The Kforce Story: 50 Plus Years of Great People Delivering Great Results

Even though Dave, Rich, and Howard had all been weaned on the “professionals working with professionals” philosophy to which Romac and Associates adhered, they quickly learned other skills, particularly sales, could also be valuable parts of the equation and a person’s work ethic and values even trumped credentials. Because they had been so diligent about developing systems and processes for operating their business, the person with the right work ethic and values could be trained for success. There is perhaps no better example of this than Joe Liberatore. Joe joined the firm in 1988, leaving a job in telecommunication sales to become a recruiter in the IT group. While he started his education as a computer science major, he switched to complete his degree in psychology and criminal justice. He joined the firm with little understanding of what it meant to be a recruiter, but he was a friend of Pete Alonso and his wife. “All I knew,” said Joe, “was that Pete was driving a nicer car than I was; he was wearing nicer suits than I was. I thought, it’s sales—I’ll figure it out.” He learned the ropes under the tutelage of both Pete Alonso and Dick Maddock and earned the title Rookie of the Year in Data Processing in 1989. “We were very disciplined about each step of the recruiting process,” recalled Joe. “We had forms and you had to fill in every answer on the interview prompters to collect information about a candidate or with a client getting information about a job.” The business, though thriving, retained some of the appearance of a start-up, partly because of Dave’s natural tendency toward frugality. Joe said, ”When I started with Romac, we were out on Harbor Island and we were moving to a new location which was

Best Business Practices

In pursuit of the best practices for operating their business, Dave sent Rich Cocchiaro to the Rochester office, which was managed by Bill Irish and regarded as a well- run office, to “flowchart” their processes. Using a plastic flowchart template from his years at Coopers and Lybrand, Rich went to work. “Dave still laughs today over that plastic template,” Rich said, “but it helped us understand that, while there were existing successful processes, we were constantly taking them and improving on what had been done for years.”

Paul Winters, Maureen Rorech, Frank Ferreri, Pete Alonso, Dave Dunkel, John Astrab, and Joe Liberatore, 1989.

35 Turning Points