case study Archives - Clearmont Technologies

How We Found the Right Business Analyst by Focusing on What Really Matters

Website Admin — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 01:52:56 +0000

When it comes to Business Analysts, it’s not a one size fits all.

A leading organization in the financial industry was seeking highly skilled Business Analysts (BAs) with a unique blend of problem-solving, stakeholder management, and data analysis expertise. The ideal candidates needed to bridge the gap between business needs and technical solutions while ensuring seamless project execution.

The Challenge:

Defining the “X Factor” – Like many hiring managers, they wanted someone who was a true problem solver. But how do you pinpoint that in an interview?
Too many resumes, not enough right-fit candidates – The team faced a flood of applicants but struggled to find someone who could thrive in the role.
Balancing technical & business skills – They needed a BA who could bridge the gap between data analysis and business strategy.
Minimal hand-holding – A consultant should hit the ground running, requiring little oversight while making an immediate impact.

The Solution:

Clearmont Technologies took a targeted approach to sourcing the right consultant by:

Screening beyond the resume – Instead of just ticking off skills, Clearmont focused on soft skills, leadership traits, and how candidates spoke about their experience.
Pre-vetting candidates – Sending only a few, highly qualified candidates rather than overwhelming the hiring team.
Understanding company culture – Ensuring the consultant would integrate well and contribute right away.

The Results:

Immediate impact: The selected consultant quickly revamped an internal process, creating a new reporting system that improved data accuracy and decision-making. Without them, the hiring manager would have had to take on this work herself, something she simply didn’t have the bandwidth for.
Independent problem-solving: The consultant took ownership of a complex project and delivered results without constant guidance .
Seamless team fit: The consultant meshed well with the existing team, adapting to the company culture and workflow.
Better hiring decisions: The hiring manager emphasized that Clearmont’s precise vetting process resulted in higher-quality hires and saved them valuable time.

“The candidates from Clearmont were consistently well-vetted and a strong fit for our team. Even those we didn’t move forward with were within the 90th percentile of ideal matches, which saved us an enormous amount of time. -Director Business Solutions

Key Takeaways:

It’s about more than just job descriptions – Identifying the right fit requires looking beyond technical skills to find the “X Factor.”
Fewer, better candidates save time – A strategic vetting process leads to more successful hires.
Consultants should require less oversight – A great consultant can hit the ground running and deliver quick wins.

The post How We Found the Right Business Analyst by Focusing on What Really Matters appeared first on Clearmont Technologies.

How Our SQL DBA Introduced Efficient Capacity Planning

Website Admin — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 22:16:47 +0000

At the onset, our client, an insurance firm, faced the dilemma of a Lead DBA who initially planned to relocate but changed their mind, leaving a key position unfilled. The client needed a hybrid role, someone proficient in SQL Server performance tuning, capable of deep issue analysis, and managing the MSP provider.

The Challenge
1. Balancing hybrid work expectations.
2. The initial recruitment efforts by the client themselves faced hurdles, including unexpected dropouts due to misunderstood job expectations.
4. Uncovering the operational nature of the role not initially expressed.
5. The need for candidates with both strong technical and interpersonal skills.

Our Strategic Approach
Our team quickly identified three candidates, and one standout individual impressed during the interview process. The successful candidate showcased problem-solving skills, collaboration abilities, and articulated challenges effectively.

The Recruitment Journey
From submission to start, the entire process took 2.5 months, ensuring a timely and effective onboarding. The SQL DBA not only met but exceeded expectations, swiftly becoming an indispensable asset to the organization.

The Results
The manager, unsolicited, shared positive feedback, praising the new hire’s intelligence, work ethic, and problem-solving abilities. Notably, the SQL DBA introduced efficient capacity planning, addressing a longstanding issue for the organization. He also tackled technical debt challenges.

Thrilled with our success, the manager expressed interest in further collaboration, offering another role to fill based on the outstanding performance of our SQL DBA hire.

“This is something you can help with remembering you got us the SQL DBA and that was a knock it out of the park hire.”- Manager Storage, Backup & Database Services

The post How Our SQL DBA Introduced Efficient Capacity Planning appeared first on Clearmont Technologies.

How Our Helpdesk Technician Transformed Team Productivity

Website Admin — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 18:31:48 +0000

Today we’re switching things up from the usual tales of hunting down elusive candidates. We’re diving deep into a hiring experience that’s a bit different, focusing on the task of narrowing down candidates for a Senior Help Desk Technician role in a small team that needs some substantial engineering skills.

The Assignment:

The task at hand was to identify a Senior Helpdesk Technician with engineering capabilities. The role encompassed managing endpoint tools, creating provisioning packages for diverse systems (Windows, Mac, iOS), scripting, providing helpdesk support, and automating manual processes.

The Challenge:

A deluge of unvetted resumes overwhelmed the hiring manager, hindering efficient candidate evaluation.
Lengthy processes resulted in the loss of potential candidates to faster-moving opportunities.
Lack of automation expertise within the existing team led to manual workflows, reducing helpdesk efficiency.
Role expectations surpassed the Helpdesk Technician title, causing salary and title misalignments with potential candidates.
Limited interview autonomy for team members impacted cohesive team dynamics.

The Solution: Contract-to-Hire Approach Opting for a contract-to-hire strategy addressed multiple challenges

Reduced emphasis on job titles, enabling a more flexible approach.
Streamlined hiring process, with a remarkable 32-day turnaround from submission to start.
Expanded interview participation to team members, fostering a collaborative hiring process.
Provided a trial period for both parties before committing to a full-time engagement.

