Jill Rupple is a business leader who believes in being direct.
As Chief Talent Officer for Kaufman Hall, a fast-growing Chicago-area management consulting and enterprise performance management software services firm, she simply doesn’t have time to talk in circles. Not only does she oversee all aspects of human resource management and is responsible for the design and deployment of activities related to talent acquisition, talent management, leadership development, and employee engagement, Ms. Rupple also manages an array of outside vendors and service providers.
“I’m very particular with our business relationships,” Ms. Rupple said. “I make sure third parties that want to engage with Kaufman Hall first get to know our culture and what we stand for as a company.”
The reasoning behind Ms. Rupple’s philosophy? Ultimately, she wants those relationships to undergo a metamorphosis from a mere vendor to a trusted thought partner.
“And for that to occur there must be a constant feedback loop and a willingness to adapt with change,” Ms. Rupple said.
Ms. Rupple cites Brian Whitehill and the team he leads at AccuSource as a Kaufman Hall partner who has made the leap from vendor to trusted thought partner. The two parties first began working together when Ms. Rupple enlisted AccuSource in recruiting sales professionals in the healthcare software sector. Since its founding in 1985, Kaufman Hall has developed a stellar reputation in the healthcare industry, a vertical that has been the linchpin of the AccuSource playbook as well.
“We were definitely playing to our strength when we first started recruiting on behalf of Kaufman Hall,” Mr. Whitehill said.
Ms. Rupple echoed those sentiments.
“The first assignments with a new service provider always serve as a barometer of potential,” Ms. Rupple said. “And Brian and his team adapted to our ways of working and quickly identified healthcare candidates that fit our style.”
Once the AccuSource team passed those first tests and established a comfort level with Kaufman Hall, Ms. Rupple laid out a new challenge.
In 2014 Kaufman Hall was in high-growth mode, making strategic investments in areas outside its core competency of healthcare, foremost among those being higher education.
“We needed to look for sales professionals with higher education backgrounds and an understanding of university environments,” Ms. Rupple explained. “This, of course, was completely different from healthcare. We could have looked for another recruiting firm at that point.”
While Mr. Whitehill and Team AccuSource had never recruited in higher education, he assured Ms. Rupple that they were ready to tackle a new arena.
“It was a trial on both sides and everyone was learning,” Mr. Whitehill said. “We listened to Jill and her team and carefully heeded their direction. We were willing to adapt with them.”
Ms. Rupple was impressed with such tenacity.
“That to me is a full partner,” said Ms. Rupple. “AccuSource showed versatility, while being flexible to constantly evolving needs.”
Shortly after beginning its foray into recruiting within higher education, Team AccuSource placed two candidates for Kaufman Hall, proving its mettle to Kaufman Hall once again.
“As Kaufman Hall continues to grow and expand into new industries, I won’t hesitate to engage with Brian and AccuSource,” Ms. Rupple said.
AccuSource has placed 10 candidates on behalf of Kaufman Hall since 2014, including a wide variety of sales professionals, solutions engineers and directors of strategic accounts in finance, healthcare, banking and higher education.
The first person AccuSource placed at Kaufman Hall, Roy Berelowitz, has worked with Mr. Whitehill as a hiring manager on several assignments.
“Helping a sales professional like Roy land at Kaufman Hall and watching him grow in his role and being promoted since then has been great,” Mr. Whitehill said. “Developing a similar path for all of our clients and candidates is always our goal.”
