(Mankato, Minnesota) – (February 4, 2011) — Spherion Corporation, a recruiting, staffing and workforce solutions provider, announced today that Anita Steinbach, Branch Manager of the Company’s Staffing Services office in Mankato, Minnesota, is the recipient of the Performance Forum Award.

Performance Forum is a company-wide leadership development forum at which outstanding performers are recognized and rewarded for sustained performance over a 12-month period — January through December 2010.

“Anita Steinbach is a superb example of the success that hard work and dedication can bring to a business. She is a leader who continues to take the right steps to expand and build on a successful operation that is focused on providing service excellence to its clients,” said Sandy Mazur, senior vice president of the franchise license group of Spherion Corporation.  Steinbach has been with Spherion for more than two years.  We are so excited to have her as leader in Mankato and Southern Minnesota.

About Spherion
Spherion Corporation (NYSE:SFN) is a leading recruiting and staffing company that provides integrated solutions and breakout specialties to meet the evolving needs of companies and job candidates.  As an industry pioneer for more than 60 years, Spherion has sourced, screened and placed millions of individuals in temporary, temp-to-hire and full-time jobs. 

With approximately 650 locations in the United Statesand Canada, Spherion delivers innovative workforce solutions that improve business performance.  Spherion provides its services to approximately 10,000 customers, from Fortune 500 companies to a wide range of small and mid-size organizations.  Employing more than 230,000 people annually through its network, Spherion is one of North America’s largest employers.  Spherion operates under the following brands:  Spherion Staffing Services Group for administrative, clerical and light industrial workers; Technisource for technology professionals and solutions; The Mergis Group for accounting and finance and other professional positions; Todays Office Professionals for specialty administrative personnel; and Spherion Recruitment Process Outsourcing.  To learn more, visit www.spherion.com.

Pythian’s recruitment team is comprised of three top-notch recruiters that are tasked with the ultimate challenge—to locate the top 5% of talent globally.

Pythian is a global industry leader in Data Infrastructure Managed Services and Consulting with expertise in Oracle, Oracle Applications, SQL Server, MySQL, Big Data and System Administration Services and it is our role to attract this top talent to meet the 50% growth projections of our organization.

How do we ensure that we hire the top 5% of talent globally? We rely on our strenuous multi-stepped interview process that is comprised of both technical and non-technical evaluations. On the technical side, we evaluate the candidate in each core aspect of the technical role that is required through our multi-stepped process. Further, we close this loop by evaluating the technical progress of the employee once hired at two months and five months to compare the results with the technical interview evaluations to ensure alignment.

In addition to hiring the top 5% of technical talent, our CEO describes our recruitment team as the driver of our corporate culture—we hire the people that set the tone for our organization and our success. Without this focus, we would not be able to succeed in our growth projections as we would not have enough employees progressing through our organizational structure.

To ensure that we are hiring to grow our culture, Pythian’s recruitment team focuses on both technical and non-technical evaluations. We can hire technical professionals that meet our 5% expectations, however it is our purpose in recruitment to hire professionals that will grow and strive at Pythian and demonstrate core competencies, like leadership, that will be needed for them to be successful.

For non-technical evaluations, the recruitment team has developed a competency-based fit interview to evaluate the five core competencies that are required for each position hired. Each core competency is evaluated through five different questions and a totalled point system is used to hire the best professional for the company.

Pythian’s recruitment team is further challenged by our task to hire the top 5% of talent in a global spectrum. Currently Pythian has employee’s across twenty countries and this global arena of hiring adds further layers of complexity to our team, including time zone coverage, communication, cross-cultural differences and varying salary costs.

Our recruitment team will describe their day at any given time as the “time zone shuffle”.  As we are each based in Ottawa, ON, Canada, on a daily basis we can be found conducting interviews with Australia in the early morning, Europe, Eastern North America and India mid-morning and New Zealand, China and Western North American in the late afternoon. The variety of time zones add further complexity to our recruiting team as we have only certain core windows of time that we can interact with these individuals.

We interact with candidates through a variety of different channels and our goal is always to ensure that we have as many high impact touch points with these individuals as possible. With this, we cannot rely on email alone to source the best talent—it is fundamental to include as many live touchpoints with our candidates through the use of conference video mediums, like Skype and WebEx, and to ensure that we pickup the phone to speak with an individual directly whenever relaying critical information that email may potentially distort.

