TTL, in 2001, surveyed our client base and asked
managers at all levels what value they gained from using our services.
Some of the answers surprised even myself as I had not even realized the entire impact
of improved recruiting results.
The links below are just a few of the areas our clients identified as
benefits they derived... as TTL 's services resulted in improving their
recruiting efforts and developing a world-class staffing effort .
Click on any of the links to view the actual quotes from our clients.
Our Clients reported Improvements in the following areas
1) Gain in equity value
(Quote from a company president/founder)
"By adding 20 people per year over the last 3 years (they have retained all of their hires) we have added between 5-7 million dollars in value to our stockholders. Each day that we keep these employees creates more value for our company. Now, we won't realize this gain until the company is sold, but it is nice to know that our stock is very valuable. We never could have grown as rapidly nor as solidly had we not utilized your services. In fact, prior to working with TTL we had reached a plateau where internal referrals simply were not generating enough people to fill our needs."
(Quote from a CEO who sold his company in 2000 and is now building another company in a non-competitive area)
"We grew my first company from 0 to 14 million in 7 years and built a reputation for being one of the best at architecture, design and development. It was a difficult decision, in the beginning, to use TTL because of the cost basis, but my objective was to build a world-class operation and I couldn't do it on my own. The people you brought to us were consistently of the highest caliber and not only did our clients depend on us, I found that we could attract other great talent because of the superior talent you had already brought to us. Bright people want to work around other bright people. I was able to sell my company at a premium because of the talent of my people and our reputation for delivery. As I get this next company up and running, I intend to come back to you so get ready now!!"
2) Distribution of overhead burden
(Quote from a CFO of a medium sized business)
"Though I'd prefer to keep our recruiting fees lower, I must admit that we've realized substantial benefits from using you. Please don't take this personally, but your fees are higher than we'd like to pay. However, the benefits do outweigh the costs so we continue to use you. In fact, I'd like you to be generating more candidates for us to hire. Back to the question... one of the ways we've benefited Has been that we've spread our basic G&A costs over a larger group of employees. This allows us to bring our cost basis down on a per employee basis when you look at the long-term."
(From another financial officer)
"We look at the recruiting costs over the average tenure of the employee which is averaging 5 years. Therefore, when looking at recruiting costs as an investment, we're getting a pretty good ROI from TTL. It costs us about $5,000 per year including the cost of money to hire through your firm, but we are making a healthy profit anyway or we wouldn't be able to use you."
3) Client penetration/Client expansion
(From a Senior Business Developer with a 450 person Intelligence Community division)
"Prior to working with your company, we had a lot of difficulty in filling the existing business we had won. This created the perception with our client base that we were not able to handle new contracts. Worse yet, our existing clients would give us chances to do more business with them and because we were too slow, this business went to our competitors. In one case, when a contract was recomputed, we lost our prime contractor status to a competitor who had filled the positions we had the first crack at. We really were kind of stuck in a rut and only growing moderately until we started using TTL more frequently. Now I will tell you that we don't use you to fill every position, however we never have a position vacant for more than 30 days now. One way or another we get it filled. The results you can see for yourself. We are winning business at the fastest rate ever. In fact, we have clients calling us asking us to bid on their new contracts."
(From a Senior Business Developer at a medium-sized company)
"We now can qualify for business that, in the past, we would not have even considered going after. Once we started using your services, we knew that we could fill the critical openings rapidly so we decided to team with other companies at new client sites. We impressed our large partners with our immediate responses in staffing and they now include us in nearly every proposal they develop. It's great because I get to determine what we'll bid on now rather than simply having to constantly hunt down new business. It simply comes to us. We now have grown to 4 other government agencies in the past two years and I expect the bulk of our growth to come from those new customers."
4) Organic business growth - additional business growth within our existing client base.
(From a placed TTL employee)
"Since I've been with this company you placed me at, I have received over $10,000 per year in business bonuses simply by contacting my friends at the agency and seeing if they needed help. I must have helped them bring in over $3,000,000 in new business over the last 3 years."
