Steelcase has a robust internal talent acquisition team that’s adept at filling roles within the company. While they’ve developed a “promote from within” culture over the years, they still look at outside talent for every role opening. But, like any team, they have their own capacity limits. During busy hiring seasons when their TA team doesn’t have enough bandwidth to actively recruit for all their open positions, they bring us on to supplement their hiring efforts.

That lack of internal hiring capacity if what led to them bringing us in on this search. They added a new role to their sales team in the greater Atlanta area: a Low-Share Global Account Manager. This role would target former customers, prospective accounts, and current customers they’d like to do additional business with. The Low-Share GAM prioritizes critical accounts that are projected to have a high impact on the bottom line.

The commercial furniture sales cycle is a relatively long one, generally lasting around 3-6 years. This presents a unique issue when hiring for sales roles, especially ones like this: Steelcase needed someone who could develop and convert business, but who also has the patience for the long sales cycle. 

Finding someone with both sales and strategic chops isn’t always easy, and longevity in previous roles was a major focal point for the hiring team. Specifically, they hoped to see candidates whose careers had them in former roles for at least six years each. Additionally, Steelcase is really big on culture, with a highly team-driven selling environment. They needed someone who was “hungry” and motivated, but not a “lone wolf.”  

Another interesting caveat was their desire to hire someone already in the Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment (FF&E) industry, but not bring in someone from a direct competitor. It’d be easier for them to train someone fresh on the commercial furniture industry who already understood the go-to-market strategy of the commercial interior space. Having to untrain a new employee from another furniture company’s way to operating could be much more difficult. 

Ultimately, four of the candidates we presented to the Steelcase hiring team made it to interviews.

Our recruiters actually stumbled upon the final candidate as part of a completely different search for another department within Steelcase. She happened to live around Atlanta, and—after deciding to hire internally for the other search—they wanted to pull  

her into this hiring process. And, as she was more interested in working for Steelcase than in any particular role, she was happy to shift her focus to the Low-Share Global Account Manager role. 

She came from an interior architectural products company and interviewed incredibly well. The team was incredibly drawn to her uniquely strategic mindset, and she checked nearly every box. While she had plenty of business development experience, she lacked direct national or global account management experience. But that shortcoming paled in comparison to everything else she brought to the table. 

But leading up to her interview where she was asked to develop a go-to-market strategy, it became clear that she’d gone above and beyond. The team could tell she’d spent significant time researching, preparing, and detailing a strategy that stood out starkly from the other candidates. It was clear she’d taken it very seriously, and both her plan and presentation reflected it. Ultimately, going the extra mile made all the difference. 

Since bringing her on, Steelcase leadership has had nothing but wonderful things to say about her and her impact on the team. She connected well with the team immediately, bringing infectious energy and enthusiasm to her work. With such long sales cycles it’s still too early in her tenure to say for sure, but her work is already speaking for itself and her future at the company is looking bright. 

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