for employers

The Best Team Usually Wins

No one ever got rich with a bunch of holes in their organization chart. No matter how good the plan, how cool the technology, or how smart the founders, it takes people to win. And, the better the people, the bigger the win.

Whether you’re a start-up with fresh investment or you’re building a new business unit in an established company, your success is directly tied to your ability to rapidly hire a quality team.

We provide a complete solution for this kind of "scale-up" hiring—a solution that’s affordable, puts you in control of the process and meets aggressive hiring deadlines.

Online resume banks have reduced some recruiters to administrators who simply search the web and e-mail you candidates. Who wants to pay 20-30% of the first year’s salary for a stack of resumes you could have found yourself?

You can’t rely on new executives to bring an entire team with them. Sure, the personal network is powerful, but no development manager can "reach back and grab" 30 engineers, 10 testers and a Q/A lead.

In 1992, we started Devon James Associates (DJA) to help high-tech companies in the Pacific Northwest to quickly build great teams. Our client list is drawn from both start-ups and established companies including:

Since then, we’ve expanded our reach to serve the major technology capitals of "the West Coast" and developed staffing programs for companies in a number of specialty areas including:

• Telecommunications
• Wireless
• Internet Commerce
• Storage Area Networking
• Business Consulting and Development
• Software Development
• Hardware and Device Companies
• Gaming

Each of the companies we’ve served was looking for a new way to meet their staffing needs and they found it in Devon James.

You Can’t Keep Hiring the Same Old Way

We found many common threads in the problems facing technology-centered start-ups and new business divisions:

Technology - internal recruiters and HR groups can’t help with highly-specialized technical employees because they’re swamped. Without the necessary time or resources, they aren’t able to effectively screen candidates, leaving the bulk of the work to the hiring manager.

Administration - developing candidate profiles and effective job descriptions is time-consuming and frustrating. And, job descriptions are often the only tool used to communicate your needs to recruiters and candidates. If the job description doesn’t speak to your unique needs, neither will the candidate(s).

Affordability - the direct costs of traditional hiring are prohibitive when you’re building an entire infrastructure or team. Headhunter fees of 30% or more are not uncommon, and are entirely defensible when you’re looking for a new COO. But, for infrastructure staff, individual contributors and first-level managers the fees are beyond the budget of most companies. Referral programs help, but not fast enough.

Intensity - their business plans require maximum hiring effort in the shortest possible time. With the other needs of their fledgling business it’s hard to focus enough energy and resources on recruiting.

Leverage - the HR group (if there is one) is focused on employee retention, benefits programs, and employment law. Plus, they aren’t salespeople and might not have recruiting experience. Once again, the hiring manager is left to his or her own devices.

Follow-through - like any sales process, recruitment requires consistent and timely follow-through, solid administration and attention to detail. In a fast-paced environment, these add an unnecessary burden to the hiring manager.

For the CEO/CFO/COO, balancing today’s operational needs with their short-term hiring goals is a question of leverage. What tools can he or she employ to help hiring managers maximize their recruiting efforts and get on with the business at hand? For many, the answer is Devon James.

The New Dynamic of Scale-Up Recruiting

Your partnership with Devon James temporarily adds a whole new function to your organization chart—Scale-up Recruiting. We bring a team of experienced recruiting professionals to your site and establish a Recruiting War Room™ to focus the entire organization’s efforts on your hiring program.

We build and implement a comprehensive plan to meet your recruiting goals that includes:

• Understanding your technology, strategy, culture and people needs
• Developing profiles, skills lists, and job descriptions
• Identifying candidate sources (including competitors)
• Establishing systems and processes for tracking, administration and hiring
• Developing a pipeline of candidates
• Qualifying candidates by phone and in-person
• Presenting hiring managers with pre-screened, pre-qualified candidates
• Following-up with offer letters and "closing" the hire
• Management reporting to provide comprehensive situation reports for presentation to your board, investors and management teams to retain focus, identify progress and continually highlight your return on investment.

Our methodology is based on our practical experience and a unique combination of skills that make Devon James the only practical solution to scale-up hiring:

Technologists - we are, first and foremost, part of High-tech and have served in management roles in both established and start-up technology companies. We understand (or can readily grasp) your technology and business model. This simplifies communication and maximizes the time you spend interviewing qualified and pre-screened candidates.

Recruiting Professionals - balanced somewhere between salesman, HR person, and counselor the role of recruiter requires sales discipline, strong qualification skills, passion and energy in prospecting, and relentlessness. We know how to "close" and land the candidate who isn’t looking for a job.

Self-administering - we bring all of the systems and procedural tools required to get the job done. We provide detailed management reports for board, hiring manager, and HR review, and the War Room™ provides an instant status of every opening.

Leverageable - with our approach, hiring managers spend their time choosing between qualified candidates. We eliminate administrative chores, automate the process, and teach your entire team the ins and outs of aggressive recruiting campaigns.

Systems-Thinkers - we bring a system of recruiting to your company, including processes, information systems, and other tools and techniques that make you self-sufficient. Many of our clients tell us that they didn’t really see the full value of this approach until after we had completed the initial assignment.

Affordable - we’d be happy to provide you with both a generic ROI model for your scale-up project or, under NDA, the specific results that some of our clients have enjoyed. The Devon James approach moves recruiting to a fee-for-service model, and away from the high-costs of traditional headhunter fees.

If you’re a technology company with a scale-up hiring project in your future, you need Devon James. We won’t waste your time, we won’t waste your money and, if we can’t make a difference, we’ll tell you and walk away. To get started, get in touch. You won’t regret it.