5) Morale and turnover
(From a department manager of a 50 person software group)
"It was very frustrating to run a software group when our recruiting was less effective. We always had vacancies and our clients couldn't understand why we were so slow in responding to their needs. Also, they were not certain they were getting the best candidates because we presented so few people to them. My upper management wanted me to present any candidates that looked close. Sometimes I had to present very marginal candidates to the client simply hoping that they would accept. Don't think the client didn't know this, but they were in a bind also. Sometimes they'd accept a marginally talented person and we'd have to spend a ton of time getting this person up to speed."
(From an employee of a medium-sized company)
"Our management doesn't realize that we have work to do here on the client site. Our government chief keeps pressing us to get performance out of this system and I can't do it all. We need a really sharp Oracle database engineer who can optimize the system. It is very upsetting that my manager isn't helping us to get a person in here. It's been months already. I'm never going to get anywhere at this company if we don't start performing better. The other contractor on site is telling them that they can do the work and I'm afraid that we'll lose this business. That other company keeps recruiting me and some day, I'm just going to say yes."
(From an employee of an existing TTL customer)
"Since my company started using you, we have been winning more business from the government. It's great because I have more options to do good work than I ever had before. In fact, my manager told me that I'll be considered for a team lead position on the next contract if I want it. I'll tell you what else, our customer is very happy with us. We've made them a big success at the government and the system we developed is one of the major hits in the community. It works even better than we originally envisioned. I couldn't do it alone. The team we have developed here is great and most of them came from TTL, did you know that?"
6) Customer Goodwill
(From a Division Chief who awards contracts)
"I've been very happy with (My client's company name) as they've been the first company who consistently gets me the right people when I need them. I've got a high pressure job here to get certain systems completed on-time. These are highly complex and customized systems that need to work and work well. I have continued to use ______ and they have grown here because they perform. I can't guarantee business to them, but our group is growing by 20 people the next year and I would expect that they'll get the bulk of those openings filled. The other contractors are very slow in responding. Also, I don't like the quality of the referrals coming from the big alliance company that we are told to use. They keep shoving resumes at me of unqualified people. Worse yet, sometimes once I approve the resume, I've found out that the person really isn't very skilled after all. The resume was trumped up."
7) ????
(From a Senior HR person)
"Since we started using TTL, my job has become easier and is really fun now. I will tell you that we still do internal recruiting and actually have more internal referrals than before. Some of them are coming from your people, I'm sure you hate to hear that, but it is a fact of life. However, now that we are filling our positions more rapidly, an interesting dynamic has occurred in that our turnover rate has actually decreased. I think this is partially because I can spend much more time on employee related issues. I can focus on helping our people be happier through better communication. We also are able to move our engineers around a bit more giving them more different technologies to work on. When we were smaller, I simply didn't have the option to do this so our engineers sometimes got stuck for long periods of time on work that they found boring."
8) Public relations
(Quote from a CEO of a 250 person company that had been 150 people one year ago)
"Prior to meeting Steve for an initial session on staffing we thought our problem was recruiting. Steve actually helped us to understand we had more fundamental issues to include employee morale and a less than stellar reputation in the marketplace. Being an original founder, I had blinders on and though we were just perfect. We had been winning quite a bit of business and had been growing. Steve let me know that our turnover rate, which had risen for 3% to 8%, was an indicator of more severe problems to come. He also analyzed our recruiting and hiring processes, eventually identifying that we were really creating some very negative perceptions of ourselves in the recruiting process, especially with those candidates that we did not have an immediate position for or that we were not interested in. Steve helped us turn every recruit call and interview into a compelling Public Relations meeting and we ensure that every candidate we talk to is sold on us. We are far better at following up with candidates we are not interested in and letting them down easily. The results are astounding...3 of the candidates we had turned down actually stayed with the government and became decision makers on several contracts that we were invited to bid on. We won both bids. We have brought our turnover rate down to 2%; yet have doubled the hiring rate at the same time. We have been asked to join several major programs from Senior Program managers that we had interviewed and not selected. Our staff is excited to work for us and it is represented through an increased flow of employee referrals. I owe Steve all of the credit for making me see the light."
