Taunton recruiting agency helps U.S. companies find tech experts overseas
Your business is looking to undertake a new intellectual property project or complement your existing intellectual technology professionals. However, you do not have the necessary resources available to hire new, full-time, permanent employees.
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What are your options? You can hire individuals from an increasingly watered-down crop of American IT professionals that may not have the necessary expertise. Or, perhaps, you could hire overseas help.
A Taunton, Mass.-based consulting firm has found a way to bring the most qualified technology experts to the companies that need them.
Global Consulting Group is the largest company specializing in recruiting IT professionals from Eastern Europe. The majority of the work force hails from Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria and Romania. They come to the States as H1B visa workers.
The company’s roots trace back to the mid 1990s when Vincent Shelzi, chief operating officer, was a student at the University of Maine. He met some scientists from the Ukraine who did not want to return to Europe because of unfavorable job prospects, said Domenic Shelzi, Vincent’s brother.
Vincent started a software company that developed into a consulting firm, said Domenic, who joined the company in 2000 as the president.
The timing was perfect as the dot-com craze exploded, exhausting the crop of qualified American IT professionals, said Domenic. At the same time, there was a high unemployment rate for these professions overseas, he said.
Vincent decided that there was a market to recruit overseas and bring people to the United States, said Domenic.
Global Consulting survived the abrupt end of the dot-com boom and continues to thrive. Rising unemployment figures did not affect the IT industry, forcing companies to look overseas for qualified workers.
The firm doubled in size in 2004 and grew another 64 percent in the first half of 2005, according to Domenic.
“Business has never been better,” he said, noting that there are currently consultants placed in more than 35 states.
The consultants, hired as Global Consulting employees, are primarily educated overseas and the majority has master’s degrees in information technology or computer science, he said.
“We’re able to provide long-term, stable consulting services to companies to help them bring projects from inception to completion,” said Domenic.
All the regulatory and logistical issues are taken care of by Global Consulting and all employees are offered a full benefits package, said Domenic.
Outsourcing was not the panacea that companies thought it would be, especially in the financial sector, because of security concerns, said Domenic.
“You have two choices: outsource (the work) or bring people in to do the work,” he said.
It is not hard to find companies that need people, he said. The challenge comes in trying to find the correct fit between the skills of the consultants and the needs of the clients, he added.
About 80 percent of the consultants are classified as experts in Java or Microsoft technologies, said Domenic.
A consulting company like Global acts as “a leading indicator of business activities,” he said.
“If companies expect business to grow, they will be hiring our consultants to get the work out in advance,” he said. “If (companies) perceive that the economy is slowing down, our people are the first to be let go.”
Currently, 100 percent of the consultants are on assignment, he said, noting that the company is consistently at between 80 percent and 90 percent placement even during downturns in the economy.
Typical clients are Fortune 500 companies, he said, and the list includes Digimarc (formerly Polaroid), Chase Bank, General Motors and Verizon.
An average assignment will last about nine months, he said. In the past, projects have run as short as three months or have exceeded several years, depending on the company’s needs.
The biggest source of business is repeat business or laterally moving from different departments within the same company, said Domenic.
Each year, the company anticipates hiring 50 to 75 employees to account for growth and attrition, he said.
Security concerns since 9/11 have made it more difficult to bring workers from overseas, said Domenic. The number of people that can be part of the H1B visa program has been reduced as well, he said.
“We prefer to have younger people because they are more adaptable,” he said.
The company maintains an office in Russia, two in Canada and three throughout the United States.
