Decision Toolbox (Recruitment Process Outsourcing)

(Dec 30, 2008) Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. That’s one of the things that really separates internal recruiters (staff recruiters) from the people who lead small staffing firms. When you start a business, you expose yourself to the furies of nature. It’s the sort of gambit that makes good protective mothers cringe for the safety of their babies.

Getting a firm up, running and continuously evolving over 16 years is an even bigger feat.

When Jay Barnett started DecisionToolbox in 1992, he had three years of running a prototype job board under his belt. A perennial "improver of things" (an engineer at heart), Barnett took a good look at Recruiting and decided to systematize it. The early years involved combining standardized interviewing techniques with customized job ad distribution services. Ultimately, Jay’s passion led to a decade long love affair with the practice of Recruitment Engineering. Productized as the Recruiting Machine™, Jay hand built the core technology that became DecisonToolbox.

Most businesses that last 30 or 40 years have a trajectory like this. (Note: Most businesses don’t make it through their first year.) The early stage, characterized by systematic improvement of a single arena is followed by the trial and error intensive process of turning that work into repeatable methods in phase two. By the time the company has been through several recessions (a decade or so), the core offering gets perfected. Phase three involves taking the product further into the mainstream and carefully choosing customers.

Over the years, DecisionToolbox has been at the edges of my peripheral vision. These days, the company offers RPO services from micro-engagements to full service enterprise operations. Years of perfecting their process have helped them build a real recruiting machine. Repeatable processes coupled with deep experience give them a recurring competitive edge.

I came across them again as a recruiting partner in the new Cisco Partner Talent Network. Cisco continuously sets standards in recruiting vision. In this endeavor, they are taking a chapter from an old Microsoft playbook and helping their supply chain find qualified workers. In some cases they are even getting the workers qualified. By swimming in this intense supply chain pool, DecisionToolbox is situating itself for more enterprise business.

There are a number of firms competing in the small to midsize RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) pool. Novotus, Accolo, The Empower Network, The Right Thing, HireVelocity and a score of others make up the  end of the business where customers are extremely unique and niches abound. With over two hundred thousand potential customers who meet the basic requirements (roughly 10 hires per month), there are no target shortages, even in a downturn. The great  RPOs have a tried and true methodology that produces repeatable results. (Almost always, their founders will tell you that their method is the one true method)

Although some companies are failing, a downturn is a good time to work for an RPO. Chanting the mantras of cost reduction and flexible workforce response (you don’t need full time people), RPOs have a relevant message with real near term cost benefits. The market should be adopting this 21st century approach as a part its response to changing economic circumstances. The only problem is knowing how to tell one provider from the other.

That’s where DecisionToolbox has another advantage. Knowing that business is built one deal at a time, the team at DecisionToolbox appears to be generating growth during this difficult time. Customer retention, growth within accounts and referrals, while never as sexy as a flashy advertising campaign, are the focus of their current efforts.

I think of it as James Stewart marketing. Long on delivery, short on hype, deep on modesty and humble as it gets. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them so far.