Communication & cross-cultural differences are another set of challenges that we face in recruitment. When interacting with a global workforce, we are always faced with the challenge of communicating effectively across varying cultural channels.  With this, we have designed interview questions that can be interpreted by all communicators, whether their communication style is direct, non-direct, circular or linear. When communication challenges are being faced in an interview, we will re-word the question for the individual and we also ask probing questions to ensure that we are receiving the most accurate information from the candidate. If we ignore cross-cultural differences, we will likely overlook potentially very strong candidates since we have not set them up to succeed in their interview.

Faced with a global talent pool, market salary costs are another challenge that Pythian’s recruitment team faces on a daily basis. We work very closely with our finance team to ensure that we always hiring talent within the total costs parameters that have been set by our leadership team that will meet our annual revenue and growth targets. With each new employee hired, we ensure that we are hiring the appropriate balance of “high cost” and “low cost” individuals and that we are reconciling these figures on a monthly basis.

It is always important to reflect on the past and see the progress that we have made. Our first full-time recruiter was hired in March 2010 and our company was approximately 100 employees globally. Today, our recruitment team is comprised of three individuals and we stand at 200 employees globally across 20 Countries. We have grown 100% in 1.5 years and we could not have done this without effective leadership, vision and the appropriate strategy to meet the growing needs of our company.

There have been many improvements that we have made to refine our process to increase speed and efficiency, without compromising our talent level. We meet quarterly as an HR team to discuss process improvements as we know there are always ways that we can continue to change and improve how we go about hiring. We are a team and we work together toward the same goal and we are not afraid to share suggestions and ideas that can ultimately impact how we do business. Within a growing organization, we are expected to be agile and to roll with the punches as we cannot grow if we stay stagnant.

We have a world-class recruitment team and we are very proud of our accomplishments to date. We are looking to the future and how we can continue to strive as a group to impact our growing organization.

The Nerdery’s vision is to be the best place in the world for nerds to work. With that, we strive to hire the best web nerds in the world. In 2012 our eight person recruiting team has already added 209 nerds with approximately 25% of our new hires coming from employee referrals. Within our recruiting team are our “Nerd Hunters” – employees whose jobs are to actively seek talented individuals while personally exemplifying our culture of respect and passion for excellence.

Because of the high demand for talented developers, one of our primary challenges is to target passive candidates not actively searching for a job. One way we’ve done this is by leveraging our employees’ Twitter presence to provide authentic conversations with curious prospective employees. For example, in January we hosted a Twitter job chat where 200 of our employees participated in an online Q&A where we received over 450 questions. We also produce a “Tweet of the Week” comic where we bring Nerdery employee tweets to life with comic art and circulate it via Facebook and Twitter.

To engage our interactive community, we frequently host events in our office space afterhours. Each month, around ten technology user groups meet in our Nerd-branded auditorium, or Nerditorium (we provide the pizza). In July we threw a “Retro Open House Extravaganza” to showcase our recently completed building expansion, celebrate vintage electronics and accept job applications. In August we hosted “The Great Intern Get-Together” to promote our internship program and allow local design and development interns and their mentors to mingle and share their internship experiences. In September we hosted our most recent Pulp Nerds event, a user experience-themed book club that brings together thought leaders with common interests. We’ve found these types of events to be valuable soft-recruiting tools as well community relationship builders.

About us: The Nerdery is a developer driven interactive production shop that partners with creative minds and big thinkers to engineer and execute their interactive projects, including websites, mobile and social media. Voted by its staff (Nerds) onto multiple top workplace lists, The Nerdery has also made Inc. magazine’s list of fastest growing private companies in its first five years of eligibility. With offices in Chicago and Minneapolis, The Nerdery’s team of 400+ interactive professionals are collectively versed in every viable development platform and programming discipline. The Nerdery’s technology agnostic development philosophy is backed by a deep toolbox and an ability to help clients see the big picture and make informed decisions that fit their objectives and budget. The Nerdery’s UX team is skilled at helping clients and developers begin their work with a well-realized end in mind, while its QA team is similarly adept at rigorously testing software so interactive projects launch successfully – bug-free and secure.

