Our client, the largest customer-owned health insurer in the nation, leverages analytics to drive business performance and create new value for their customers. Historically, any advanced analytics and data science were completed by professionals directly embedded in the business areas. Our client made a strategic decision to create an Enterprise Data Science Center of Excellence and a corresponding Enterprise Data Strategy. They sought a true partner to help add over forty members to the team with in-demand skills in Data Science and Data Engineering. Swoon was ready to partner up!
Key Challenges
- To accomplish this, our client needed to hire a large team of advanced Data Scientists with expertise in AI, Machine Learning, and a variety of niche modeling techniques as well as build an enterprise Data Engineering team to support that effort—all of which are highly competitive and difficult positions to source.
- The senior-level roles were also very niche and had a high urgency to fill in a timely manner.
- For this client, Principal level job postings only produced a handful of underqualified resume submissions.
Our Solutions
- Swoon became a true partner by generating a customized sourcing & screening process—ensuring that only the most qualified and aligned candidates made it to interviews with hiring managers.
- This significantly reduced time-to-fill and lost man-hours interviewing substandard candidates.
- For the Principal level positions, we sourced through analytics organizations, networking groups and our talent network to capture passive, highly qualified candidates.
The Outcome
- Swoon was instrumental in hiring Senior and Principal Data Scientists and Senior Data Engineers for the team
- Our clients were extremely satisfied with our candidate quality and level of communication
- Our partnership created operational efficiency and made their Enterprise Data Science Center a reality
Have a hiring challenge that you’d like Swoon to help with? Fill out our contact form and one of our team members will reach out.
One of the largest investment banking enterprises in the world was looking for a strategic partner to re-architect their online savings and personal lending mobile app. In order to gauge the success of the restructured app, they set a goal to double online savings deposits within a 12-month time frame. These key objectives required onboarding a highly technical team within their timeline and budget constraints. Swoon was up for the challenge.
Key Challenges
- Triple the team size of highly skilled developers from 15 to 45
- Secure front and back-end developers in the most competitive marketplace – Software Engineering
- Double deposits in online savings from $13B to $25B in 12 months
Our Solutions
- Customized a sourcing and screening process resulting in high interest from qualified candidates
- Created targeted engagement strategies to secure commitments from specialized engineers
- Blazing fast mobilization of niche experts in order to meet mission-critical objectives
The Outcome
- Our custom sourcing strategy brought in top-level talent in a 6-week window which was vital to the project’s success
- The app exceeded growth expectations by $10B –resulting in $35B in deposits
- Contractors had a 100% success rate on all deliverables
- Several Swoon contractors were converted into permanent hires
“We were incredibly happy and surprised by the consistent quality Swoon provided. We didn’t know this level of success was possible.”
Hiring Manager
Have a hiring challenge that you’d like Swoon to help with? Fill out our contact form and one of our team members will reach out.
A Fortune 500 online travel shopping company needed a quick solution to a big problem—assemble a brand-new team across the country in 3 weeks. The project? A critical, customer-facing website with a strict deadline. Swoon was ready to jump into action.
Key Challenges
- 3 weeks to assemble and onboard a brand-new team
- Hire and onboard a highly skilled team of 4 UI engineers and a product manager
- Find a highly skilled team in a very competitive landscape within budget
Our Solutions
- Allocated additional team members from different departments to vet and secure the right talent quickly
- Acquired a deep understanding of the client’s needs to ensure only the right candidates made it to manager-level interviews
- Developed an advanced screening and an engagement strategy to secure top talent
The Outcome
- The team was assembled and onboarded in 3 weeks
- Came in under our client’s budget while capturing top industry talent
- 100% team retention through an 18-month, on-time project delivery
“This is the team I call to get things done.”
Senior Hiring Manager
Have a hiring challenge that you’d like Swoon to help with? Fill out our contact form and one of our team members will reach out.
One of the largest U.S. public universities was facing high turnover due to lackluster employee performances. The talent struggles spanned multiple departments in roles that were critical for organizational success, allocating research budgets and handling proprietary information. The university was seeing a consistent problem where developers and business analysts would be hired only to fail on key project deliverables—revealing that they did not have the proper skill sets. This pain point was causing massive delays on key projects and depleting valuable resources onboarding short-tenured talent. Along came Swoon.
