The Hunt for a New Office
Beyond Talent Acquisition
A Fortune 500 requested recommendations on where to open their next major hub. Their HQ sits in Silicon Valley and acts as the main R&D center. They maintain 2 hubs within the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, and have numerous sales offices splattered across the US.
This company provides computer data storage systems, software and services. They rely in a highly technical workforce to thrive.
I have worked with this client since 2005 and as a cost savings initiative, transplanted many of their technical roles from HQ into these 2 hubs. When the time came to open a 3rd hub, they asked me to provide a few recommendations.
APPROACH: To back our recommendations, I lead a team to conduct market research on data points such as cost of living, availability of talent, price of talent, state and local taxes, payroll burdens, facility rental cost, tax rebates, incentive programs and intangible factors.
We examined all possible locations with these 6 points in mind:
[ 1 ] Availability of local talent to jump start the office
[ 2 ] Attractiveness of location to lure in non-local talent.
[ 3 ] Decent college or university to groom future employees
[ 4 ] Costs in terms of labor and CapEx
[ 5 ] Incentives from local government
[ 6 ] Cities with the biggest increase in population
The client picked one of our top 3 recommendations and constructed a 53,000 square feet facility to house hundreds of employees. My team was then tasked to staff this location with talent.
