“Everyone’s targeting the same pool of talent,” said Pollino. “So we’re all kind of chasing the same people.”
Even as government spending shrinks and some contractors warn of tighter times, there’s no evidence that the specialized workforce TASC seeks will be shrinking. The company has said it plans to hire about 1,000 people in 2012.
Its recruiters acknowledge the contractor sometimes has a larger challenge than other firms; spun off from Northrop Grumman in late 2009, TASC is still working to cement its brand and make itself well-known.
Fortunately for Pollino, his program is flexible and gives him the latitude to pay for some of the more expensive candidates on the market.
For most recruiters in this competitive market, it’s about being creative. McLee prides herself on figuring out innovative ways to track the best candidates.
In TASC’s Chantilly headquarters, she puts together complex strings of search terms that help her zero in on the resumes and profiles of high-ranking intelligence executives. McLee strings together search terms like “bio,” “profile” and “resume” with “cleared” and area codes like “703,” “202” and “301” to track local candidates. She subtracts words like “jobs” and “ads” to weed out traditional job sites. When she finds a search string that works especially well, McLee e-mails it out to her coworkers so they can use it.
She’ll look for guest speakers at conferences or ask TASC employees about co-workers at previous employers they’d recommend. Baker stays on top of local news, watching for companies that may be laying off employees, making an acquisition or relocating offices — all changes that can prompt employees to consider other options.
McLee, who started at the staffing agency Career Blazers in 1997 but eventually transferred from headhunting to corporate recruiting in 2004, draws a sense of accomplishment from luring attractive candidates. At Career Blazers, recruiters would ring a bell when they snagged a key hire, and McLee said she still gets that charge when she hits the jackpot at TASC.
But she said her job is really about building relationships and credibility that help her win recommendations from other employees and maintain relationships with potential hires. In one case, she recruited a candidate who had been referred by a TASC hire. He came in to speak with company officials, but ultimately decided he wasn’t ready to leave his job. Six months later, he came back and now works for TASC.
Baker encourages recruiters to take the long view. He sent out a Samuel Johnson quote to the staff earlier this year: “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
At a career fair held at The Washington Post’s downtown headquarters earlier this month, McLee adopted that credo. Of the roughly 100 people she and Pollino had spoken with that day, she only saw one that met her clearance requirements.
But she and Pollino planned to take the stack of resumes they collected — many with their notes about the person’s specialties and possible program fits — back to the rest of the staff, where they would be culled by recruiters looking to fill other spots.
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