Curate Partners

Curate Partners

• Rank: 3
• Headquarters: Woburn, MA
• Top staffing segment(s) served –  IT
• 2019 US staffing revenue – $28.5 million
• Compound annual growth rate – 63.7%
• Website: www.curatepartners.com

When Curate Partners formed in 2014, it had a mission: Not to be a commodity provider. It didn’t want to simply fill requirements. The founders wanted Curate to partner with its clients and help them solve problems. “We really launched Curate with that people-first mindset,” says Sean Brady, COO, managing partner and co-founder at the Woburn, Massachusetts-based firm.

The founders felt the human element had been missing at some larger firms and there was too much emphasis on some of the wrong key performance indicators. They decided to do things differently, putting people at the heart of everything they do, emphasizing their commitment to local communities and embodying the core values that the company was built on. Brady credits the firm’s culture as a major driver of Curate Partners’ growth.

“The thing that makes us proud is that the employees always talk about how it feels really genuine with the company,” Brady says. Mike Giglio, managing partner and co-founder, puts it similarly: “We want quality. We want you to have good conversations.” The company does a lot with community involvement. It holds a backpack drive for schools, employees volunteer to help out in a soup kitchen and every year it sponsors between eight and 10 children via a Secret Santa drive during the holidays. It’s also doing a pro bono search for a nonprofit seeking a diverse candidate. But having the right culture also means starting out with good people.

Giglio says the company has had great success with its intern program, having people work the summer of their senior year, or last semester of college.

“You put the person first,” he says of hiring the right people. “They don’t have to have a certain background; it’s more about the way they communicate.” When interviewing candidates, Giglio says he might start talking about their family and how they grew up. He notes you can tell if a person is feeding you answers rather than being vulnerable. But he recalls the best interview that he ever had was with a person where they ended up talking for 2-1/2 hours. They hired that person.

But it’s not just about hiring.

“We’re just really good at building relationships, too,” Giglio says, referring to relationships between the company and clients. The company works at developing relationships and creating a word-of-mouth referral system. As a result of its approach, the company has deep relationships with its clients.

Further, business has not struggled during Covid-19 as Curate Partners works with high-tech and digital professionals who are still working amid the pandemic.

However, it’s adjusted to accommodate internal employees during the crisis. Curate Partners holds daily Zoom meetings with internal employees at 9 a.m. just to make sure that they see one another. And they have a signup sheet for the office to meet government- mandated limitations on how many people can be in a space.

However, the signup sheet got filled within five minutes the first time it was introduced. While the company also doesn’t force people to go into the office, it does limit attendance to two days in a row to ensure everybody has a chance to come in.

And although Curate Partners may be a relatively young firm, its leadership team has plenty of experience as its five founders all came with long tenures in the industry.

Still, it comes down to culture.

“Curate has really set out to be a differentiator in the market,” says Ron Fuccillo, co-founder and CFO. “We practice what we preach. We care about the people.”