Joe Bierschwal

Joe Bierschwal’s education and early work history say a lot about why he’s able to provide candidates who really satisfy clients: he himself performed most of the jobs he now hires for.


With a 1980 engineering degree in hand from the famous School of Mines and Metallurgy at the University of Missouri, in Rolla, Joe immediately went to work for Proctor & Gamble. In the following 12 years he was a team manager on the production floor, a project manager, a logistics manager, and a capital projects engineer, in one case overseeing the $10 million upgrade of what he calls “a disposable diaper line the size of a football field.” As logistics manager, he received and distributed $1 million worth of raw material a day coming into the plant, and over 100 employees reported to him. Joe left P&G as the plant chemical engineer, responsible for all the plant’s quality systems. He didn’t do any hiring at P&G, but as a department manager he helped interview other mangers being promoted from within the company.


Joe left P&G because "I had always wanted to own my own business, and I thought P&G would be a good way to learn how to run one. And it was." But there was intermediate step: he signed on as VP of quality systems for a mid-sized company. "I had much more to say now about how the business operated, so I saw it as one step closer to having my own."


His own came soon. He left in 1995 to form a partnership developing Internet survey software that grew very quickly to $1 million in business. "Being responsible for sales and marketing, I learned some of the basic phone skills that I later discovered were central to successful recruiting." In 1997, Joe sold his interest in the company and set out on his own with an MRI franchise.


Joe recruits for a host of engineering jobs in manufacturing all over the U.S., "and my background in engineering management really gives me an advantage when I’m speaking to clients." Six account executives report to Joe, and they together employ three project coordinators. The executives call the companies, negotiate job orders and fees, and recruit. The coordinators, who study the job orders, help find, screen, and qualify candidates. In this way, an account executive can handle 15-20 orders at a time. Joe posts all his orders on Internet boards- "I don’t want to leave any stone unturned in my search for qualified candidates"- and, like other Pinnacle members, mines his database for employees who want to make a career move. He interviews exclusively on the phone.


Joe says that recruiting from last year into this has been very strong. "My companies are now hiring heavily after the 9-11 fall-off; they desperately need people. Moreover, they know me well enough to treat me as a consultant about what’s going on in the industry, even asking for information on typical salaries for the kinds of positions I fill. It’s a great time to be in the recruiting business."