The Challenge
Scaling Hiring Without Sidelining an Existing Team
thyssenkrupp Materials North America had aggressive hiring and growth goals that their internal talent acquisition team alone wasn't built to absorb. Bringing in an outside recruiting partner, however, required careful consideration. With a seasoned internal TA team already in place, tkMNA needed a firm that could work alongside them — not around them.
For Brian Diephuis, CEO, the gap was most acute in sales and operational management — two areas that required targeted outreach and a deep candidate network.
"Our recruiting team is definitely supporting many internal placements and it's very good, but we particularly know that in sales, we've had a lot of trouble locating key people. In operational management, I believe we're finding maybe half of them ourselves and W Talent is the other half, but we wouldn't be able to get our work done without W Talent Solutions."
— Brian Diephuis, CEO, thyssenkrupp Materials North AmericaThe Approach
Embedded Partnership, Not Outside Vendor
W Talent Solutions embedded itself in tkMNA's culture to become an extension of their team, integrating its proprietary process into tkMNA's own custom workflow. This included a proprietary scorecard that quantifies candidate qualities and competencies, ensuring an objective and comprehensive evaluation process — informed by market trends, role-specific data, and performance metrics.
"I really liked the approach that W Talent Solutions uses on learning a candidate's profile — the methods you're using to create a profile on the candidate, particularly trying to align candidates that have the attributes that have already worked for us in placements. I think in working with us to build some good profiles, it's allowed us to bring in people that, culturally as well as from a capability standpoint, are aligning with us."
— Brian Diephuis, CEOThe Partnership in Practice
30+ Searches. Two Years. One Long-Term Partner.
Over two years, W Talent Solutions partnered with more than two dozen internal stakeholders at tkMNA — spanning human resources, talent acquisition, executive leadership, and hiring managers — completing more than 30 searches across the United States and Canada. The work covered operations, logistics, manufacturing leadership, human resources, and the executive suite.
What began as a carefully considered decision to bring on an external firm evolved into something closer to a permanent fixture in how tkMNA approaches talent.
"I liked the entrepreneurial culture that W Talent embodies. W Talent Solutions is growing, and I really felt that they'd be a long-term partner — and that's what I would encourage another CEO to consider. This is not like filling a position. It's really like hiring somebody into your organization as a long-term partner."
— Brian Diephuis, CEO