It is a pleasure to submit this nomination for the 2012 Recruiting Awards on behalf of Merritt Hawkins, the leading physician search and consulting firm in the United States.

Established in 1987, Merritt Hawkins is one of the pioneers in the relatively new field of physician search.   From a small start-up comprised of six people, Merritt Hawkins grew rapidly based on its commitment to the highest standards of professionalism in its field and was named to Inc. magazine’s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies List in 1993.   In 2005, Merritt Hawkins merged with AMN Healthcare (NYSE: AHS) to become part of the largest healthcare staffing organization in the United States.  

Today, Merritt Hawkins conducts close to 3,000 permanent physician search assignments annually and is by far the largest physician search and consulting firm in the industry.   Of perhaps more importance, Merritt Hawkins developed a paradigm for physician search that now is emulated industry-wide.   This model features in-depth, on-site client consultation during which Merritt Hawkins assists clients in shaping physician incentive packages, contracts, candidate parameters, sourcing, screening, interviewing and closing strategies.   Merritt Hawkins then applies industry-leading resources, including social media, mobile devices, direct mail, online resources, a team of over 100 consultants, and the industry’s largest data base to identify and secure appropriate candidates.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Merritt Hawkins literally wrote the book on physician recruiting.   Merritt Hawkins’ Guide to Physician Recruiting, a book detailing proven physician recruiting strategies, has been called “…a no-nonsense compact book brimming with information for recruiting doctors” by Forbes.com and has been read by thousands of hospital executives and physician recruiters nationwide.

In addition to leading the physician recruiting industry, Merritt Hawkins has taken a national role in shaping policy affecting physician supply.    Merritt Hawkins was one of the first organizations to warn of an impending national physician shortage, when most policy experts believed that the United States had a surplus of physicians.   Merritt Hawkins’ book Will the Last Physician in America Please Turn Off the Lights? A Look at America’s Looming Doctors Shortage has been repeatedly referenced in policy circles and helped dispel the illusion of a physician surplus.  

To advocate for additional physician training, Merritt Hawkins co-funded the Council on Physician and Nurse Supply (www.physiciannursesupply.com), a group of health care experts based at The University of Pennsylvania dedicated to finding solutions to the shortage of clinical professionals.   In 2006, The Council called for a 30% increase in medical school graduates, a policy now being pursued by the Association of American Medical Colleges.  

In 2012, Merritt Hawkins was selected to provide expert testimony before a subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Small Business.   Merritt Hawkins’ testimony revealed why small physician practices have become increasingly untenable and why physicians are embracing employment and other practice styles.

To highlight the shortage of physicians in rural areas, and as a public service, Merritt Hawkins conducts an annual Pro Bono Physician Search Program in which it recruits a physician for an underserved community at no cost.  In 2012, Merritt Hawkins recruited a physician for the small towns of Larimore and Northwood, North Dakota through this program.  Merritt Hawkins is proud to be the exclusive provider of physician search services for the National Association of Community Health Centers, the professional association of America’s “safety net” healthcare facilities, and to be the preferred physician search provider of 20 state hospital associations. 

As an outgrowth of its consultative approach to recruiting, Merritt Hawkins has become the acknowledged thought leader in its field.   Merritt Hawkins’ surveys of physician compensation, morale, practice metrics and career plans now serve as industry benchmarks for hospitals, medical groups and other organizations throughout the country, and have been cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Fortune, Forbes, The Economist, U.S. News & World Report and hundreds of other publications.  Merritt Hawkins’ executives have written hundreds of articles on physician recruiting, including a regular column for RecruitingTrends.com, and are selected to speak before over three dozen professional associations annually.

Merritt Hawkins’ thought leadership now is sought out by third parties that contract with the company for white papers, surveys, and other data.   In 2010, Merritt Hawkins completed two national physician recruiting surveys of behalf of The Indian Health Service.   In 2012, Merritt Hawkins completed one of the largest physician surveys ever undertaken in the United States on behalf of The Physicians Foundation (www.physiciansfoundation.org).   The book Merritt Hawkins completed for The Physicians Foundation (In Their Own Words: 12,000 Physicians Reveal Their Thoughts About Medical Practice in America) has been called “…vital reading to anyone who has ever been a patient or who is likely to be one” by noted healthcare writer Richard Reece, M.D.

