidate recruitment system designed to recruit a high volume of passive candidates for multiple positions or target passive executive level candidates for single positions, using custom, targeted research and detailed three part finalist talent selection.

For more information on the gasification process read Wikipedia or the redefining clean energy information at theGasification Technologies Council.

National Sales Force Expansion Project - Fortune 200 Company

Custom Recruiting Solutions Based Upon Client Goals

Client Problem:
The Director of Human Resources for a major electromechanical manufacturing company (Emerson Electric) learned that he had 90 days to staff 15 new Sales Engineer territories. At the same time, the President of the Company had asked him to direct and lead an organizational survey and analysis at all company facilities in North America. His Assistant Director had been with the company for only two weeks and was not yet capable of managing either major project.

CSG’s Solution:
Career Solutions Group had filled several of this client’s Sales Engineering positions previously and understood their hiring process for this type of position. Our staff had a working knowledge of the company's technology in chemical process automation, control and instrumentation for process flow, level, temperature, pressure measurement in oil & gas, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, food processing, and other applications. Career Solutions offered to coordinate the sales force expansion for the Director of Human Resources from our Indianapolis office in a recruitment process outsource (RPO) staffing solution.

Here is how we tackled the assignment-
We laid out an aggressive timeline to complete the recruiting project while allowing for the Holiday weeks in November and December (deadline was in January).



Our first step was to ramp up our capabilities for this project to handle a larger volume of phone calls, faxes, email, data storage, and administrative support needed. We hired a Programmer to build a project specific database, hired three Staff Recruiters, and an additional Administrative Assistant to help with the high volume of data entry. Our office coordinated communication between 14 of our client’s regional offices around the US, four other external Recruiters (Houston, Minneapolis, Boulder, and Austin), and several hundred potential candidates for the 15 positions. We provided the Director of Human Resources with daily updates on our progress and weekly project status reports on position coverage and interview activity. Our staff interviewed all respondents to ads run nationally and in each local market. We interviewed additional potential candidates from target competitor sourcing and referrals.

All information gathered was entered into a database created for this project. Viable candidates were forwarded jointly to the Regional Offices and Corporate for review and scheduling interviews. We helped prepare and debrief applicants for interviews. Every person that we contacted on behalf of our client received our client’s response card sent from our database of addresses.




Our Results:
We hit our goal of having all 15 positions covered with at least four viable applicants by the first week of December. Ten positions had offers accepted before Christmas, three positions were filled internally, and two positions were cancelled by their respective regions. The client considered the project a huge success for the organization – and the database is still in use to this day.

National Market Expansion Recruiting Project - Fortune 1000 Financial Services Company

Career Solutions was retained by the CEO of a $2 billion company over several years in a strategic market expansion project.

For each of over a dozen metropolitan markets in the US, a global management consulting firm conducted a market study to determine if a given city met the corporation's criteria as an expansion market. If the market was approved, Career Solutions took over in phase two of each market to conduct a thorough assessment of talent in the market meeting the client's position profile. Our job was -



In each market, we conducted thorough research of passive and active candidates meeting the position profile. The we interviewed anywhere from 70 to 120 potential candidates per market before focusing on usually six to ten finalists.



We managed the finalist candidate pool for the Market President in each location. Our team took finalist candidates through coordinated detail interviews with either the Executive VP or CEO of the company, coordinated assessments, reference checking, and management of candidates through negotiation to start date.

Following successful placement of a Market President, Career Solutions team then worked with the newly placed Market President to recruit and build out the new team for the market, usually using the new President's input to guide the search in the local market.

In each market we went into, we had no prior knowledge of the market and knew none of the candidates. Through our detailed and thorough process we were successful in helping this CEO establish 16 new markets as the company went through a substantial 10 year growth period.

Rapid National Sales Force Expansion - Fortune 500 Sales Engineers

Custom Recruiting Solutions Based Upon Client Company Goals

Client Problem:

The Director of Human Resources for a major electromechanical manufacturing company ( Emerson Electric) learned that he had 90 days to staff 15 new Sales Engineer territories. At the same time, the President of the Company had asked him to direct and lead an organizational survey and analysis at all company facilities in North America. His Assistant Director had been with the company for only two weeks and was not yet capable of managing either major project.

CSG's Solution:

Career Solutions Group had filled several of this client's Sales Engineering positions previously and understood their hiring process for this type of position. Career Solutions offered to coordinate the sales force expansion for the Director of Human Resources from our Indianapolis office in an outsource staffing

solution.

Here is how we tackled the assignment-

We laid out an aggressive timeline to complete the recruiting project while allowing for the holiday weeks in November and December (deadline was in January).

Our first step was to ramp up our research and interviewing capabilities for this project to handle a larger volume of phone calls, faxes, email, data storage, and administrative support needed. We hired a Programmer to build a project specific database and hired three Staff Recruiters, and an additional Administrative Assistant to help with the high volume of data entry.

Our office coordinated communication between 14 of our client's regional offices, four other external Recruiters, and several hundred potential candidates for the 15 positions. We provided the Director

of Human Resources with daily updates on our progress and weekly project status reports on position coverage and interview activity.

Our staff interviewed all respondents to ads run nationally and in each local market. We interviewed additional potential candidates from target competitor sourcing and referrals. All information gathered was entered into a database created for this project. Viable candidates were forwarded jointly to the Regional Offices and Corporate for review and scheduling interviews. We helped prepare and debrief applicants for interviews. Every person that we contacted on behalf of our client received our client's

response card sent from our database of addresses.

Our Results:

We hit our goal of having all 15 positions covered with at least four viable applicants by

the first week of December. Ten positions had offers accepted before Christmas, three positions were filled internally, and two positions were cancelled by their respective regions.

The client considered the project a huge success for the organization and the database is still in use to this day.