Fast Growing Vital Networks Trust Standout Jobs to Deliver Great Technology Talent
Vital Networks provides comprehensive outsourced IT services to companies too small to have their own professionally managed IT department. The concept is simple: deliver great, around-the-clock services for the critical computing infrastructure small organizations need to focus on their business. Vital’s model is catching on; they were recently named the “Fastest Growing IT Company in Sacramento” (and 6th fastest growing company overall) by the Sacramento Business Journal (September 2008). Despite the down economy, demand for Vital’s services has led them to open two new offices—San Francisco and Boston—in just the past two years. A year ago Vital engaged Standout Jobs to attract skilled, high-value employees who would help ensure the future success of the company.
Challenge
Vital Networks is experiencing a growth spurt, having recently added new offices on each coast to meet small business’ demand for skilled IT “helpdesk” talent. Vital prides itself on the quality of people it hires and goes to great lengths to source the best, often sorting through hundreds of applications before filling a single opening. Vital’s personnel distinguish themselves with exceptional technology skills as well as outstanding personalities—a relatively rare combination in technology. Consultants are career IT pros with typically five or more years of experience in network management, configuration, troubleshooting and design. Each employee is considered strategic, and “vital” to the company’s future.
Hiring used to be very painful, says Account Manager Eric Johnson.
Everything was managed through public folders in Outlook, which were manually populated and associated with an email, and we were constantly trying to keep the public folder organized because several of us were involved from the beginning of the process and each additional person with a stake in the decision added another level of complexity.
Solution
Vital Networks turned to Standout Jobs’ Recruitment Communication Platform to brand the company as a great place to work, expand its reach on the Web for top talent, and bring some order to Vital’s process of vetting and hiring only the best candidates for their open positions.
Instead of using recruiters which can take up to as much as 30 percent of a hire’s starting salary for fees, Vital Networks previously sourced jobs through boards like Craigslist. The quality of incoming candidates through those channels, however, was “hit or miss.”
Now when we post a job, it gets in front of the very people we’re looking to attract by landing on the sites those people are most likely to frequent. They see we’re an innovative, growing firm in a hot space. After getting to know us and our culture better through the Standout Jobs employment portal, those who feel they’re a good fit and have the right skill set will apply because they already know so much about us,” said Johnson.
Vital Networks now funnels all of its candidates, their resumes and cover letters through Standout Jobs, where the collaborative back end lets the partners communicate in an orderly way with one another until a hire is made. “If candidates don’t go through the system they’re disqualified,” continued Johnson.
Standout Jobs turn-key employment micro sites are delivered via a hosted solution, so it’s easy to use for anyone in charge of hiring—no IT experience is needed. Working employment sites are created, launched and attracting talent in a matter of minutes. Standout Jobs services and automatically updates sites while sharing with customers best practices techniques to ensure their success.
Results
In a little over a year of using the Standout Jobs employment portal Vital Networks has hired four key people, which was almost 50 percent of the company when they began using the solution. Johnson highly recommends all small companies outsource their hiring to Standout Jobs, “You’re saving at least one, mid-level HR salary. This is a cost savings issue and a huge timesaver for us.”
Standout Jobs reduced the amount of overhead associated with Vital’s hiring, and saved time and productivity lost by Vital’s executive team to their manual processes. Hiring is now faster, orderly and better targeted. Hundreds of applications for a single opening are now whittled down by an admin to approximately 75 or 50, which are further vetted by one partner who takes the field down to 25. All three of Vital’s partners then debate the remaining candidates until a single applicant is agreed upon with a thumbs-up or down vote – two out of three wins. Eric estimates the new system has simplified the process by many hours per candidate. The Standout Jobs portal attracts the right talent based on their skill set and cultural fit with the organization, and brands the company across the web as a fantastic place to work for super-talented IT pros.
Johnson concludes, “50 percent of our past hires came through Standout Jobs; in the future, 100 percent of our hires will come through the system.”