In partnership with Richard “Buz” Cooper, M.D. of The University of Pennsylvania/Wharton School, Merritt Hawkins developed the Hospital-Specific Physician Requirements Model, the first model for assessing community demand for physicians at the hospital service area level.  

For 25 years, Merritt Hawkins has set the standard for professionalism and customer service in physician recruiting.   Merritt Hawkins is proud to be a part of the recruiting industry and to contribute to its growth and professional stature.                 

More information on Merritt Hawkins can be found at www.merritthawkins.com

The Talent Acquisition Center of Excellence (COE) has completely re-engineered and restructured SAIC’s approach to recruitment strategy, candidate management, and support to internal recruitment partners. Specifically, the newly created team rolled out a model that focuses on 4 recurring elements that are integral to an ongoing successful recruitment process:  Innovation, Optimization, Collaboration, and Communication.   The focus of the team has been on data-driven decisions and recommendations.  As a result of success, the team leader has been invited to speak at multiple conferences on current process including ERE, HR Technology, and LinkedIn.  Of major note, is the fact that SAIC switched to a new applicant tracking system, (Taleo) during February of the year and the Talent Acquisition COE has been responsible for managing the process of ongoing upgrade support, Tier 3 ticket resolution, training process and updates while operating in a new model,  Specific output to all major stakeholders has been successfully provided through 3 developed channels and roles within the team:

-          Talent Consultants – Internal Relationship Managers have been successful in consultingliaising and strategically partnering with staffing groups; they acted as a continuous entry point to solicit business input/needs.  They then provided feedback that helped to influence strategic direction of Staffing philosophy and objectives.  An example was demonstrated when a Talent Consultant acted as a formal Project Manager to analyze Prescreen question usage and results for a specific business unit.  They then delivered recommendations on options to isolate more qualified candidates, created and lead training to recruiters for streamlined question usage, and provided metrics based evaluation of the resulting impact of the process change for recruiter time spend.(Communication and Collaboration)

-          Talent Strategists –  The Strategists focused on multiple areas within recruitment:Analysis of External Products and Trends, Sourcing Metrics, Training and System issue resolution, Process Re-engineering, and Recruitment Branding.  Specific success in investigating new and innovative products and ideas lead to adaptation of a new tool from an innovated new company named Startwire.  Startwire’s ApplicationConnecttool interfaces with candidates to provided real-time updates (text and email) of current recruitment status. (Innovationand Optimization)

-          Talent Programs – The Program Analysts successfully managed and executed enterprise wide programs with staffing implications for the following areas:  College; Intern; DiversityReferral; Temp Staffing; and Redeployment.  Of specific note was the new creation of an ongoing strategy cycle for each program that detailed focus areas for strategic growth, outlined process for utilization, assessed existing gaps, and liaised with stakeholders for feedback and buy-in. (Optimization and Collaboration)

This year the Talent Acquisition COE applied a more regimented service model approach to recruitment support.  The result has been extremely well-received.  Additional accomplishments include delivery of quarterly dashboards measuring sourcing success and recommendations for change, multiple customized strategy plans that were detailed documents analyzing gaps and recommendations at the level of specific job, function, and location.The Talent AcquisitionCOE is recognized both internally and externally as progressive and knowledgeable about recruitment processes and strategy and is most deserving of the Recruiting Organization Award.

Major Accomplishments

Optimization

-          Data management output and system compliance – Maximized integration points between all metrics related tools.  Specifically worked to create, test, and mange ongoing system push of feedsfrom applicant tracking system to Jobs2Web for accurately review and produce source related reporting to clients.  Currently provide weekly and quarterly sourcing reports to 4 different business units.

-          System Issue Resolution – by the end of 2Q resolved over 300 system related issues resulting from migration to new applicant tracking system.

Innovation

-          Provided key project implementation support for migration to new applicant tracking system (Taleo)

-          Implemented Startwire’s Application Connect tool to improve candidate interaction

-          Began utilizing CareerBuilder Supply/Demand tool to provide line partners market analysis support for alternative recommendations for talent acquisitions per locations and job functions

-          Evaluated 10+ staffing technology for potential future usage (ex: Social Job Matcher, multiple CRMS, etc…)

-          Created 4 new linked in Career Pages customized to attract specific functional and location-based targeted candidates.