Key Challenges
- Restructure an existing hiring process that was consistently returning under-qualified applicants within the university
- Attract top talent with a budget 20% under market salaries
- Stem the tide of high employee turnover
Our Solutions
- Vetted candidates thoroughly with two interviews and a skill test prior to client review. Our client only saw the candidates that were highly qualified
- Matched candidate fit across multiple criteria including skill set, drive and culture
- Employed a 6-month contract-to-hire strategy to vet candidate performance prior to full-time status
The Outcome
- On average, a one-week turnaround for new roles
- 100% fill rate within departments
- 100% conversion rate for candidates
- Client departments exclusively partner with Swoon for staffing needs
Have a hiring challenge that you’d like Swoon to help with? Fill out our contact form and one of our team members will reach out.
We are so excited to introduce our most recent Swooner of the Quarter, Kaylie Mora!
Swooner of the Quarter recognizes one of our team members for going above and beyond. Everyone in the company submits a nomination describing how they made the most impact. This past quarter, Kaylie won with a total of 10 wonderful nominations!
Kaylie Mora
Title: Senior Professional Recruiter
Location: San Diego
Why She Was Nominated: Kaylie was nominated by a vast amount of people for her recruiting skills and her willingness to help others with whatever they need. She is a huge asset to our team and is someone that our newer hires always look up to!
Quote from nomination: “If I were to describe Kaylie in one word, it is: consistent. She consistently works hard every day to find great, quality candidates, shows up to work ready to tackle the day and doesn’t make excuses; she has a fun, vibrant energy that she brings to the team as well. Her work ethic is a perfect example of a Swooner and never cuts corners!”
Click here to connect with Kaylie!
May’s Contractor of the Month is Jordan Chan, a Quality Control Monitoring Specialist for Swoon’s mobile payment client in San Francisco.
Jordan had his resume posted online and Kaylie reached out to him as she thought he would be a great fit for the role. He wants to give a huge thank you to both Kaylie and Krisanta as they have helped him tremendously throughout the process.
“Working with Swoon was an easy process. Kaylie and Krisanta prepared me for the interviews, gave me all the necessary tools to succeed, and helped me know what to expect every step of the way,” Jordan said.
In his role, Jordan is part of the collections team where he reviews and monitors cases and merchant communications to make sure all is in accordance with the company standards. He loves the collaborative culture of the company and has met a lot of great people and teammates so far.
Jordan said he will continue to put his best foot forward for the duration of the contract and would love the opportunity to be converted to the team full-time.
Fun Fact: Jordan majored in Graphic Design but is now working in finance. Also, he is ambidextrous!
April’s Contractor of Month is Adam Jennings, a Digital Asset/Rights Manager at Swoon’s business and employment-oriented service client in San Francisco.
Adam was first Swooned by Maggie when he was on the job market in Sunnyvale, CA. She reached out to him about a role at our client, which just so happened to be a company he had wanted to work with for quite some time.
“Working with Maggie has been great. She is my first point of contact for everything, routinely helping me and pointing me to the right people when I have questions,” said Adam.
He started at the client as the Head of Registration for their flagship conference, then joined the Center of Excellence team, and ultimately landing his role as the Digital Asset/Rights Manager where he is currently working.
In his role, Adam has worked to help develop and launch two internal tools that work and help to store and share the photography, videos and other collateral for all marketing campaigns. His hard work has led him to talks with his team about the opportunity for his role to convert to a full-time position this summer.
His favorite part about his job and the company is the culture;
“It is the first place to truly feel like home. Culture and integrity are bred and instilled by the leadership in place. Some companies use it as a tag word or selling point, but here, they really own their culture and respect peoples’ values. We really are in it together,” Adam says.
FUN FACT: Adam enjoys golfing and loves attending music festivals. He went to the Stagecoach country music festival this month, and frequents southern California to continue his love for surfing.
Congratulations on all your achievements, Adam!
On Friday, March 22nd, Swoon hosted our fifth annual fundraising event to raise money for Almost Home Kids (AHK), a local organization that offers transitional care and training to families who are bringing their children home from the hospital with complicated health needs.
This year, the event was held in our Chicago office’s building lobby, “The Tenant Lounge at The 300.” This is a brand-new space that was renovated earlier this year. We were very excited to hold our event in the larger venue and to host more guests than we were previously able to. Each ticket included food and beverages, and we were pleased to serve food donated by Mediterranean Express and desserts given by Nothing Bundt Cake and Eli’s Cheesecake.
Our charity committee began planning and gathering donations for the event in early January. We reached out to our friends, family and local organizations to request donations for our gift baskets and silent auction items. Several charitable donors participated, and we had more than 30 raffle baskets and 15 silent auction items available to bid on which was the most we have ever offered! We had a very successful evening with over 90 guests and several bidding wars on our hot ticket items. We raised over $7,000 which was then matched by our CEO and President to total $14,000 donated!
