Hiring the right candidate can be hard in normal times, let alone during a global pandemic.
Vetted founder and managing partner Tim Walsh is hoping to change that for tech companies looking to boost their marketing and sales teams within Greater Boston.
Walsh has launched Vetted, a third-party recruiting and career services firm catered to the tech industry in Massachusetts. He said the timing felt right as he observed the drastic changes the Covid-19 pandemic brought on traditional hiring systems.
“In some ways, I think the larger number of candidates on the market has made it harder for companies to sort through and really find the right person,” Walsh said.
Walsh has been working with boutique search firms for the past 16 years and said he knows how to find the perfect hire for growth-stage tech companies. His approach includes advanced skills-matching, deep reference-checking and building an excellent rapport with clients and candidates.
Vetted’s process, Walsh said, is guaranteed to produce the right candidate with in-depth knowledge for nuanced roles that need to be filled.
“If it’s a hard-to-fill position, the odds that you're going to get somebody applying for that position that's appropriate are fairly small,” Walsh said. “That's where we come in. We help those companies really go out to the market and find the candidates that are still employed and are appropriate for the position.”
Outplacement assistance is also offered to those transitioning out of an organization, but Vetted’s primary role is recruitment.
Another unique aspect of the search firm: its promise to contribute 10 percent of its profits to local charities.
Walsh said the intent is to do something at a time where there is social strife and uncertainty in the country.
“From a business perspective, I think it's a differentiator,” Walsh said. “But then I just think from a human perspective it's like, ‘Oh, wow. That's something that we can really feel good about in terms of having that giving back-component to the business.’”
Vetted had a soft launch in late August before going live online and officially launching the website vettedboston.com in early September. Walsh has so far been a one-person team, leading searches for five companies from his home in Arlington.
In order to stay true to his boutique search firm concept, Walsh hopes to bring on nine more people over the next few months and years.
Walsh said although his idea was spurred during the coronavirus pandemic, he is in it for the long run. Hiring, he said, is returning as companies begin to embrace the work-from-home concept.
“There's always going to be a need for companies to partner with a search firm, typically on these hard-to-fill roles where they're just not finding what it is that they need,” Walsh said.
He explained that he’s been able to feel out who is best positioned to fill what some would consider niche roles, especially in tech. Spending eight years in sales and marketing himself, Walsh said, gained him “first-hand” knowledge on what tech companies are looking for.
Past clients of his include VistaPrint, PAN Communications and digital marketing agency Genuine.
This isn't Walsh's first foray into entrepreneurship. Walsh previously co-founded Connected Search, another boutique hiring firm that he left three and a half years later.
“Having walked in the shoes of the people on recruiting and partnering with types of clients where I've worked [in the past] … I would say that it's a huge advantage, both from an identifying talent perspective, and then also being able to qualify those people and make sure that they're ranked for the role,” Walsh said.
As his recruitment firm gets better known and he begins growing his team, Walsh said he hopes to build long-term relationships with companies that will begin to rely on his services as we navigate a new normal.
“The way that we're trying to position ourselves and sort of what we offer, I think, will resonate in the market,” Walsh said, “whether it's during pandemic times or hopefully soon post-pandemic times.”
Jordan Frias is a contributing writer for BostInno.
