Care to Join Me by the Fire?

It’s often said that civilization emerged when humans stopped roaming and started sharing ideas and building community around a fire. On a recent social media scroll into guru advice for startups, I encountered a clip that built off this concept to draw the metaphor that every entrepreneurial endeavor must think of itself as a small fire on a mission to burn bright enough to attract the first group of attendants. The guru went on to reference Apple’s original Macintosh production order of 500 units, and the simple yet incredible task of finding the first generation of personal computer users in a desktop-less world. This immediately made me wonder about the objections they must have gotten on those sales calls: “No thanks, I already have pen and paper,” “so it’s a big calculator?” and “that’s what the steno pool is for!” I digress.

The illustration nevertheless resonated, and reframed a couple of the Illyrian Group 's wins and losses from the past year. Our home runs happened exactly where they should have - directly inline with our business plan and operating model. The near misses and L's, on the other hand, occurred in spaces where we’d allowed ourselves to creep into other market shares or bent too willingly to client requests. In hindsight, this all seems obvious and easy, in practice, its sleepless nights and a gut punch.

To overcome these challenges, and an execute just a little closer to what I see as the true fuel to our flame, I delved deeper into our business thesis: "distributed work and global teams empower growth," strategy, and motivations for launching in the first place. I'm nowhere near finished, but I think I've hit bedrock and wanted you to know what we’re about and why I believe there’s not another recruiting or outsourcing firm on earth quite like us.?

I) Nationwide, Contingent Recruiting on a Remote/Hybrid Basis

Every word in that sentence has tremendous implications. Contingent recruiting, as in, no money upfront and call 2-3 shops in town, is traditionally hyper-focused on market specific relationships. Retained firms, on the other hand, can't tell you about a candidate's college roommate's recent divorce to the VP at your number one competitor, but they will leave no stone unturned in exchange for a down payment, exclusivity, and time. We’re a bit a both: easy to engage, a heck of a lot more teeth than a branch-based, volume shop, but definitely not the “guarantee” in C-Suite placement. I think there’s a place for us.

II) Kosovo Back Office Outsourcing

Dedicated to back office functions in accounting, operations, and technology within our lower and middle market client specialization. We believe that outsourcing will steadily supplant contract employment as the compliment to direct placement recruiting. Moreover, we understand that addressing labor cost, improving processes, and increasing operational efficiency, is invariably the mandate of every candidate we place in a management or leadership role. As such, we see significant potential to weave outsourced team building objectives into the hiring process of most US based placements - let’s have that conversation (there's a broader case to be made for why to choose Kosovo as your outsourcing location which I'll make in a future issue).

III) Global Team & Dedication to Service

I like to say that “the sun never sets on the Illyrian Group,” because at least one of us is always live. More tactically, this means we have physical presence and the ability to support our clients and candidates in very substantial ways. In-person candidate employment/identity verification during outsourced onboarding, routine engagement quality control check-ins, and the legal framework to secure the data privacy of all parties involved, to name a few.?We also approach our work with a service ethos. This may sound like a bit of fluff but, I can assure you based on my experience at other firms and feedback from clients as to why they're considering making a change that its not (between us, I personally know an organization that had their technology product swiped near the end of the engagement and were ghosted by their outsourcing partner entirely. Their legal counsel said to anticipate 12-years in remediation.... yikes).

All that said, I recognize what I’ve laid out here isn’t going to appeal to everyone. If you’re on the fence, I'll go ahead and tell you that if you've got inflexible working hours, paper based/physical processes, and a desire to get the cheapest support possible, the Illyrian Group is not for you (consider Indonesia or respond to one of the many recruiter email blasts sitting in your spam folder). I do, however, think a new type of organization is emerging in the post-pandemic workplace. One that sees remote work, leveraging global talent, and optimizing cost efficiencies as a competitive advantage and recipe for growth. This is the type of organization we're looking for, and that's why we've built this fire.

Corbin

Feel free to give me a ring 312.544.9237, or drop me a note [email protected] if you'd like to explore any of this further.

Illyrian Group #andsowegrow #kosovobpo