Collaboration

-          Partnered with Corporate Communications to create a duplicateRecruitmentcampaign strategy that had thematic continuity with corporate brand.  Worked to create new digital and print collateral for improved messaging to candidates.  (Over 40% of the corporate branding campaign linked directly to career site traffic where new digital was available)

-          Invited internal and external vendors to provide presentations on multiple subjects of interest to Staffing community. (Averaged over 80 participants at each web session).

Communication

-          Created (Design and roll-out to 150+ community members)  a new SharePoint site with interactive links including workspaces for strategy presentation delivery, RMS feeds, External best practice articles, and multiple workspaces on special topics like Search Engine Optimization, Temp Staffing Lists, Recruiter Training, etc..)

-          Provided monthly newsletter with detailed links and information on current staffing related initiatives and projects

-          Managed (content and delivery) bi-weekly Recruiter Forum that ranges in attendance of 50-80 recruiters for update on system issue resolution, compliance, and a wide range of recruitment topics.

HR director Emma Weare relocated to the U.S. from Tesco’s U.K. office in 2007 to assist with recruitment efforts as the company prepared for its U.S. launch of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Inc. Weare spearheaded efforts to staff retail stores in three Western states including several distribution centers and manufacturing locations as well as a home office in El Segundo, Calif. Given the rapidly rising number of job seekers using social media as a critical component of their search, Weare was committed to implementing the latest social media tools and programs in order to capture the attention of quality candidates. Weare was committed to creating a cohesive employment brand across all business units and positioning Fresh & Easy, first and foremost, as a “Great Place To Work.”

Weare implemented solutions that harnessed the social media category in order to maximize ROI and minimize costs. Fresh & Easy was able to quickly and easily connect and build pre-employment relationships with prospective candidates. In addition, it has cultivated an organic following of people who are interested in working for the company. Utilizing social media was an innovative method of allowing candidates to get a “feel” for Fresh & Easy and it created a valuable Talent Community of potential Fresh & Easy employees.

YouTube, the world’s largest video site, was the perfect channel to reach a mass audience utilizing multimedia to showcase what it is like to work at Fresh & Easy. Weare collaborated with a creative agency to plan and develop videos that successfully showcased Fresh & Easy’s unique culture and employees. Weare worked hand in hand with the team to develop concepts, storyboards, footage and scripts resulting in a series of fun and engaging videos that capture the brand and position Fresh & Easy as a great place to work.

Weare continues to devise innovative concepts and strategies to grow our organic following of people on all of our social media channels. She is always one step ahead in order to make sure we attract top talent and are building a talent pipeline for future leaders of the company through fresh and innovative methods.  Our social online presence includes:

• Careers website
• Careers blog
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Google+
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Talent Community
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Today, all social media efforts and campaigns are designed to tout Fresh & Easy’s “Great Place To Work” branding to internal and external parties, including current employees and job seekers. Key milestones include gaining over 17k+ organic Twitter followers since joining in October 2011 and over 18k members joined our Talent Community since introducing our talent community in March 2012.  Fresh & Easy also has 23 videos on our YouTube channel which have received over 14k+ video hits. 

Executive Search

To date, we have assisted our clients in securing over 1500 executives at the VP, ‘C’ level and CEO stages of their careers.  We have closed 97% of our assignments since inception. This is a statistic that we are fiercely proud of, particularly when the success rate for our industry for the last two years averages at 54% (Consultants News – a Kennedy Publication).

Our Team

We are a team of 11 Partners supported by a staff of over 20 research and recruitment specialists operating from offices in San Francisco, Menlo Park, New York, London and Singapore. Within our team of recruitment professionals we have collective experience of hiring executives for over 1,700 organizations.

Tom Barnes, Managing Partner
Tom is one of the founding partners at Calibre One and conducts the most searches within the firm. He has over 15 years of experience in recruiting at the senior level with nearly 200 placements done in the technology sector. He now focuses his time on board positions, CEOs and their direct reports. In his career, he has pushed for innovation, accountability, and growth and has expanded search firms from 40 people to 850 people.

