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DotConnect: Who We Are

DotConnect: Who We Are
How do you find the right fit for your open job positions?Finding the right candidate for the open position at your company can be challenging. Many factors go into selecting the person, including experience, skills, and cultural fit. Not to mention that looking over applications, reading resumes, and reviewing applicant portfolios can turn into a full-time job all on its own.At DotConnect, we want to make the hiring process easier for you and your team. We realize that a company is only as good as its people, and it’s the people who make any brand successful. Our goal is to build relationships with candidates and understand what makes them great humans before they become great employees.Come along with us as our CEO, Dom Farnan, shares more about why we do what we do and what sets us apart from other recruiting agencies. You’ll get to know more about why we chose an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) strategy rather than a traditional hiring strategy, what makes us unique as an organization, and the purpose that drives us forward.
How do you find the right fit for your open job positions?
Finding the right candidate for the open position at your company can be challenging. Many factors go into selecting the person, including experience, skills, and cultural fit. Not to mention that looking over applications, reading resumes, and reviewing applicant portfolios can turn into a full-time job all on its own.
At DotConnect, we want to make the hiring process easier for you and your team. We realize that a company is only as good as its people, and it’s the people who make any brand successful. Our goal is to build relationships with candidates and understand what makes them great humans before they become great employees.
Come along with us as our CEO, Dom Farnan, shares more about why we do what we do and what sets us apart from other recruiting agencies. You’ll get to know more about why we chose an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) strategy rather than a traditional hiring strategy, what makes us unique as an organization, and the purpose that drives us forward.

We’re Not Your Typical Hiring Agency

Before we get into why we chose to be an RPO, let’s take a second to talk about what “recruitment process outsourcing” means. In short, RPOs fill a similar function as a recruiting agency. They both look for talent and pair that talent with companies to save clients time and money, but they do it in different ways.

The Key Difference Between RPOs and Talent Agencies

The key difference between the two is how recruitment process outsourcing companies find the right candidate:

“Typically, companies come to us when they have a high volume of roles that they need filled, like ten to a couple hundred and need dedicated, full-time recruiting support, but they don’t have the headcount internally for it. [In] an agency model, [companies] might farm out a role or two to an agency that works on a placement fee basis.”

Dom Farnan
An RPO essentially works as a recruiting department within the business. Instead of functioning outside of a client’s organization and handling minimal recruiting functions, an RPO provides fully-embedded, on-demand talent acquisition teams deployed within the organization. While working within this framework, a recruitment process outsourcing organization can handle tens to hundreds of open roles at a time for a client.

Why We Chose to Be an RPO

Now that you know a bit more about what an RPO is, let’s talk about why DotConnect became an RPO. According to Dom, choosing to go the RPO route instead of becoming a typical recruiting agency was a natural evolution:

“For 18 years, I was a solopreneur, and I had nine clients that I was a contract recruiter for. At the end of 2018, I was burnt out and tired from supporting nine clients and having a couple hundred roles that I worked on myself with a handful of part-time people helping me. I decided to tell my clients I had built a team that could deliver the same quality of service that I had committed to.”

Dom Farnan
Dom took steps to recruit and train her new team and then flipped her clients to her team members. This process kept DotConnect focused on building relationships with clients and prevented us from transitioning into the typical recruitment agency model.

“I never had an interest in agency recruiting. I didn’t like the fact that in agency recruiting, you were placing your livelihood on very high stakes. You can’t control a candidate to take an offer, and you can’t control a company to choose your candidate. I always wanted to build relationships with the company.”

Dom Farnan
Working internally with clients allows us to build relationships on both sides of the recruitment process — even if there isn’t a fit at the company. This business model prevents candidates from being forced on clients and ensures that we do what’s right for both the client and the candidate.

Relationships Set DotConnect Apart

First and foremost, we’re different at DotConnect because we love building relationships with our clients. These relationships open the door for us to be problem-solvers for our clients instead of just locating a new person for their team. Helping clients overcome big challenges is one of our favorite things to do as a company.

“[We] love understanding what problems our clients are trying to solve and the challenges that they have in hiring their teams. I get excited when I’m on a discovery call with clients, and they tell me they need to hire five hundred people in six months or some ridiculous, big thing that they’re trying to do that I think can’t really be possible.”

Dom Farnan
In addition to being problem-solvers for our clients, we love seeing our candidates grow where we plant them. Because our team members work directly with clients, we get to keep close contact with their new hires and personally invest in their growth.
Our people-first strategy also makes it possible for us to make connections that last with our clients:

“Once we’ve established our relationship with clients, they take our team everywhere they go. We have a deep connection, and we know each other. We understand … the things that make us tick.”

