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Charleston Business

#4 - The Hiring Group LLC

Jan 07, 2019 09:28AM ● By Kathleen Maris
Year Founded: 2014
Founders: Brooks Israel and Chris Yarrow
Headquarters location: Atlanta and Greer
Number of employees (start): 2
Number of employees (present): 10


Recently ranked by Inc. Magazine as the No. 130 fastest growing private U.S. company on the Inc. 5000, The Hiring Group is a technical staffing and recruiting firm with clients located throughout U.S. The Hiring Group helps companies hire and retain top IT and engineering employees by focusing on the well-being of the contractor. Its mantra is “Great Contractors Deserve Great Benefits.” Leading organizations rely on The Hiring Group as their trusted recruiting and contingent staffing partner. Unlike typical staffing firms, The Hiring Group goes beyond meeting minimum requirements and offers our contractors the richest benefits package available in the industry today.

What are the keys to your company’s rapid growth?
Brooks Israel and Chris Yarrow (Co-founders and managing partners): The primary driver for revenue growth is retention-focused hiring initiatives across our client base. Demand for IT and engineering jobs continues to skyrocket across South Carolina and the Southeast. In addition to the growing need for technical talent across all industries, companies are increasingly leveraging a contract-based (or “contingent”) workforce to scale to meet demand for business requirements.

What’s in store for your company?
As we head into the fourth quarter of 2018, we will continue to stay focused on hitting our financial and operational goals for the year. As our clients have already begun planning and projections for their 2019 budgets, we are working with them to ensure their staffing and hiring plans align to meet the strategic corporate initiatives. We are excited to continue to grow our company by bringing on new clients and contractors weekly. In addition to our growing contractor population, we are also hiring new internal staff to scale to meet our growth projections heading into 2019.

What are your firm’s biggest challenges and how do you plan to overcome them?  
In the current economy and with a low unemployment rate, competition for the highly skilled workforce in IT and engineering will continue to rise. We continue to work with our clients to help them adapt their hiring strategies to effectively compete to attract the best talent for these highly specialized roles.

What trends and innovations do you see down the line for your industry?
Technology and innovation have dramatically impacted the way companies recruit and hire. We live in a digitally connected universe today, and like everyone else, staffing and recruiting companies must leverage technology to work smarter. Technology helps us all become more efficient and effective recruiters, but there is a critical “people factor” that is required in our line of technical staffing that cannot be automated or mechanized. We have to be laser-focused on not just “checking the boxes” on candidate skill and education requirements, but also having the emotional intelligence factor to be able to place candidates who will be the right cultural fit as well.

What word of advice, if any, has shaped your career and who gave it or where did you read it?
Find a business partner with your same core values, but with completely different strengths than yourself. Think yin and yang.

Growing fast is one thing, but long-term sustainable success is another. What are you doing to make sure your company sticks around for the long haul?
We started The Hiring Group because we saw an incredible opportunity to change how companies recruit, hire and retain their technical workforce. When we started the company in 2014, we knew that to retain great contractors, you had to go beyond providing baseline benefits. Our focus from day one has been to look after our contractors’ well-being, and over time we continue to find ways to invest in our people so they are cared for. This has become a major differentiator for us as our contractor retention rate is between 96 to 98 percent. This retention-focused approach delivers significant value to our clients in terms of cost-savings and reduced opportunity costs associated with contractor attrition.