Clients

“Borro worked with Calibre One to find a new Board member. The process was managed quickly and diligently and we ended up with a World-class shortlist of candidates from which to make our selection. Through this process we have hired an outstanding candidate who has already made a major positive impact. We couldn’t be happier with the result of the search and we will certainly be engaging the services of Calibre One again.”  - Paul Aitken – CEO, Borro

 “To find the GM for our Next Generation Messaging business, we requested that Calibre One focus on European Candidates in the mobile applications space – a very small pool. Calibre One correctly persuaded us to look globally and we found our perfect candidate – a European, living in Texas who has a life time of experience working for US-based companies in mobile.”  - Lisa A. Hook – President & CEO, Neustar, Inc.

“Tom and his team did an absolutely fabulous job sourcing Scott Lang as CEO of SilverSpring Networks. Scott has proven to be exactly the right candidate for the company and we could not be happier.”  -Adam Grosser, General Partner, Foundation Capital

“I placed a very high bar on this appointment, and in my fourth search with the Calibre One team, they once again didn’t fail to astound me with the amazing outcome”.  -Jim Fowler CEO Jigsaw (acq. by Salesforce)

Wall Street Services stands out by focusing exclusively on the most qualified and adaptable candidates in investment banking – 2% of all applicants – and understanding what is the best possible fit for those candidates with respect to both their long-term and short-term goals. Our proprietary screening process, developed from over 28 years of experience recruiting on Wall Street, allows us to consistently deliver only the highest quality to clients. Our commitment to job seekers, even outside our exclusive candidate pool, includes regularly providing feedback on submitted resumes, hosting monthly job seeker workshop events for career counseling and training at no cost, and individual interview preparation and continual on the job mentoring for each candidate we represent. Our team is most successful because of the dedication each member commits, and our open circle of communication is a key piece of our success and motivation. 

True Talent Group is the fastest growing marketing, creative and interactive placement firm in
the Twin Cities. It is a local, independent and woman-owned company. Ninety percent of True
Talent Group placements are still with their companies today.
As one client said, “True Talent Group has been imperative in my quest to find good team
members.”

The company is led by Stacey Stratton. Stratton’s genuine approach is thoughtful and fresh.
She works closely with her clients to identify needs and place talent that is a true fit with the
company. Her personal drive and dedication to her clients, talent and company are an
inspiration to those in the field.

Since its founding in 2008, True Talent Group (http://www.truetalentgroup.com) has
experienced triple-digit growth every year. The company hit the $1 million mark in sales in 2011
and growth is projected to double in 2012. Stratton is a certified staffing professional and True
Talent Group is the only woman-owned staffing firm certified by WBENC (Women’s Business
Enterprise National Council).

Stratton was named a 2012 Woman to Watch by Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal; she
was selected based on professional and community achievements as well as her potential for
the future. Stratton was the 2011 winner of the NAWBO (National Association for Women
Business Owners) Emerging Woman Business Owner of the Year and was featured as a local
success story by SCORE.

True Talent Group works with thousands of qualified marketing, creative and interactive
professionals, and places talent at growing companies such as Deluxe, Caribou Coffee,
Medtronic, Allianz, Capella and JT Mega. Each year the company shares insights about the
Twin Cities market with others through the annual Talent Forecast—a preview of upcoming
trends and a valuable resource for those in the fields of marketing, creative and hiring.
Learn more about True Talent Group in their introduction video:
http://truetalentgroup.com/video.html

This team was formed in August 2011 and essentially ran out of the gate to execute on some massive hiring numbers. We went from building an entirely new business model, socializing the change and doing internal business development to revolutionizing how our intern and new college grad on-site interviews were done in a batch day formula called “Invitationals”, to building sophisticated training and interview programs to bring many Engineers and other teams with us to campus to the actual hiring results we achieved in our inaugural year. We’ve taken the “personal relationship approach” and successfully deployed it at scale to hire hundreds of campus hires. Coming from an intern program of 37 two years ago to nearly 200 interns in 2012 + having built our first MBA intern program and adding nearly 200 new college grad and junior level hires to our plate- our results were nothing less than phenomenal. Not only that, this team is currently partnering with our product team to help evangelize our higher education products to a wide audience of students and career center professionals. The Campus Recruiting Team is now seen as a strategic avenue for talent acquisition and future talent bench building.

