The Client
Federal Civilian Agency
Our Systems Integration partner has been modernizing this federal civilian agency’s IT systems since 2006. These efforts focused on building critical IT functionality in the following areas: Requisitioning, Procurement, Asset Management, Warehouse Operations, and Transportation. The work in these key areas feature extensive integration with the agency’s financial management systems and incorporates embedded status tracking information.
From the start of the project, our expert recruiting and staffing team has been delivering senior, highly skilled Information Technology (IT) professionals to support a myriad of implementations. These include new technology implementations, upgrades, and ongoing O&M systems support in a variety of technologies.
The Support
- Requisitioning
- Procurement
- Asset Management
- Warehouse Operations
- Transportation
The Challenge
Our Systems Integration partner had recently won multiple task orders with an aim to add functionality and build new applications. This new volume of work created a surge need to hire new junior functional analysts, sub-leads, and junior testers to support a variety of new task orders.
To add to the challenge, our Systems Integration partners had challenging GPA guidelines for college recruiting. Any graduate should have a GPA of 3.8 or higher and would have attended top schools to be considered. This set the bar high for all candidates and, as a result, restricted the available pool of candidates.
So, the challenge was hiring enough qualified junior talent to deliver in a compressed timeframe.
The Solution
Our dedicated account manager and leadership team met with the senior project executives to discuss the recruiting and staffing solutions. While exploring various options, we discovered that our Integration partner could hire top-flight junior IT professionals (with one to two years of work experience) without meeting the stringent collegiate hiring guidelines.
In addition, and to ensure a great hire for our Integration partner, our company’s leadership suggested a contract-to-hire option. That way, our partner could immediately hire the resource on a contract-to-hire basis to evaluate:
- Can Do: Does the individual have the relevant skills and aptitude to do the job?
- Will Do: Does the individual have the motivation or the will to do what it takes to succeed?
- Will Fit: How does the individual fit with the rest of the team and the culture of the project?
Our integration partner team was thrilled with our suggested approach, so we agreed to immediately engage in a pilot program to test out this concept. Once we worked out the pilot program details, our expert recruiting and staffing team started to source top-flight junior candidates with up to two years of relevant IT experience.
In particular, we identified candidates with a background in:
- Analytics: Providing the statistical expertise and analysis support required for data investigation and modeling, as well as assisting the team with data cleaning and preparation.
- Functional Analysis: Providing system expertise, conducting system and regression testing, and supporting deployment of new enhancements. Our focus was to provide data integration between PeopleSoft, Ariba and other legacy systems.
- Cross Functional Lead: Providing an efficient, accountable, and measurable way to support the procurement, storage, shipment, and tracking of items around the world.
The Success
As a result of our strategic recruiting program, we were able to fill multiple contract-to-hire positions for these junior roles. Our Systems Integration partner was thrilled with our delivery and the success of our candidates. We have now become the go-to partner for delivering junior-level resources.
As a result of the initial success, our Systems Integration partner has engaged us to hire a Cross Functional Lead through our contract-to-hire program. Moreover, they have shared the success of our approach with other partners and Federal procurement teams to adopt our program as a best practice for future junior talent acquisition needs.
Do you have a need for contract-to-hire staffing services? Reach out to The Squires Group, an award-winning specialized recruiting, staffing, and placement firm focused on accounting, IT, and other professional talent acquisition solutions.
