Time to Reprogram Hiring Process
The guys at Kensington, Md.-based Casaplex took obvious pleasure in theirs not being a traditional CI cover shot. The team takes tremendous pride in not being a traditional integration firm.
Far more influenced by IT programming than AV, Caseplex might just be the type of firm that is well-positioned to sell AV to customers’ IT departments.
The young team — “Most people here are in their late 20s, early 30s,” Goldstein says — doesn’t necessarily feel like it fits in at industry events or fits the mold of typical Commercial Integrator cover subjects.
However, the team at Casaplex is focused on breaking those molds. When most integrators see products at industry events they take them at face value, says JP Rike, director of IT. “There’s no innovation going on. They’re all looking at the product and just saying, ‘Wow!'”
Casaplex has assembled a team of programming-minded individuals who break from traditional AV integration in that it looks at the products its vendor partners provide as a starting point for innovation.
“We don’t settle for half-baked products or the old ways,” says Luka Bajic, business development. “We try to ingrain ourselves and be top-of-mind with the vendors that are open to a full critique.”
That programming mindset removes all limitations from customer conversations. In an industry in which talent recruitment often means hiring employees as they bounce from integration firm to firm, Casaplex has only a few who previously worked in the industry. Hiring at Casaplex is uncommonly organic.
For instance, Casaplex tries not to find itself in a position where it has to hire a certain number of technicians.
“We try not to get into the habit of filling a particular void in terms of operations or just to fill some sort of gap,” Bajic says. “We find brilliant people that we want to work with and we kind of make it work. What we don’t do is look for somebody with a certain skill set. We look at the skill sets they have and think about how we can apply that internally.”
Lesson: These guys are well-positioned to sell to IT departments. Are you?
Read Casaplex’s entire CI Profile here.
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