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Cameron Smith & Associates Expanding

2 min read

Cameron Smith, founder of the executive recruitment firm Cameron Smith & Associates in Rogers, says business has been good, so good that the firm has opened an office in San Antonio and is looking at offices in Chicago and Nashville, Tennessee, as well. Those would be in addition to CSA’s office in Minneapolis.

CSA made its mark as a top provider of executive talent to many of the thousand-plus vendors doing business with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and it’s in Minneapolis because that’s where Target is headquartered. San Antonio is the home of HEB Grocery Co., and the headquarters of Dollar General is in the Nashville suburb of Goodlettsville.

“2016 was our second-biggest year ever,” Smith said. In recent years, it’s added a focus, gender diversity, and “that’s really taken off for us,” he said. In addition, Smith said, CSA is “getting more into IT” and is expanding into C Suite positions — CFO, CIO, CSO, CEO — “around the country and possibly even internationally.” To that end he’s beefed up his staff, including hiring an employee from global executive recruiter Korn Ferry.

Smith had considered expanding into the medical recruitment niche, what with the boom in health care in northwest Arkansas, but the fees are not attractive. “The fees are really beaten down,” he said. “There are so many health care recruiters.”

For example, CSA normally gets 25 percent of the base salary of someone the company recruits, “so if it’s a $200,000 job, our fee is 50 grand.” But in medical recruitment, “for a $400,000 surgeon, the fee is like 25 grand,” Smith said, so “we opted not to go that direction.”

CSA, however, is looking at recruiting for health care administration jobs. “But I think the sweet spot for us is keep building these ‘vendorvilles’ around the country,” Smith said. “Wherever there’s a big retailer, there’s a little vendorville around it, whether it’s Dollar General or Walgreens or Target.”

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