The Results: The hired consultant exceeded expectations, proving to be a pivotal asset to the department

“It turns out that he is the pinnacle of this department. Wow! Hands down, he’s phenomenal. Without him, that team would not have been able to accomplish half the things that they were able to. If you present a problem to him, he won’t rest until he finds the solution. It’s a very innovative one, too.” -Director of the Help Desk

Innovative Problem Solving: The consultant successfully tackled device trust and exchange name policy issues deemed insurmountable by well-known vendors. Notwithstanding the suggestions, he delivered a solution within a day.
Process Automation: Implemented automation to replace manual workflows, enhancing team productivity.
Career Advancement: Recognizing our consultant’s contributions, he transitioned from a consultant to a full-time employee and achieved two promotions within two years.

“There is a difference working with Jodi. I think that the experience talks. It’s knowing what to ask. It’s how to interview us to find out what we really need.”_ -Director of the Help Desk

The post How Our Helpdesk Technician Transformed Team Productivity appeared first on Clearmont Technologies.

How Our Data Architect Transformed Complex Data

Website Admin — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 18:09:28 +0000

How our Azure Data Architect Unified & Automated Complex Data for a Real Estate Platform

The Client & Our Involvement

The client is the Head of Data Engineering for a global Commercial Real Estate company.

They were building a platform where brokers and agents could log in and see detailed and critical industry information such as price listings per area and operating costs on a live map.

The data to support this platform resided on different servers and in different formats located on-prem. They needed to translate this into a consistent, cloud-based architecture. To accomplish this, they would need to build several data pipelines to collect the raw data into a unified set.

Streamlining, cleaning, and formatting such a high volume and complex data flow required an expert Azure Data Architect to develop and automate the pipelines using various technologies.

We were able to find the right candidate for the company, and the project was tackled and finished on time.

The Challenge: Data Integration- Handling, Formatting & Automating Data

The main challenge was to adapt diverse business-related data from many internal & external sources into a custom data warehouse type of environment. The data was siloed and in incompatible formats. Pipelines need to be built to take the data, ingest it, and run processes to turn raw data into usable, standardized data. Once processed, this curated data could be used by this platform and others. Furthermore, anyone could tap into that data and create their reports.

This complex project required a Senior Azure Data Architect who can act both as a data architect and data engineer. The architect would need to have extensive experience to anticipate problems in the cloud that would not have occurred on-prem. He/she would also have to decide what happens when Azure Data Factory doesn’t support customization or when working with larger volumes of data.

As an added difficulty, Azure Data Architects and Engineers are in high demand. They get hired and go off the market quickly.

The Solution: Clearmont’s Approach

After understanding the requirements and challenges of this project, we presented four candidates to the client. These candidates were thoroughly pre-screened, making this initial roster more on-target compared to the other agencies’ first round of candidates.

From these four candidates, two were interviewed by the company and one was hired. This architect had the right technical skills along with the needed personality traits to undertake this challenge and proved it by successfully solving an interview test.

The Results: After Our Candidate Started

More than 20 data pipelines were created and automated.

The data was able to be stored in the cloud in a clean, consistent, and ready-to-be-used status.

The client was able to take this from a minimal viable product into a scaled solution with over 1,000 users and high adoption rate.

The architecture is unified, cloud-based, and scalable, allowing the company to handle larger amounts of data.

“My experience [with Clearmont] has been good in terms of the resumes provided. It’s not just a general pool of candidates that I have to sit and sift through to get to the right set of candidates. There’s a great depth of applied understanding that makes even the first batch of resumes very close to the final one.” – Director of Data Engineering.

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How Our Web Designer Automated a Complex System

Website Admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 22:58:02 +0000

How We Modernized & Automated An HR Self-Service Portal After Filling A Key Role In 10 Days

The Client & Our Intervention
The Employee Benefits Administration firm offers a service to employers that relies on an outdated software platform. Even though successful, the platform, internal processes, and methodologies relied on manual steps rather than genuine “person-agnostic” automation.

In only 10 days following candidate submittal, we filled a critical role in this transformation process: A Web Designer, with the required unique set of skills that allowed a quick comprehension of user requirements, user experience, and end goal. The project was successfully developed and deployed within the deadline.

The Challenge: Eliminating Manual Processes
The main challenge was to re-think all the business workflows for the company. Many of the old processes had to be re-designed into a new automated version. On top of that, another critical challenge was reviewing dozens of legacy systems and mapping out the flow of information. Then, within each, detect which steps could be replaced with more modern tech, and which ones had to be removed entirely. This was captured in over 1,000 individual screens that represent user journeys across multiple transaction types, with a lot of complexity, variables and rules built into them.

The platform had to be redesigned into an automated, self-service system. To do that, we had to find a Web Designer with a particular set of skills. Since the platform is transactional and informational rather than focused on marketing, the designer’s main focus had to be on functional, usable, clear, and UX-friendly interfaces with great attention to detail.

The Solution: Clearmont’s Approach
After understanding the requirements of this project, we presented three candidates to the client. Ten days following submittal, the selected candidate started. By going beyond the written job description and identifying special traits for this task, we knew we had to find a UI designer who makes functional, clear, user-friendly designs. Curious, attentive to detail, and a great portfolio of complex apps were key attributes as well. Given the nature of this project, the chosen candidate would be added as a contractor.

The Results: Successful Project
In 10 days, the client had our Web Designer kicking off discovery sessions.
The Annual Enrollment and New Hire Processes were re-envisioned and re-designed.
All manual and siloed processes were transformed into automated steps, without having to rely on a single person.
New processes balanced the needs of the three main stakeholders: business, tech, and users.
The final product is comprised of more than one thousand user journey screens, accounting for all transaction types, steps, and rules in the processes.

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