In the last year a team of 5 people set out on a mission to fill 300 + permanent IT positions at Lowe’s Home Improvement. These roles ran the gamete of experience from Help desk to VP of IT. This hiring initiative is what has lead Lowes to be able to roll out the use of 46,000 apple products in their stores across North America. This team is 1/4 the size of recruiting teams at most fortune 50 companies. They not only hit the 300 hire market but far exceeded it. They did this by using non innovative ways for recruiting top talent in nontraditional industries, they maximized their presence at networking events to leverage a diverse candidate pool and implemented Lowe’s first candidate referral program that increase candidate flow by 20%. This team of 5 people has done extraordinary work and should not only be in the running for organization of the year but they should hands down win it.

Talencio provides vetted, accomplished contract and direct-hire professionals to the Life Science community. Upon completion of my MBA from the University of St. Thomas this past May, I had the great fortune of interning with this small business that embodies integrity, collaboration and fulfillment. Founded only 5 years ago, Talencio has experienced consistent year-over-year growth with a highlight of 100% increase in revenue from 2011 to 2012. Talencio’s reach is ever growing as well, providing talent for medtech, biotech, health care and pharmaceutical companies in Minnesota, throughout the United States and also in Canada. But what makes Talencio so unique is not merely that it serves a niche market for the Life Science community, but also the dynamic of the recruiting team: Paula Norbom, President, and Kate Richards, Vice President of Talent Services, and Jenny Pietrick, Talent Specialist.
I have witnessed first-hand how business is done in our office and how both clients and colleagues are treated. Whether it is a Fortune 500 or a small startup company, Paula, Kate and Jenny have the ability to identify our clients’ needs and invariably find the right contractor for the job—they are matchmakers.
Two matchmaking “success stories” that stand out in my mind are:
1. A client called Talencio looking for a non-woven, thin film, polymer expert with heat seal experience. We had a contractor that was the perfect fit for the assignment. The contractor was able to solve a manufacturing issue, replace a raw material with a better performing, lower cost material and provide a superior competitive finished product. By using the contractor, our client saved millions of dollars in labor and materials and was eventually purchased by a Twin Cities Fortune 500 company. Our client invested $20,735 to solve a significant issue and achieve an immeasurable return on their investment.

2. A mid-sized medical device company partnered with Talencio to provide them with a regulatory guru with Asia Pacific experience. Talencio provided a contractor who worked 10 years in China and Japan before returning to the U.S. The contractor conducted gap assessments between technical files and design history records, technical file revisions and regulatory document revisions. Our client was so thrilled with the results of the contractor’s work that they have continued to use Talencio for many of their subsequent regulatory contract needs.
Our colleague feedback speaks for itself. Here are extracts from some thank you cards we have received:
“Thank you again for your time this morning and for helping me find new direction in my career transition. You have provided new tools, resources and new ways to market my skills. A side benefit of all this is a boost in self-confidence—very valuable at this stage. I also appreciate your careful approach to matching candidates with firms.”
“Today’s discussion was terrific and honestly more than I expected. Your kind and generous sharing of ideas and resources to aid my job search are greatly appreciated, and I look forward to continuing our dialogue once I complete my “homework.” Thank you again for everything!”
As I alluded to earlier, what makes Talencio so unique is the caliber of its leadership. Paula, Kate and Jenny give their time and energy in service of others. They frequently spend hour-long meetings with professionals who are referred to them—some recently laid-off from Life Science companies and others who do not fit the profile for Talencio’s “talent pool”—having real conversations about where these people are headed in their respective professional lives and how they can help with the journey. The caliber of these three women and their commitment to quality relationships improves the image of the entire recruiting industry. To the Talencio team, the business of fulfilling others’ needs is not exclusive to the company’s bottom line; it is reflective of their values.
I urge the judges reviewing this nomination to consider Talencio for the Recruiting Organization Award because it serves a vital support role to a vital community in the Midwest and throughout North America and does so with a business model that relies on integrity, collaboration and fulfillment.
Sincerely, George Kerrick