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Editor's Notes
I operate like an employment agency, but, with my expertise and market focus I see Kim Fletcher Associates as a broad based contract IT consulting firm. I provide SMART People For Projects
My clients are organizations who have a need for a knowledge expert and don’t have that expert in house, or, the one they have is to busy to take on another project. Some of my clients are large like Research In Motion or Canadian Institute for Health Information. Some of my clients are smaller like Kelron a local trucking company and EconoRack who make warehouse shelving I pull my candidates from a database of over 4000 contract consultants who have registered with me. My recruiting group also subscribe to all the major North American and a few European job boards for recruiting. I can provide services in most countries and bill in the local currency. I can use local talent or import the right expertise for a project.
Kim Fletcher Associates is different from the regular employment agency (there are about 13,000 of them in Canada). Because of my experience in IT, and, in the recruiting business I’ve seen where my competitors and clients can go wrong. Often agencies my size run a 360 degree desk. That means the salesman does everything. He does sales, then does the recruiting, then he does the time tracking and billing. I do a final interview with every candidate I present, but I don’t do the initial screening or the payroll. There’s no way for the 360 desk operation to become an expert in any one area. My expertise is in IT projects and that’s what I focus on. I contract professional recruiters to find the right expert. My recruiters have about 15 years experience in recruiting and human resources within the IT industry. I also use a dedicated payroll company leaving very little room for mistakes (Ceridian). This allows me to provide the best of breed service in each area required to give my clients and my contractors the best employment experience possible.
The three main areas where I help companies are: Contract IT workers for projects. SMARTcontract SMARTperm, Where I provide recruiting expertise for companies looking for the perfect fulltime IT employee (and I do that with a “try-before-you-buy” program which I’ll explain later). SMARTfusion, Is where I provide consolidation of contract employees for a company that already has engaged contract employees and it’s become a full time job to manage that workforce and they are starting to expose themselves to risk.
So I’ll spend a few minutes discussing the 3 main solutions I offer businesses. As a broad based technology consulting firm I provide knowledge experts when and where you need them.
Here is just a small sample of the different areas where we can help companies. The areas of expertise where I have knowledge experts is actually much bigger. And with the great recruiters I contract I can find some pretty obscure knowledge experts.
SMARTperm is about full time employees. Recruiting IT employees is often difficult for HR departments. They often don’t understand the terminology or what the projects are all about. They can find the key words in a resume but have no idea what questions to ask or what details are important. There are too many areas that can be misinterpreted when screening a candidate unless you understand IT and the requirements for a specific job.
Contract To Hire is how I place full time consultants most often. The client wants a full time person and may not be having much luck in keeping who they do hire. I’ll go in and review what they have been doing to date, make the recommendations required to keep the person they require if needed. Then I’ll recruit the right person for a 6 month contract. During that 6 month period both the employee and the employer get a chance to see if there is a good fit. If it’s not a good fit I’ll pull the contractor out and find a replacement at anytime during the engagement. The client doesn’t have to worry about severance payments or any contract issues. During the engagement the two parties negotiate a final compensation package between themselves that they can both agree on. Both parties go into an final full time agreement with their eyes wide open and no surprises.
Often a quickly growing company or a large company can end up with multiple contractors who they have hired from multiple sources and all of a sudden they’ve created a full time HR position just to manage all their contractors, their different contracts, pay schedules, timesheets etc. I can consolidate this problem and relieve their requirement for hiring another HR person
The other issue with companies that have many contractors working for them directly is that after time Workmans Comp and different government agencies see these contractors and full time employees not as contractors. They’ll be audited, get fined and have to make all the back payments for UI and WSIB. I provide the 3 rd party separation required so that there are no grey areas in the eyes of the government as to what their status is. The government has started to aggressively look for who’ve put themselves into this position. WSIB has been told to find $1 billion of additional revenue from this “gray” area of employment. Both the contractor and employer benefit from having this work agreement clarified.
Here is the process I go through to find then place a consultant there are no charges until the client and contractor sign and contract and the work starts.