Tricom Technical Services

• Rank: 158
• Headquarters: Leawood, Kansas
• Top staffing segment(s) served:  IT
• Final 2022 revenue: $28.0 million
• Final CAGR 2018 through 2022: 15.0%
• Website: tricomts.com

Professional skills matter in IT staffing, says Tricom Technical Services CEO Matt Sharples. But personal characteristics matter more.

Success, he says, is “more about who the person is. What’s their aptitude for learning new skills? Are they open and curious? Do they work well with other people? Some people in IT get stuck in the tool set they’re working in, and that isn’t possible in a world that keeps changing. You always have to get used to using new tools and solving problems in new ways.”

It’s that focus on the individual and their personal goals and attributes that drives TriCom’s success.

Sharples started TriCom about 30 years ago and bought out his co-founder about five years later. Today, the Kansas City, Kansas-based firm places about 200 IT professionals every year with around 50 corporate clients. The great majority of the placements — 95% — are contract or contract to hire, though TriCom handles some permanent placements as well.

Rather than just searching for whatever credentials a client company needs right now, Sharples’ team builds relationships with potential recruits. They spend about 60% of their time talking about active job openings and 40% talking more broadly about where potential job candidates are in their careers.

“It’s very important to build relationships before you need them,” Sharples says. He and his team work to understand what might motivate potential placements to take a new assignment. “We want to have a career conversation with people and understand what the next step in their career looks like. People don’t want to change jobs in order to do exactly what they’re doing now. We’re not just trying to find people to put in current slots.”

Understanding where a job might fit into a career trajectory is important for the clients TriCom works with, too. That requires doing due diligence. “What does this person want to do? How does this company fit with that? We go beyond matching a résumé with a job description — and we have to do that better than a client’s human resources department could do.”

A solid sense of a prospect’s strengths and weaknesses is also vital. “There are some brilliant people who aren’t easy to work with,” Sharples says. Still, while some roles require a lot of client interaction and therefore would not be a good fit for such candidates, there are plenty of roles that involve primarily looking at data on a screen, he notes. Knowing someone’s strengths and weaknesses is a crucial part of making a good match.

So is knowing whom a potential recruit knows. “You might actually be working with the person sitting next to your prospect — or someone else they know,” Sharples says. TriCom looks for referrals, especially from people the company has already worked with.

TriCom recruiters try to touch base with prospects every six months to learn about any potential life changes that could make them open to new gigs. For example, someone nearing retirement age might be more open to contract work. Others, meanwhile, might be getting bored with their current situation and want to switch it up, Sharples says.

And, he adds, still others might be more open to new jobs if they can work from home. “Working from home has really opened up the door for a lot of new talent to consider opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible for them three or four years ago.”