Hiring in STEM: Talent with Potential - PaR Systems’ Head of TA, Zac Engler

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Max: Hello, and welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers podcast. I'm your host Max Armbruster. And today I'm welcoming Zac Engler, who is the head of talent acquisition for a company called PaR Systems, which he'll tell us all about. Zac, welcome to the show.

Zac: Hey Max, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Max: It's a pleasure. When I saw that you moved into this new company I thought that was a real good match between the kind of recruiter that you are, a tinker, somebody who likes to play with tours and the kind of business that PaR System does. But for those who don't know you, perhaps, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you come from? How did you get into recruitment? and then we'll talk about your business next.

Zac: Yeah. So, thank you. I started off with a career in more of an HR generalist capacity at Target headquarters. Transitioned over through to, more of a retail leadership slash talent development and recruitment person while in my time at Apple. And that's really where I got my taste of full-on recruiting. And from there I just realized that it needed to be a hundred percent of my job. I landed an opportunity at Amplifon, the world's largest provider of hearing care solutions, and I oversaw the build-out of their North American talent acquisition team. And from there, you know, was really on a great pace in terms of exploring new technologies and bringing new capabilities to recruitment.

When PaR Systems came along with really the dream job for me, as you said, I'm a tinkerer. I love all things nerdy when it comes to space flight. When it comes to nuclear reactors, when it comes to nuclear energy, when it comes to robotics and automation, and PaR does all of those things. So it just was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that I got to capitalize on, and they're slated from some tremendous growth over the next few years. So they brought me on as a head of talent acquisition to really help grow out that capability and scale the team.

Max: I believe this company has a few hundred people today.

Zac: Yeah, we have 450 people. We have locations here in Minnesota, in the Minneapolis area. We have another large location in Brunswick, Georgia, and then we have satellite offices around the world. Some of the locations are in the United Kingdom, South Africa, France, Japan, but overall, the biggest locations are Minnesota.

Max: Minnesota and Georgia. Okay. And PaR Systems, hires a lot of engineers then, and finds what it's looking for in Minnesota.

Zac: Yeah. 75% of our staff is either engineers or highly technical positions, a lot of the projects and products that we design and build are one of a kind or first of a kind solutions. The robotic crane system currently tearing apart Chernobyl is one example of something that had never been done before. That we designed and built. But yeah, as far as the engineering talent that we're looking for, a lot of that is based here in Minnesota, whether it's applications engineers, controls engineers, systems engineers, mechanical engineers, electronics engineers, you know, we are looking for them all And so getting into those work streams has been a unique challenge for me as well.

Max: Yeah. I think you're the man for the job but, these roles seem like perhaps you would find them in the sort of fundamental research university sector, find these kinds of profiles, because if you said it's first of a kind, you're not going to find people who have, you know, nuclear crane on their resume much. I'm sorry if I'm misquoting your example. Is your funnel focused on more general traits? And then, you know, you need a solid engineering background and then general traits of the tinker? Or you know, can you learn on the job kind of thing?

Zac: Yes, our team full heartedly believes in, in training and development and mentorship. A lot of the people that come into our organization in a junior position are given a mentor almost immediately, and are set on a path for development. And one of the nice things about joining the PaR team is that, you know, if you would go join a larger organization, you might be assigned as an engineer to work on a piece of the widget that's a bigger part of the project for the next two years. Whereas at PaR, you get assigned projects almost immediately that you get to own, you're giving guidance and support as you work through those projects. But you can almost think of us like McKinsey or Deloitte in a way where we're not the company always necessarily turning out the product....