Colleen Aylward, president and CEO, Devon James Associates, Inc.

It's the Lull before the storm at Detto.com, tucked inside a nondescript industrial building in northeast Bellevue. While a small group of employees and contractors are working on the start-up's first product, four recruiters from Devon James Associates Inc. have opened their War Room™ nearby and are getting ready to ambush the job market. Their phones and computers up and running, the recruiters have begun diligently digesting résumés, combing through references, and deciding the best catches to bring to Detto.com. Three white boards behind them all say the same thing: "83 positions open."

Within a week or two, this still half-empty room will be buzzing with phone calls, interviewees, and hiring managers. When Devon James' three-month contract ends in late October, the recruiters expect to have generated most or all of the 83 people needed at Detto.com, which makes software to ease the process of upgrading to a new PC. "For this kind of a ramp-up, we don't have time to sit with every job candidate ourselves for five hours," says Kevin Chang, president of Detto.com ("detto" is the Italian root word for "ditto"). "I'm counting on Devon James to help us. They have the experience and the expertise at this."

Dot-com shakeout in the Puget Sound area? Yah, baby. No denying it. But don't let the headlines fool you. Not every dot-com is going bust or scaling back. Truckloads of Northwest venture capital money are still funding new Internet and other high-tech start-ups, including Detto.com and its DettoMe software for original equipment manufacturers (it enables PC users to transfer bookmarks, favorites, and other desktop customization while migrating to faster PCs). "Certainly, some of the retail and business-to-consumer (dot-coms) may be having a challenging time, but there is no shortage of capital out there and no shortage of opportunity," says Chuck Hirsch, strategic director at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle. "You just have to be more discerning with your investment."

That means a continued high demand for the services of Bellevue-based Devon James Associates, which in recent years has helped Internet companies such as Amazon.com, Visio, Avenue A, and others with high-volume recruiting. President and CEO Colleen Aylward, the redheaded dynamo who founded Devon James as a sole proprietorship in 1992 and now manages 10 other recruiters, has developed a niche locally with her War Room™ style of on-site recruiting. "Our mantra is 90 hires in 90 days," Aylward says of the method, in which teams of three to five recruiters work inside their clients' offices for at least three months. Clients are charged between $25,000 and $45,000 a month for the service and can use shares of their company's stock to pay up to 40 percent of the bill.

Aylward has proven herself as astute judge of high-tech talent, according to clients and many venture capital companies.

Unicycles, Legos, and pub crawls
Using such offbeat skills-testing devices as unicycles and Legos, Aylward's firm has recruited dozens of top-flight engineers, marketers, and Web designers to area high-tech start-ups. At Avenue A last summer, Devon James jazzed up the recruiting effort by helping stage a pub crawl in which Avenue A employees converged on bars and restaurants throughout Seattle, spreading word of exciting new opportunities at the company. The pub crawl generated hundreds of résumés and 35 hires; all told, Devon James recruited 124 people for Avenue A, as well as 116 for Amazon-com, 113 for Freeinternet.com, and 84 for eCharge.

"They came in and really helped us out by hiring some great people," says Michelle Murray-Minamide, Avenue A corporate recruiting manager. "When they came in, we had only 50 people." Avenue A, a three-year-old Internet media and data marketing concern, now employs more than 500.

Likewise, Xylo, which changed its name from Employeesavings.com in late August, has grown by about 100 employees in the past year and got 73 of those hires through Devon James. "The quality and attitude of our employees is very, very high—it's the highest quality team I've ever been associated with," says Xylo CEO Norman Behar. "It is due to some of the planning we did, the talent we have in our management ranks, and the experience and professionalism that a recruiter like Devon James brought to our company. They had a very organized approach and the recruiters they brought in really understood our culture."

Devon James gets top marks from several dot-com executives for systematically bringing in top talent in what generally is an employee's market. And Aylward, 47, a self-proclaimed "small-town girl from Walla Walla," has established herself with many venture capital companies as an astute judge of high-tech talent. Her firm even recruits for VCs themselves. "She has developed a lot of good relationships with venture capitalists," notes Susan Sigl, general partner of Bellevue-based Seapoint Ventures. "She plays the ever changing dot-com talent game better than almost anyone else," Fast Company magazine says of Aylward in a profile in its June issue.

