Fortune 500 Financial Services I.T. Team Augmentation
Optomi Technology Talent
Skill Sets
Business Optimization, Software Engineering, Java Developers, QA Automation Engineers, Manual QA, Scrum Master
This Fortune 50 financial services firm was going through a large upgrade to their insurance platform. The resource plan to complete this update included onboarding 40 people and building out entire teams of Scrum Masters, Developers, and Quality Assurance Engineers. In parallel, a CIO top down initiative to retain IT domain knowledge in house and convert all consultants engaged on a project longer than 12 months presented some unique requirements. Optomi partnered with the client’s leadership team to understand their goals and devise a strategy which streamlined the interview process and provided them with the option to hire the resources.
business
challenge
The client had tried two paths to onboard resources: a Contingent Labor Program and a short list of I.T. outsourcing partners. Both paths presented significant challenges. The Contingent Labor approach required extensive efforts to filter profiles and yielded disappointing interviewto-hire ratios above 10:1. Resources from their I.T. outsourcing partners were culturally misaligned and had contractual obstacles in converting. The volume of needs and exorbitant interview cycles also put a large strain on their internal team’s bandwidth. They were seeking a true business partner.
SOLUTION
The Optomi team collaborated with the client on a strategy that segmented their resource plan into squads. Optomi carved out a majority of their QA needs into a single Statement of Work. The initial 6 person team consisted of a Team Lead, QA Automation Engineers and Manual Testers. This QA team crosses over to support all of the insurance QA and Automation efforts. This crossfunctional concept introduced by Optomi was not previously considered by the client. Optomi also executed a staggered hiring approach. Because the client ultimately wanted to convert these consultants to full-time, during the pre-screening process we ensured that at least 50% of the proposed candidates were open to full-time work with the client and that all of them met the client’s hiring requirements. This provided much needed flexibility for the hiring managers.
1:1
SUBMITTAL TO INTERVIEW RATIO
75%
OF ALL CANDIDATES OPTOMI PRESENTED THE CLIENT WERE SELECTED FOR ENGAGEMENT
IMPACT
The client’s level of satisfaction was so high, they removed other Scrum Master, Java Development and QA Performance positions from their contingent MSP program and doubled the initial size of the Optomi team. The client’s previously painful screening process was dramatically reduced with a 1:1 submittal to interview ratio and 75% of all the candidates Optomi presented the client were selected for engagement.
