I grew up with a reverence for the possibilities of what can happen around a kitchen table. There's a power to kitchen table conversations – whether they're simple small talk with family and friends, all about getting to know new people, or just me by myself replicating the experience with email. A good kitchen table conversation brings back countless childhood memories of great stories, wise lessons learned, problems solved, and ideas born.
My father started successful companies from behind our family kitchen table. He felt that if he could not do his business from behind the kitchen table, it was not worth it. Even though I have a home office, I often find myself bringing my work over to the kitchen table. When I set up offices in various office buildings over the years, I always brought in a round table and what was needed to make coffee and tea. With a setting that invokes the kitchen table, I knew my colleagues would have some great conversations and ideas in those rooms. And we have.
This month we celebrated reaching the four-year point with one of our top clients. Sitting around “the kitchen table” setup in our office, our staff pondered the many opportunities to shine this client had given us and the success that brought to so many people. Our work with them created high-paying jobs for hundreds of our employees and sub-contractors across the globe that afforded them the opportunity to work on innovative projects in the semiconductor industry. How great is that?
One of our most recent projects was outside of our core engineering services. We coordinated an industrial video showcasing new Bluetooth/Haptics technology. As you can see, the kitchen table does play a role in the video. I'm confident that many of the ideas shown – both in how the video was made and the technological innovations that inspired it – also came about around the kitchen table.
What we do at Talent 101 is easy to communicate on paper. We offer workforce solutions to the semiconductor industry: we place individual engineers with client-specific skills for immediate contribution to a project; we create and deliver solutions of a Statement of Work (SOW); we payroll engineers or technicians our client managers have identified as the best resource and wish to on-board; or we draft a milestone delivery solution for a turn-key project.
That's what we do, but how we do it is really what makes the difference. The emphasis we place on the kinds of personal relationships, valuable conversations, and innovative ideas I associate with the kitchen table is just as much a part of who we are as a company as our list of offerings.
Maybe we can schedule some kitchen table conversations with you. In our experience, there are a lot of great things that can come from them.
