BH Associates™ Case Study
Providing Statement of Work Solutions for Administrative Support During COVID-19 Pandemic
Challenge
Our client, a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois, faced a heightened pipeline regarding pilot scheduling during the COVID-19 pandemic. The department had to find pilots to cover flights if pilots got sick, and they also had to make sure pilots were off for eight hours to meet aviation regulations. This made scheduling very challenging.
Our client’s scheduling department was understaffed and needed their most skilled workers to focus on scheduling, not administrative duties. Therefore, our client engaged Beacon Hill Associates to hire contract staff to manage the department’s administrative functions and ultimately pull other employees to focus on scheduling.
Our client didn’t want to go through the vendor management process and had never used contractors before, but they were determined to keep their business functioning efficiently. Therefore, they engaged us through a statement of work (SOW) project. The client initially needed ten administrative coordinators. However, when we started filling the positions quickly, the client realized they only needed four administrative staff members.
Our rapid turnaround time for reviewing and signing the agreement, along with filling the jobs before the client was ready with computers, resulted in the client pushing our candidates’ start date out several weeks. Although the start date was delayed a few weeks, we kept all the candidates engaged so no one left throughout the hiring process.
Solution
Our Chicago contract recruiting team’s success on this project can be attributed to our sense of urgency. Our team dropped everything and immediately started making calls to find qualified candidates.
We looked for candidates who worked in an environment where they had to be resourceful. We used computer testing to ensure they had basic computer skills, and we confirmed that candidates would be available for the first or second shift. Finally, we completed reference checks on all candidates.
We looked for candidates who worked in an environment where they had to be resourceful. We used computer testing to ensure they had basic computer skills, and we confirmed that candidates would be available for the first or second shift. Finally, we completed reference checks on all candidates.
Achievements
Overall, the four contract workers we placed completed the work and received excellent feedback from the client. One of our candidates was converted to an internal, full-time equivalent (FTE) position! We continue to work with this client and recently formalized our role as an ongoing staffing provider. Through our Beacon Hill Technologies division, we fill IT positions as well as administrative roles.
