NIMIS Group Offers Industry-Specific Recruiting for the Retail, Hospitality, and Fintech POS Market

CINCINNATI, OH – NIMIS Group is a boutique recruiting firm focused on retail/hospitality/fintech POS—or “Point of Sale”—markets, including but not limited to payments, terminals, scanning, printing, loss prevention, labels (ESL, RFID, EAS, traditional shelf labeling), handheld scanning, enterprise mobility, RFID, rugged computing, and more. The company was founded in 2020 by Marc Sennett, who spent 21 years prior recruiting in the POS market. As an RSPA member, NIMIS Group offers for-fee staffing services, advisory services on compensation and hiring practices, and coaching for interviewing and job-seeking practices. To learn more about NIMIS Group’s services, explore the information below and watch the accompanying video on YouTube.

Quick story:
In 2022, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions (TCGS) was billing about $20M with Wal-Mart and asked me to find someone to take over the account. At the time, Mike Evans was with SOTI—not an obvious TCGS competitor. He was employed, doing well, not applying on job boards, and not friends with anyone at TCGS. I recruited him and showed him the leadership team’s vision for what Wal-Mart could be. Mike bought in, joined, and now he’s their top rep. In 2024, Wal-Mart spent $150M with TCGS. My fee? Roughly 25% of Mike’s first-year salary. TCGS made $130M (less my fee and their cost of sale). That’s ROI.

So, what do third-party recruiters actually do? Why do you pay us?

We’re a professional services solution—just like you’d hire an accountant or a lawyer. You outsource time to us so you can focus on your day job.

What we can do:

  • We’re a professional services solution.  Like other pro services firms, you use us to outsource your time to experts, so you can focus on your “day job.”  Experts?
  • We’re subject matter experts (SME) in the art and science of recruiting and onboarding:  Many companies treat their interview process as somewhat of an afterthought.   They field the applicants, schedule the interviews, eventually make the offer, and “hope they’ll take it.”  How many times did you think you had your new hire, only to have them leave you at the altar (ghost you, take another offer, decide to stay put)?  How much time/money did you waste? How long did it take to repeat the interview cycle and fill the job again? As a SME in the art and science of recruiting, we (and presumably other agencies) have a process for ushering candidates through, and sometime OUT OF your interview process.  It’s not that we force people to take your job, we just have a system for identifying the people that won’t.  There’s no other way to separate the serious job seekers from the ones that are ultimately going to leave you at the altar, than spending time with these folks, asking the right questions, and knowing what behaviors to look out for.  Line managers don’t have the time to do it.  Internal recruiters usually have too much “volume of searches” to do it.  Benefit to you? This is where we spend a bulk of our time, in those mid stages: white glove service constantly communicating with you and the candidate. Benefit?  You only have to fill that job once.
  • We’re industry specialists: Some firms specialize in certain types of positions. Think of AccounTemps.  Some specialize in a geography but fill all kinds of roles.  Some only do contract/temp staffing, many of these in IT and Engineering.  We chose to focus on your market and to become industry specialists.  The benefit of that expertise is reduced time-to-fill because we have KNOWLEDGE, ACCESS, and RELATIONSHIPS.  Our tribal knowledge means less time educating us on your market, products, and clients.  Our database means we spend less time searching.  Good relationships get us access to gainfully employed professionals that trust us. Benefit to you?  It shortens the hiring cycle and assures you get someone who becomes productive faster.
  • We insulate you from anti-poaching laws:  Third party recruiters are not burdened with some of the anti-poaching laws that keep companies from “predatory practices.”  An internal recruiter from Coca Cola could get them in trouble for reaching out to too many Pepsi people.  We wouldn’t.

What we can’t do:

  • We are not a” magic drawer full of resumes” that can produce the perfect candidate on demand:   As a way of qualifying me and my services, a prospect asked me if I had a “Software Onboarding Specialist with Virtual POS experience.”  I had three answers: 

1) “What is a software onboarding specialist?!” 
2)  “Do you mean a specialist that wants to work for you in your city, at your pay rate?”  Then…

3) “No, but I could find you one quickly with the right information from you.”   

If you’re asking a recruiter if they have a specific kind of candidate NOW, and they say, “yes.” …proceed with caution.

YES, we have a LOT of contacts. That’s part of our value of having that 25-year-old database of people in your industry… part of it. It’s NOT, however, a magic drawer from which we produce a candidate that is a perfect fit, that is in your comp range, geography, interested in you, and open to a new job now.   That would be a rare and lucky occasion. It ALWAYs requires a search. Our rolodex of contacts helps shorten that cycle.  Our knowledge of your market does too. But it always requires a lot of search.

  •  We are not a candidate factory:  Staffing firms do not make candidates, and therefore do not provide unlimited warrantees for their success with their employers.  They typically offer limited (usually 90-day) “replacement” guarantees.  We do that because if, and this is rare, a candidate does not work out in that time frame – perhaps we missed something – we’ll happily replace them or an fill an equivalent role at no charge. But a candidate is not a product with a refund attached, and staffing firms don’t manufacture them.  They are not responsible for buying conditions, company culture, macroeconomic factors, managing them, your leadership team there, etc. 
  • We’re not a job warehouse:  Staffing firms are usually working on a limited number of openings at any given time.  We spend the bulk of our time filling the specific openings for specific companies in specific locations.  The other part of our time is spent trying to drum up new clients, often by advertising an “A -player” with a skill that could appeal to a broad base of companies.  Sometimes, the candidate that calls us can be that person, often the candidate is only “marketable” to a handful of clients.  Keep in mind, we earn our fee by offsetting ramp up time and training costs, so we have to be very surgical about our matching, meaning, if a hiring manager wants to pay our fees, it’s less likely they also want to spend a lot of time and money educating you on a new (product, market, role, career). There is a common misperception that when you reach out to a recruiter they’ll either “find you a job,” or will have one waiting for you.  Unfortunately, it is a rare and lucky occasion when a job seeker reaches out and we have just what they want, right now.
  • We’re not a resume writing firm:  Just not something we do.   There are many firms and individuals that are much better at that than we are.

How do you evaluate a recruiter?
Easy—tenure. This job is hard. If someone’s been doing it a while, they’re probably good. I’ve been recruiting in POS for 25 years. There’s not much I haven’t seen.

If you’re thinking about adding or replacing staff this year or next,  let’s set up a call.

About NIMIS Group

Founded in 2020, NIMIS Group is a boutique recruiting firm specializing in the retail, hospitality, and fintech POS market. Services include fee-based staffing, hiring and compensation consulting, and candidate/job seeker coaching.