Professional Search: What Shoes Are You Trying To Fill?
We highly value our strong relationships with the people we serve. Trusting partnerships garner candid feedback. And, feedback from our clients helped us realize we were missing opportunities to serve them.
Today, we would like to introduce you to our Professional Search Division, the solution to that missed opportunity. Since this solution involves our parent company, ABR Employment Services (ABR), we’d like to help you get to know them a bit better, too.
Meet Our Parent Company
Headquartered in Madison, WI, ABR has 12 operating units, including a presence in MN. They provide staffing support for manufacturing, skilled industrial, human resources, professional office support, logistics, scientific lab, and accounting positions.
A decade ago, ABR welcomed Kinsa Group into its staffing family.
ABR has spent the last 30 years honing its ability to serve clients in a best practice approach garnering accolades and awards along the way. Some of those accolades include receiving the Inavero Best of Staffing™ Award eight years in a row. During that time, Kinsa Group was recognized (this year) as one of Forbes’ Best Professional Recruiting Firms.
CEO Jim McNett has spent 20 of those years personally overseeing the strategic development of ABR. And over the last 10, overseeing the strategic development of Kinsa Group in partnership with Kinsa Group VP, Laurie Hyllberg.
Both take pride in the collective organization’s organic growth.
Professional Search: The Mid-Level Staffing Solution
Yet, with all of the growth and successes, McNett knew they could do more. “We determined over the last few years that there was a huge need for professional to mid-level management positions that was a missed opportunity,” he explained.
ABR built its base on filling support positions, both in the manufacturing and office settings. “You’re talking pay rates of $11 to $20 an hour—non-exempt, hourly positions,” explained McNett. “Then you have Kinsa Group doing managerial to executive searches—$90,000 to $200,000+ salaries.”
But, these polar opposite roles left gaps. ABR clients successfully fill warehouse and administrative positions, but aren’t receiving assistance for higher level openings. On the flip side, Kinsa Group turns out executive level candidates, but can’t fulfil mid-level requests.
“Kinsa Group would receive a request for a $60,000 production supervisor, but that would be below their level,” said McNett. This meant that recruiters were turning down hundreds and hundreds of jobs from clients. “They weren’t quite in our funnels,” McNett explained. “This was a lot of lost revenue and our clients were going elsewhere when we knew we could probably do this ourselves with focused recruiters with the right skills.
McNett rolled out a strategic plan and began a testing phase with a recruiter specifically working these jobs that had previously been lost in the gap. He quickly found the need was greater than originally thought.
“In talking with clients, we determined there really was a need for that mid-level, $45,000 to $90,000 salary realm,” shared McNett. “There was really no one doing well with that. There were some trying to do it, and big exec groups saying they were doing it, but they really didn’t want to spend time on it.”
But we’re willing to spend the time and put forth the effort, and testing paid off. “We had great success in finding and placing these people,” McNett shared. “We decided to move forward and to brand a separate division that can really complement what ABR and Kinsa Group is doing and that can provide our clients a full array of services to get them anything they need, from entry level to executive level, through one resource.”
Professional Search Division Goals
The professional search division is kicking off with two recruiters who are officially targeting the $45,000 to $90,000 salary range of professional to mid-level manager positions. McNett hopes to be at full staff by the end of the year—a team of four—with revenue that supports that goal.
“We will start out primarily as a recruiting partner in the Midwest,” he added. “But I hope to see us expand that footprint outside of just the Midwest in two to three years.”
Within a few weeks of launching the division, the recruiting team has placed a Production Supervisor, Assistant General Manager, Quality Manager and Manufacturing Engineer. The team has also experienced an in-flux of inquiries and resumes from candidates actively searching for their next professional opportunity.
Ultimately, McNett would like to see ABR Professional Search as a comparable and complimentary division to Kinsa Group and to become known as a national recruiting partner at the professional to mid-level manager sector in the way that Kinsa Group is seen at the executive level in the food and beverage industry. “We are all part of the same company,” he concluded. “We are a very cooperative organization set on success.”
What Shoes Are You Trying To Fill?
If you are having trouble finding your perfect ‘mid’level’ candidate, take some time to consider how—and where—you’re searching for and evaluating them. They may already be in our database! We can help you reframe your search criteria and focus your efforts in new directions so you have more success in finding what you need. Let us know how we can assist you today!