Forced to Face the Web

About 40 recruiters work the phones at kforce's operations center, which takes up an entire floor at one of the company's facilities in Tampa. The whole place crackles with the energy of the New York Stock Exchange, as each recruiter dials in more than 100 calls a day to IT and finance pros in "second-tier" markets like Las Vegas, Nevada; Nashville, Tennessee; Richmond, Virginia; and Sacramento, California -- cities where kforce lacks a field office. At least four times a day, the din of voices is punctuated by the clanging of a bell, which signals that a recruiter has "closed a deal" -- in other words, that a job candidate has accepted an offer.

The pace never lets up, since a recruiter typically has just three hours to fill a job opening (most openings are for short-term projects and assignments). Meanwhile, the competition is intense. Everyone in the operations center knows how everyone else is performing: Recruiters are divided into teams, and each team posts each "deal" on a 10-foot-by-5-foot scoreboard. And everyone lives by a motto that is tacked to a bulletin board: "Intensity. Passion. Attack. Today."

"We're a sales organization," explains Richard Bramel, 45, vice president of the operations center and a 17-year company veteran. "We work with intensity to complete our goals; we have a passion for what we're doing; and we attack -- that is, we're always, always closing."

But thanks to the Web, kforce's David Mamet - like sales culture is morphing into a kind of digital Dale Carnegie. Recruiters aren't just commission-driven salespeople anymore. They're expected to connect with job seekers by phone, fax, or modem, and to follow up with insightful advice. In fact, candidates are now customers. Employers are clients. And recruiters don't "do deals" -- they "nurture relationships."

"The staffing industry has been seen as almost a necessary evil," says Liberatore. "It has not been customer-focused. It has been a sales-oriented business, not unlike the car industry. When you walk in to buy a car, the dealer is focused on selling, selling, selling. He's not necessarily interested in making sure that you get the car that best meets your needs.

"We're telling our employee base that this is what the world thinks of the staffing industry. But we're also telling them that the Web gives us a unique opportunity to change the way we do business."

It remains very much in doubt whether that opportunity will result in lasting success. The company's third-quarter revenues rose 5.5% -- to a historic high of $202 million. But at press time, its stock (which had traded at $38 per share as recently as 1998) was trading in the low single digits.

"The investment community's attitude is 'Let's see some results,' " Liberatore says. "The challenge is to deliver."

Dunkel believes that the worst is now behind him -- that kforce has succeeded in integrating the Web into all of its operations and that it is embarking on an "advanced state" of execution. Still, he concedes that during the inevitable dark hours, "You wonder if you've done the right thing. I was distressed by the impact of the initiative on our stock price. And my biggest worry of all was whether we could get this organization through the change: Can we hold the pieces together long enough to make it all happen?"

But he refuses to second-guess himself. Dunkel understands that you can't move forward if you're looking back. "I'm an entrepreneur, and I don't believe in going halfway on something. We knew the risks. And we knew we'd incur a lot of wrath. But I have no regrets about scrapping our business model. If I have to, I'll scrap it again tomorrow."

Bill Breen (bbreen@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor. Visit kforce.com on the Web (www.kforce.com).