Lindsay Rawlings, Manager AHK Project Management and Martin Grisko, the son of founder Deborah Grisko, attended our event and gave a brief presentation on the organization and the many ways that it helps families in need. Almost Home Kids envisions opening new facilities to service the needs of children with complex medical conditions and their families in other communities throughout the country. Swoon is honored to be able to contribute to the costs associated with running the Almost Home Kids facilities. For more information or to see how you can make an impact, please visit www.almosthomekids.org.
Here at Swoon, our recruiters see hundreds of resumes a day and are aware of what makes a resume stand out to hiring managers. While each company and position are unique, these three resume tips are relevant for any role in any industry.
The Simple Things Matter
It is important to have a clean, crisply designed resume that is easy to skim through. You can make your resume easy to read by choosing a simple, standard font. You may stand out if you choose a unique font, but not in a good way. If someone cannot easily find the keywords they are looking for, your resume will be dismissed.
You also want to remain consistent in your layout. If you are putting a range of dates on your resume and you spell out the months on one position, do not change this and use abbreviated months in a different position. The same thing goes with bolding and italicising If you bold one job title, bold them all.
Grammar and spelling errors can ruin your chances of getting hired from the start. In most cases, your resume is your only chance at a first impression. Make sure you have triple-checked your resume for mistakes. There are online services such as Grammarly that help explain why certain things are incorrect on your document and what you should do to fix them. Also, it never hurts to have another set of human eyes review your page for anything you overlooked.
PRO TIP: It is a myth that resumes must be only one page in length. If you have a large amount of experience to share, it is okay to continue onto more pages, but remember, nobody wants to read a nine-page resume either.
Keywords
It may seem obvious if you are a designer that you know how to use the Adobe Creative Suite. However, no skill should be left out of a resume, especially if it is a program or certification. Many times, hiring managers will do a search function on resumes, typing in keywords to be sure the resume has them listed. Even if you are a great candidate, you may be overlooked if you are not focused on including these common industry keywords. If you are experienced in Adobe, add the specifics. Do you know Adobe Photoshop, or are you only familiar with Adobe Illustrator? The more specific you can be in these cases, the better.
Tailoring your resume to each individual job description is another great tip. Look for keywords in the job description that you have experience with. Then, be sure to format your resume to include these words. A great perk when working with our team at Swoon, is that we do the tailoring for you. We will make sure that your resume is customized for each role we submit you to. As a bonus, you will get a leg-up on the competition, because we know what the individual hiring managers are looking for in each candidate’s profile.
Quantify Your Successes
Although it will take some extra work, quantifying your efforts is a key tip to getting your resume noticed. Instead of including a bullet point that says:
- Created and implemented a social media plan that grew the company following on all platforms
Say:
- Created and implemented a social media plan that grew the company’s Instagram following by 500 followers, Facebook likes by 40% and Twitter followers by 95
Including these numbers shows that you can quantify your work and gives a more accurate story of your success. Be mindful not to include numbers that are insignificant, or do not add value to a statement. You want to highlight your biggest successes in each of your roles, and then mention the day to day functions that can be transferred to the work you would do in the new role you are applying for.
If you are ready to start looking for a job, or simply want to update your current resume, these tips are sure to get you headed in the right direction. As always, we are here to help, so reach out with any questions or apply for one of our open roles today!
Written by: Jessica Henry
February’s Contractor of the Month is Stacey Hou, a Financial Analyst turned Data Analyst at one of Swoon’s clients, a consumer credit reporting agency in Boston.
Stacey started her Swoon journey when she applied to a role online and started working with Beth Suchocki. Beth and team offered advice, provided sample questions to ask during interviews, and checked-in throughout the process. In fact, Stacey was deciding on concurrent offers and Beth negotiated a more favorable package, ultimately sealing the deal for Stacey.
When starting as a Financial Analyst, a typical workday for Stacey included data entry and reporting, financial journaling, auditing and transactions. As she became more familiar with her role, Stacey realized due to her background in coding, that she was able to automate a lot of her work. Her boss was very supportive and began to assign Stacey additional tasks in business intelligence, coding and data analysis fields.
Stacey was then offered a full-time position with the client as a Data Analyst and her new position started this month! She now supports the business in quantitative data and coding to improve efficiencies.
“My favorite part about the job is the flexibility to identify the optimal way of doing a project and being able to run with it. I am not set to doing everything by a certain set of rules, and this empowers me to go a more creative and passionate route,” Stacey said.
We at Swoon would like to congratulate Stacey on her success and wish her well in her new, full-time role!
Fun Facts: Stacey has a three-pound toy poodle named Luna and a rescue Chinchilla named Bubbles! She loves music and works as an event pianist and church organist in her spare time.