As I look back at my career (no comments from the peanut gallery how long I have to look back), I’ve had opportunities to work with some amazing people, build fantastic businesses, and create and launch partner strategies with companies for which I have so much respect. This past week represents a career milestone for me and something that I will be forever grateful to those who made it possible. For the past 16 months, through a global pandemic, an inspiring team worked tirelessly to catapult a business from start-up to being a highly sought-after acquisition. When I joined Praneeth Patlola, I never imagined we’d be here so quickly. When the right people are in place, all working at a feverish pace with a common mission, and the authority to dream and create, anything is possible. The biggest thank you goes to my boss, my sounding board, the one who listens intently to me when I get passionate about a topic, our lead entrepreneur, and most importantly, my now life-long friend, Praneeth, who made this milestone a reality. I could go on and on about the rest of our team; Eric the sales pro who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, my constant banter provider, Prady, Vivek, Sunil, and the rest of the dev team who blow me away with the speed and quality of awesome new products.
I wear a lot of different hats at WillHire, which we all must do in a small startup, but it makes me the happiest. Without a doubt, I am most passionate when building and deploying strategic partnership programs and I couldn’t be more proud of the WillHire partner ecosystem. Strategic partnerships have been a primary go-to-market strategy from day 1 and we’ve aligned strategies with incredible HR tech platforms, VMS solutions, MSPs, payroll providers, and services providers focused on delivering and supporting next-generation talent strategies. We have an incredible group of companies (check out our partner page) that have supported our mission, selected us as their preferred direct sourcing and talent pool platform, and continue to entrust us with their customers. Thank you to each and every one!!!
Over the past several days, I’ve had so many conversations with leaders across the industry asking what’s going to happen to our partnership now that we are part of Pro. Overwhelmingly, the response has been positive. Positive for the industry, positive for our employees, and positive for our partners. Unfortunately, I have listened to concerns around competition from our VMS and MSP partners. I get it….and we’ll do everything to address those. I’m an open book, and frankly, when we began discussions with Pro about the acquisition, my biggest concern was about our partners and the impact on them. Without our partners, we wouldn’t be where we are today and certainly not as attractive for acquisition. Let’s face it, without partners I wouldn’t have a job!
So what about our partners?
WillHire is still WillHire. We are remaining an independent business unit with the autonomy to continue to grow and nurture our partner ecosystem. We’ve built incredible integrations with the largest VMS solutions and will continue to expand those making it seamless and easy for enterprise organizations to tap into their private diverse talent pools. We have strong bonds with our MSP partners and payroll providers, and of course our direct sourcing services providers. These relationships will continue and grow. We will remain dedicated to providing value to our partners and our customers alike.
If you doubt our mission, then let us prove it to you. You’re not going to want to miss what the future holds.
Now, we are full speed ahead as we continue our journey of innovating for the future of work — with our partners in lockstep.
