Success Story - AvalonBay Communities

Challenge

AvalonBay Communities, a leading real estate investment trust (REIT) that develops, redevelops, acquires, and manages apartment communities, were initially looking for a Construction Superintendent, later also requiring an Assistant Construction Superintendent, too.

They had a lot of new projects coming up and didn’t have enough skilled Superintendents in the area to oversee them. Consulting with them on their exact needs, they were looking for 1 Sr. Superintendent with 10+ years’ experience, and, subsequently, 1 Assistant Super with 5+ yrs experience. They needed to have ground-up multi-family residential construction experience, and working knowledge of timely and cost-effective field coordination, quality control, and day-to-day supervision of subcontracted work forces for construction projects. They’d also need to be comfortable joining a new area, running milestone projects.

Solution

AvalonBay wanted candidates with niche experience from their competitors.

For the Senior role, we used our vast LinkedIn network and premium licenses to map and contact all potential candidates for this role from AvalonBay’s potential competitors. As specialists in construction Super and PM searches in the tri-state area, our approaches were warmly received by many candidates.

This process involved different stages of sourcing and headhunting, reaching out to candidates with the required experience who were either looking for a role or were passive in the market, through to briefing them on the role, getting their approval to represent them, and then assisting through the interview and hiring process took around 6 weeks.

Results

After 6 were shortlisted for the role, 3 made it to interview stage, and with 1 at a final stage interview, Timothy Umlauf was chosen for the position. He was picked, primarily, because he’d worked for over 20 years at a competitor. Timothy later actually gave us the mandate for the Assistant Superintendent once he’d been in his role for just over a year, and gave Samuel Levine, the managing consultant for his placement, the following review:

"If you are looking for someone and a Recruiter to find the perfect fit for you and your future, Sam Levine and Cobalt are who you are looking for. During my time looking for my next career challenge, Sam was there every step of the way. He stayed in touch with me and made sure he had my best interests in mind during the entire process. Even after I was hired, he reached out to see how I was doing, even at my 1 year anniversary. I can’t say enough about him and Cobalt, other than anyone I know who is looking for a change for the better or a new challenge, without hesitation I recommend, Sam and the Cobalt Team!!"

Since then, the Assistant Superintendent has also joined AvalonBay, joining from a competitor, as they were looking for more of a growth opportunity.

The Construction & Development team has a demonstrated record of working with leading industry entities such as Developers, Owner/Builders, GC’s, and subcontractors, built since 2001. Running the gamut of Staff, from Project Managers to Directors and Executive/C-suite roles in multiple U.S. geographies, we leverage our ever-growing industry contacts to consistently achieve best-in-class results for our clients. We cover roles in Project Management, Estimating Scheduling, Design & Architecture, Engineering and more. Contact us to find out how we can help you and your business.