DSU Staffing Aspires to Increase Revenues Fourfold in 2 Years

By Vivian Tse

Danieal Avery, president and CEO of DSU Staffing, took her background in corporate America in human resources and channeled it into establishing North Carolina’s only minority-owned staffing firm with top-secret facility clearance for federal contracts. However, Avery does not take her company’s status for granted, asserting her firm can do just as good a job, if not better, than the giants in the industry. “We’re not only doing brisk business in this sphere because of this distinction, but we are proud to do so,” said Avery.

DSU stands for “Diversity Sources Unlimited.” The nationwide staffing firm provides technical, professional and defense contract staffing. Without the level of clearance DSU has achieved, the firm would not be able to place individuals on federal government contracts in those areas.

“For top-secret clearance, one needs to go into certain government spaces,” said Avery. “Without that secret-level clearance, one cannot obtain access to government contracting information.” To obtain secret clearance, companies must be sponsored for the designation. Northrop Grumman sponsored DSU for its secret clearance.

“You can’t buy it. You can want it, but it won’t come to you. It’s not something that happens everyday,” said Avery. “It has to be a situation where they see you’re able to deliver a service and we had a situation where we were able to deliver on professionals with that type of skill set. With us doing that, they turned around and cleared.”

Added Avery, “They’re putting themselves on the line when they do that for you because they’re saying you’re a company they can count on and you don’t have things in your background that would cause problems.” Previously, Avery worked at a number of technology firms, including IBM, Cisco Systems, Sony Ericsson and PeopleClick, as a technical recruiter.

“I reached top performer at every company I worked for,” recalled Avery.” I was very skilled and known in North Carolina as great sourcer and being able to put together great techniques. I’ve trained a lot of individuals in recruitment departments on how to go after recruiting the right candidates nationwide for different technical projects.”

After she “plateaued” in the corporate sector - “There was nothing else for me to do inside those departments besides train,” as Avery put it - she decided to open her own staffing organization to help other people. Specifically, Avery desired to gear a portion of her business towards diversity recruitment in order to recruit more diverse individuals into higher-level positions.

“People in some networks want to block certain individuals from getting in,” said Avery. “I’ve seen that in HR departments as well. By creating our organization, I wanted to leverage more of the diversity community to get into those positions.”

DSU’s annual revenues are nearly $5 million. To grow the business, Avery has set a target of $20 million by the next two years even in the midst of a bad economy. In order to grow to this level, Avery plans on networking “as much as possible” for both commercial and federal business.

“We’re planning on growing very, very quickly within the next two years. We’ve put together a stronger sales force to do that, as well as bringing in a strong sales business development professional from the federal space from a military business center,” she said. “We’re building up that federal space with him to go after some business.”

In terms of competition, Avery acknowledged that DSU’s concentrated niche, coupled with her background in internal recruitment, help the company find the specific candidates its clients seek.

“I know exactly what the corporations are looking for on their side,” said Avery. “If a corporation like Cisco needs individuals like contractors, we won’t just throw paper at them or whatever we can find out there. What we give them is paper they can convert over to internal employees as well. That sets us apart from our competition, knowing what corporations look for and what they want to hire from a consultant standpoint.”

Unlike Act-1, another women and minority-owned staffing firm focused mainly on providing professional services, administrative, and labor, Avery considers DSU more of a high-end consulting firm engaged in more defense contract, technology, software engineering and software development recruitment.

“I see an opportunity for DSU to grow as large as an Act-1, but on the high-consulting side of the business,” said Avery.

One example of a successful partnership DSU has formed is one with The Mention Group, a small minority-owned general contractor. It currently works with Hamlet in a mentor-protege program. In the future, DSU hopes to partner with other organizations, even outside its specializations, to provide labor and help it deliver to a client if it is overloaded.

“We are looking at more strategic partnerships,” said Avery. “If it’s not in our industry, we’ll at least be the labor piece of it and let the big guys go after the business and we help support it.” Avery credits keeping internal costs low as a significant factor in the company’s success.

“We watch things daily to see the different changes,” she said. “Our employees are very loyal to us. If we needed to ship anything around there, we’re definitely willing to go with that. Keeping your costs low and watching your books will definitely help you to stay competitive. We’ve gone after business and actually underbidded a few other companies and taken away business that way in this economy.”

Given the current state of the economy, procurement has tightened and Avery acknowledged having to work 100 times harder than a year ago.

“The most strategic part right now is putting together different plans, ideas and working harder than you ever have before. That’s the challenge at this point,” she said. Communication is key in the midst of challenging economic times.

“If I put a plan in place, I’m always discussing things with the rest of my group,” Avery said. “We’re all a part of each other and we’re all checking after each other to make sure things are accurate, right and on point. The biggest part of our process is making sure someone else is overlooking the work people are doing and that they have a backup person to do that. That keeps our quality higher.”

Weekly meetings and checking in daily with the rest of the team are all part of the communication at DSU. Avery ensures salespeople go out and communicate with clients, then she will go back behind them monthly to check that the clients are happy from a quality assurance standpoint.

“My team understands that delivery is important,” she said. “If we say that we’re going to do something, we have to do it. We have to turn it around quickly. What we do that may be a little bit different from some of our other competitors is we understand turnaround time. All of my recruiters and internal people come from a corporate environment and are all degreed. They understand what the hiring manager wants because they’ve worked in the corporations as well.”

Time after time, DSU has managed to prove itself to clients that have doubted its ability to find top secret-cleared candidates despite giving other minority companies chances. One example of DSU proving the usefulness of a new product to a major client comes in the form of Johnson & Johnson’s WorkSense new vendor management system, which it implemented to try to work with more diverse companies. A skeptical hiring manager posted a job with it, which DSU filled. Consequently, the manager was sold on the benefits of the system and DSU’s success has resulted in it receiving favorable mention from J&J.

Kathy A. Francis, Site Manager for Work Sense, a company specializing in employee health and safety, said what separates DSU Staffing from other suppliers she works with is that they really care about their customers and employees. “They put true feelings and effort behind each order. They work hard and really care about their customers, which is a really hard quality to come across nowadays,” said Francis.

Further down the line, DSU envisions a project solutions side of the business.

“I see us doing staff augmentation, growing to managing and running big projects, placing 20 to 30 people on high-level projects at a time, anywhere from software development to networking,” said Avery. “I see us being able to go in to process and do that implementation from a minority standpoint. I see us growing staff a lot, as well as large project solutions.” Avery asserts that DSU offers the same type of service large players provide outside of minority preferences.

“We can sit down beside the Manpowers and Kellys and do just as good of a job,” Avery challenged. “Technically, you can put us beside each other not knowing we’re a minority company and we’ll come out to be one. You will get a minority company that will actually deliver and be professional. You will see a lot of us in the future and we will provide a great quality service to all of our clients that will surpass our competition.”