Dom Farnan
A mutual understanding of each other’s values makes it possible for us to work well with our clients, find exceptional talent, and help foster an ideal environment for candidates. These connections separate us from other agencies and elevate the level of support we provide to our clients and candidates alike.

We’re Built Around Strong Core Values

Core values are necessary to a strong company, just like a good foundation is essential to any building. These three values are at the heart of everything we do at DotConnect: mindfulness, ownership, and fun.

1: Mindfulness

Mindfulness is at the top of our list when it comes to how we treat our clients, candidates, and our teammates. We want to make sure that the people we work with know we’ve got their back and are here to help them succeed.

“[We] want to … bring a mindful attitude and positive attitude. [It’s important] to be calm with compassion and have an awareness of ourselves and others. And it’s also important to be willing to help your team.”

Dom Farnan
Approaching our position from a place of mindfulness creates an environment that fosters openness and growth. Paying attention to what others need helps us overcome challenging situations and helps push others forward to success.

2: Ownership

We don’t just want our team and the people we work with to do well — we want them to own their jobs. Owning your position means that you are coachable, curious, and take pride in your work.

“[We] really want to ensure that everyone in [our] company owns their roles. I don’t care if you’re just graduated and the most junior person on the team or the most senior person on the team. You [need to] have ownership in the quality of work that you produce.”

Dom Farnan
Taking ownership ensures that everyone at DotConnect upholds our high standards. We take pride in the level of excellence we hold and the high-quality candidates we provide for our clients.

3: Fun

Fun may seem like an odd core value for an on-demand hiring team, but at DotConnect, we don’t want to create an overly stressful environment. Staying light-hearted allows us to work at a high level without too much pressure bringing us down.

“We’re not saving lives or curing cancer. We’re just hiring people for a lot of different companies, so it’s not that serious. Even when the sky is falling … we can always figure it out. It’s not the end of the world.”`

Dom Farnan
It may seem counterintuitive to keep things light while hiring hundreds of people, but it works well for us. Putting too much stress on getting people into positions makes it difficult to build positive relationships with clients and candidates.

We’re Conscious Connectors

In our opinion, there’s so much more to onboarding employees and retaining talent than providing the right benefits package or offering room for professional growth. We believe that companies need to change how they connect with their team.

“[We’re] trying to lead a conscious connector movement and change the way companies hire, onboard, and retain talent [by] focusing on connecting as humans in hopes of aligning with their purpose.”

Dom Farnan
To create that connection, we encourage our clients to have a holistic view of their team as individuals. Building a solid team begins with strong bonds, and at DotConnect, we believe that our culture should be an example to our clients. Some of the things we do to build our human connection include weekly breath work via Zoom, a company-wide book club, and a beach cleanup.

“Starting in the spring, we’re going to be doing a coastal beach cleanup. We have a pod of people in the Northeast [and one on the West Coast]. We’re going to sponsor a beach cleanup, then do a barbecue [after].”

Dom Farnan
In addition to crafting our culture as a template for talent retention, we want to give clients tools that promote a great work environment. One tool that we love to use and suggest to all of our clients is called Roots, which helps remote businesses make Slack more personal through watercooler topics, interest groups, and meetup ideas.

“[We] share all of our tools with clients and tell them what we are doing [with them]. We also embody our values, right? We show up within our own team meetings and start with two minutes of dancing on Zoom together to shake our energy out and bring a higher frequency when we drop into meetings. Similarly, we do that with our clients and make it a little bit more light-hearted.”

Dom Farnan
Ultimately, we believe that people are people, even when they’re at work. And that means people should act like human beings while they’re on the job. Corporate culture doesn’t need to be filled with boring business updates and a serious mindset — it can be lighthearted, uplifting, and people-focused.

Learn More About What DotConnect Can Do for You!

It’s essential to look at the hiring process as connecting human beings. Staff members aren’t numbers on an organizational chart or cogs in a machine, and companies need to see them more holistically. At DotConnect, we have experience helping companies build solid and people-focused teams that retain top talent.
We believe that building relationships lie at the core of finding the right talent for your business. When you work with us, you gain a partner that will stand by your side and help you reach your hiring goals. We’re experienced talent advisors that spend time coaching and supporting our candidates to help you build a stronger team.
We’ve helped companies like Beautycounter, Samsung NEXT, and Zendesk find the right talent and build stronger teams. To learn more about the results of working with us, check out our case studies. Our results speak for themselves!

If you’re ready to make a change and work with a talent advisory company that’s dedicated to your team’s success, reach out to us. We have the tools you need to make a more significant impact with your hiring process.

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