Ingram Micro Inc.’s ongoing quest for profits has the electronics distributor in a new line of business: searching for workers for its customers.
A few weeks ago, Ingram Micro hosted a job fair in New York to hook up professionals with two dozen customers looking for qualified technology workers.
The job fair is a stretch from Ingram’s daily operations of distributing electronics and software from Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and others to technology consultants that resell them along with their services.
Recruiting is a small part of Ingram’s $35 billion in yearly sales.
But it’s good business, according to Jason Beal, director of sales for the company’s services division.
“Not only do we see a financial benefit, but it helps us drive deeper relationships with those customers when we are able to hire somebody for them,” he said. “We then have an instant Ingram Micro advocate in-house for that customer.”
The job fair is one way Ingram is pushing to boost its razor-thin distribution profits by offering other services. In many ways, Ingram is an outsourcing company for its customers.
It helps them run help desks, rent space on data storage networks, monitor network security and host e-mail systems, among other tasks. Ingram also recruits, places and trains workers for customers looking for temporary contractors, engineers or full-time technology employees.
“In this case we are acting as a staffing company,” Beal said. “We do the leg work and find highly qualified people.”
Ingram does all of the background and reference checks, testing and initial interviews to find technicians, programmers, project managers and engineers.
If one of its customers hires an Ingram-vetted worker, the company gets a cut based on the worker’s initial salary, according to Beal.
The job fair in New York produced some 30 follow-up interviews, he said.
Short Supply on Skill
Ingram said it’s trying to meet demand for highly skilled technology workers, who are in short supply.
“Companies want someone who can walk in the door and sit down and start working on complicated things that very day,” said Matthew Kazmierczak, vice president of research and industry analysis for the American Electronics Association, a trade group based in Washington, D.C. “It’s not like during the boom times, where companies had more time to address a lack of information and get people up to speed. There is such competition that they don’t have the time, ability or resources to do that anymore.”
At Ingram’s job fair, one of its customers was looking for a certified engineer who’s an expert in installing and servicing Cisco networking gear.
It’s not unusual for companies to look to hire people with that specific kind of training, Beal said.
“The sweet science is finding the right candidates,” he said. “There are a lot on the market who have a base level of knowledge. But when you look at higher levels of networking, security and storage, they are lacking.”
Offset Slowdown
Ingram doesn’t break out sales from its services division, which started in 2006.
The company’s dominant distribution business has been hit by a slowdown due to sluggish demand for consumer electronics and office gear in North America and Europe.
The hope is that the higher profits from services will help offset some of the slump.
“North America has been over the last three years consciously diversifying its profit streams by adding specialty business,” Chief Executive Greg Spierkel said in a conference call earlier this year.
“As these specialty units grow in scale, we expect that they will continue to help us mitigate the risks of a down economy, while enhancing the margin profile and improving our competitive position.”