The War Room™ style of on-site recruiting is one of Devon James' key weapons, but Aylward also has executive recruiters engaged in the more traditional retained and contingency search methods. (A "retain" search is usually for a CEO or other top executive and commands a set fee, while a "contingency" search is usually for managers and consultants, and a firm is paid only if it produces a candidate who is hired.) Almost all of Devon James' business is repeat or referral, and many of those recruited are veterans of high-tech start-ups.

A bizarre world
Recruiting for Internet and other high-tech companies today is no easy job, Aylward says. The risks are high, the market for talent extremely competitive, and the timeframe to get new technologies into the marketplace often as tight as a nervous investor's stomach. Meanwhile, experienced candidates not only push the envelope with their salary demands, but also may hold out for only companies backed by big-name VCs, such as Silicon Valley's Benchmark Capital. "Recruiting can sometimes be a bizarre world," says Steve Kyryk, Devon James' director of strategic recruiting. Aylward describes the zaniness in much harsher terms.

The key is evaluating talent as quickly and efficiently as possible, then knowing what it takes to get the best people, she says. "Internet companies no longer have time for hours-long, let's-get-to-know-you interviews," she told Fast Company. "They certainly don't have the luxury of hiring the nicest people with the toothiest smiles, then training them." They also generally can't offer long-term security either (but they can and do cough up six-figure salaries or generous stock packages).

Despite a shortage of skilled high-tech workers globally, there is usually no shortage of applicants locally, Aylward says, due to many workers' constant need to test their worth in the marketplace. Inflating these ranks in recent months are displaced workers from failed start-ups. Those averse to taking risks need not apply, as nothing in the dot-com world today is guaranteed to last, Aylward says. But problem-solvers are welcomed with open arms, particularly those with previous experience at start-ups. They know what it is like to put their careers on the line and to work the first few months without a lunchroom.

"We ask some of the executives we interview: 'Could you go a few months without having secretaries, without having support, without even having a budget—but in return you get stock options representing 7 percent of the company? Can you handle that?'" she says. "We know right away if we want to talk further."

Old-style recruiters often make the mistake of seeking exact skill-set matches for a position and don't understand that some skill sets do transfer, she adds. "Project managers, business development managers, and professional service managers all can come from the same skill-set pool," she says.

But skill set and experience are hardly the only factors in the equation. Attitude, personality, and fit within the company and its culture are other keys to getting the right people. (Sometimes, even body language and tone of voice enter the picture.) The importance of each often depends on the company and the position being filled, Aylward says. In recruiting a CEO or chief financial officer—and Devon James does searches for many—corporate fit and personality are weighed more heavily than in recruiting an engineer. "Good CEO candidates need to have a big Rolodex (of future colleagues and business partners) coming with them," Aylward says. "If they haven't done it before and don't have a Rolodex to show for it, they probably aren't going to make the cut."

Addicted to recruiting
Alyward's own business career is filled with twists and turns, not all of it as a recruiter. A graduate of Walla Walla's DeSales High School and the University of Washington, she's owned an art gallery, got her hands dirty on an oil-drilling rig, been a waitress, and worked in high-tech sales. (She is favorable to others who, like her, earned battle scars in the retail and restaurant industries.)

She joined Bellevue-based Houser Martin Morris, the Northwest's largest and oldest executive recruiting firm, in 1990. "I got addicted to recruiting; it's a lot like sales," she says. But doing traditional searches for banks, law offices, and other established professions bored her. "I wanted to do recruiting in a different way. You can't take a 20-year-old company like that and change it." So she parlayed a single client into her own business, and from there built a West Coast high-tech clientele that today is closely tied to where VC money is invested and what companies are positioned well for initial public offerings.

Besides dot-coms, Devon James has helped numerous clients in wireless and telecommunications. The firm won't take on a client if Aylward doesn't feel the technology has a long-term market, she says. So far, her technology bets have paid off.

"She is very passionate about her clients, about her company, and about quality," says Derek Cotton, managing director of Devon James' retained-search division. "She is very focused on the task at hand, and she has a strong personality. So do I. We sometimes have lively discussions."

Devon James has doubled its revenues the past two years and expects to generate between $1.5 million and $2 million in 2000. It sees growth opportunities ahead but has no plans at this time to become a national firm, Aylward says. "We like what we are—a West Coast boutique," Cotton says. "We can make good money, and we can go to bed feeling good about ourselves."

Monte Enbysk is content editor for Microsoft Central and a freelance business writer based in Bellevue.

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