Mastersul Comex - Hunting for Specialized Professionals During the 2020 Pandemic

Client
Mastersul Comex 

Area
Foreign Trade 

Summarized Problem
Mastersul Comex approached Visionnaire in 2020 to overcome a recruitment bottleneck caused by the resumption of activities after the pandemic. With its generalist HR team overloaded by multiple vacancies and focused on the industry’s operational positions, the company could not devote sufficient attention to hiring technical professionals for its internal systems and processes. In addition to the difficulty of finding candidates with specific expertise, Mastersul needed to better understand the IT market, define competitive compensation, and select professionals with autonomy, adaptability, and profiles suited to the company’s needs. 

Summarized Solution
Visionnaire took over the specialized recruitment for Mastersul’s vacancies, from understanding the profiles to advertising the positions, actively sourcing candidates, screening résumés, and conducting preliminary interviews, quickly filling the vacancies. Candidates would be assessed based on experience, salary expectations, availability, and technical and behavioral compatibility, with the option of applying tests. Only the most suitable candidates would be forwarded to Mastersul for the final decision. The solution also included guidance on compensation and IT market conditions, as well as replacement in the event of a lack of fit, helping to accelerate hiring, ease the internal HR team’s workload, and reduce the risk of unsuitable choices. 

Results
Mastersul was able to fill strategic vacancies more quickly and accurately, reducing the bottleneck faced by its internal HR team. Visionnaire presented candidates who had already been assessed and who matched the technical and behavioral requirements of the open positions. Instead of receiving a large number of poorly qualified résumés, Mastersul gained access to professionals who had already been interviewed and screened according to experience, technical knowledge, salary expectations, availability, and compatibility with the hiring model. 

Mastersul also obtained a more realistic benchmark for the technology talent market. Because the company acknowledged that it was unfamiliar with salary practices in the sector, the search conducted by Visionnaire made it possible to assess whether the compensation initially proposed was compatible with candidates’ expectations and to adjust the conditions of the vacancy whenever necessary. 

In addition, the operational workload of Mastersul’s HR team was reduced, allowing it to remain focused on foreign-trade-related vacancies and other internal activities. Visionnaire took over the most specialized and time-consuming stages of the selection process, delivering validated candidates for the client’s final interview. 

Finally, the project reduced the risk of an unsuitable hire. The success-fee model aligned Visionnaire’s compensation with the actual hiring of a candidate, while the one-month replacement guarantee provided protection if the professional did not remain with or adapt to the company. 

In summary, the expected results were to hire the right professionals in less time, improve the quality of the selection process, ease the HR team’s workload, validate the vacancy conditions against the market, and enable Mastersul to advance the modernization of its internal systems and processes. These results were projected based on the proposal and the context presented; the documents analyzed do not, by themselves, confirm whether both hires were effectively completed. 

Mastersul remains a Visionnaire partner to this day, providing another example of how Visionnaire always seeks to build and maintain long-term partnerships with its clients. 

Technologies
Development languages and technologies: C#, .NET, .NET Framework, .NET Core, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX. 

.NET platform frameworks, libraries, and components: Entity Framework, LINQ, Web API, WPF, and XAML. 

Front-end frameworks: React, Angular, and Vue. 

Databases and SQL features: SQL Server, relational databases, JOINs, subqueries, triggers, and stored procedures. 

Version control, formats, and integration: Git, XML, JSON, and Excel files manipulated programmatically. 

Systems and tools associated with Mastersul: Microsoft Excel, iBroker, iBroker Import, iBroker Export, iFinance, and JasperReports. These tools were especially relevant to the Process and Performance Analyst profile, which required knowledge of foreign trade systems and report and document generation. 

Development patterns and paradigms: Object-oriented programming, MVC, and MVVM. 

Development practices and methodologies: Scrum, Kanban, agile methodologies, unit testing, automated testing, and manual testing. 

Digital marketing and recruitment platforms: Google, Google Analytics, SEO, Growth Hacking, and LinkedIn Recruiter. 

Visionnaire has extensive experience in Hunting, with deep knowledge and expertise in this field. We specialize in a wide range of technologies and have specialists in software, websites, agile methodologies, applications, Human Resources, Cloud Computing, DevOps, and other areas, connecting companies with ideal professionals according to the business needs of organizations of all sizes and industries. We emphasize that we search for and select the best professionals not only for their technical skills, but also for their compatibility with the company’s culture.

Detailed Problem
Mastersul Comex is a consulting firm specializing in Foreign Trade, with experience in customs clearance and management, international logistics, and domestic road transportation. It operates at Brazilian ports, airports, and borders, connecting importers and exporters to a global network of agents and offering customized solutions to make operations more efficient, secure, and suited to each client’s needs. 

The company approached Visionnaire because it was facing a backlog of vacancies after economic activity resumed amid the context of the 2020 pandemic and could not devote sufficient attention to strategic hires outside the usual profile handled by its HR team. 

During the pandemic, the company, which had been directly affected by the downturn in foreign trade, significantly reduced its workforce, with approximately 30 layoffs in an organization of around 130 employees. When industries began resuming operations, several hiring demands emerged at the same time, overloading the company’s generalist HR team. 

In this scenario, operational vacancies related to foreign trade were being prioritized, while technical positions, although important to the evolution of internal systems and processes, were not receiving the necessary attention. These profiles differed from those the team was accustomed to handling and required specific technical knowledge, which is why the company sought a consulting firm focused on the technology field. 

The difficulty was not limited to advertising the opportunities; it also involved understanding the IT market, defining appropriate compensation, and finding professionals with the right combination of technical knowledge, autonomy, and adaptability. Mastersul acknowledged that it was not a technology company and was uncertain about the competitiveness of the salary range initially envisioned. It expected Visionnaire to provide benchmarks regarding candidates’ expectations and prevailing market conditions. 

The vacancies also had highly specific requirements: creating and maintaining internal systems in C# and .NET; knowledge of front-end development, databases, and Git; and, preferably, modern development frameworks and practices. The roles would also require assessing processes, reducing errors, improving service quality, and working with industry-specific tools. 

Detailed Solution
Visionnaire proposed taking over the specialized Recruitment and Selection process (Hunting) for Mastersul’s vacancies, searching the market for professionals who matched the technical and behavioral requirements defined by the company. The work would begin with a detailed understanding of each opportunity and could be adapted to Mastersul’s internal process, focusing on quality and fit rather than simply sending a large volume of résumés. 

Visionnaire would be responsible for advertising the vacancies, actively sourcing candidates through different channels and its professional database, reviewing résumés, and conducting preliminary interviews. At this stage, experience, salary expectations, availability, and compatibility with the conditions of the opportunity would be assessed. Technical or behavioral tests could also be included if Mastersul considered them necessary. After these filters, Visionnaire would forward only the candidates deemed suitable, together with a profile summary, so that Mastersul could conduct the interview and make the final hiring decision. 

In addition to finding professionals, Visionnaire would provide IT market benchmarks, helping Mastersul assess whether the compensation and conditions offered were competitive in light of the expectations identified during the search. If the hired professional did not adapt to the company, or the company did not adapt to the professional, Visionnaire would provide a replacement. 

In summary, the solution was to outsource the most labor-intensive and specialized recruitment stages to Visionnaire, providing Mastersul with pre-assessed candidates compatible with the vacancies. This would accelerate hiring, reduce the workload of the generalist HR team, and lower the risk of selecting unsuitable professionals.

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