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Many husbands draw inspiration from their wives, and Luke Doubler of Minnesota is no different.
Luke’s wife inspired him to make a dramatic change in his career—one that set him on an entrepreneurial path toward fulfillment and purpose while running a search firm that is one of the fastest growing in the upper Midwest.
“What really inspired me to start RecruiterCentral was my wife,” said Luke, whose firm focuses on searches ranging from executive leadership to hourly employees and maintains a global client list. “She’s an entrepreneur herself.”
Kate Doubler is a registered nurse (RN) and some years ago she was working in the intensive care unit at a hospital in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. She found that while the U.S. healthcare system maintained a firm grasp on acute care, there were gaps in chronic care and the vital importance of a healthy lifestyle, real food, and exercise. That inspired Kate to launch a food blog, RealFoodRN, to educate the public on the importance of eating healthy by breaking down the ingredients in food and how meals maintain our health. Her motto is “Health and Healing the Way Nature Intended”
By following her purpose and creating a platform that can help transform people’s lives, RealFoodRN has grown to one of the largest blogs in the real food/mothering/healthy lifestyle niche.
“That inspired me to ask myself, ‘Why are we here on this earth? What is our God given purpose,’”said Luke, who at the time was a corporate recruiting leader and former high school American History teacher. “Then I thought, I’ll go and really help people.”
Luke worked in recruitment at Cargill, then Target.
But armed with the inspiration he found in his wife’s blog, Luke launched RecruiterCentral. The Minneapolis data-driven recruiting firm specializes in finding candidates for jobs that can be particularly hard to fill.
Luke’s vision for his firm is straightforward. He and his team listen to a company’s goals and objectives for the job opening its team is working to fill. Then Luke and his team develop a proprietary talent client-sourcing strategy that includes a comprehensive assessment of the:
- Talent market
- Top employers
- Compensation ranges
- Candidate availability and diversity
- Diversity goals and metrics
- Market Themes and Timelines
RecruiterCentral’s top talent sourcers harness the power of the most advanced sourcing tools, tactics and strategies to deliver three top candidates in two weeks. Friday updates offer ongoing progress reports on how the search is unfolding.
RecruiterCentral finds candidates for a wide range of firms working in specialized areas that include, but are not limited to:
- Technology
- Finance and Accounting
- Engineering
- Skilled Labor
- Production
- Operations
- Supply Chain
Luke Doubler grew up on a farm that has been in his family since his great-grandfather emigrated from Belgium more than a hundred years ago. The farm is located in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, the town made famous in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Little House on the Prairie, and on the television program of the same name.
Luke, his two siblings and his parents maintained the Doubler family farm’s cow-calf operation and Luke’s father and brother now run the farm. Luke has wonderful memories of working the land, and of baling hay in particular.
“I learned how to work my tail off and I learned the value of honesty right away,” Luke said of growing up.
Both qualities served Luke well as a history teacher, and then as he worked in recruiting at Cargill and Target.
But he really began to apply what he had learned while working on the family farm, and from life in general, after launching RecruiterCentral.
“As recruiters, we have the best job in the world,” said Luke, a graduate of St. John’s University in Minnesota. “We get to meet all types of people and have very good conversations, often career-altering conversations. We’re the fun part of HR—we change people’s lives on a daily basis.”
But recruiting offers Luke even more than the satisfaction he gains connecting candidates and companies.
“I speak a lot at conferences, I write a lot on our blog, I share recruiting tips, tactics, and my marketing strategy,” he said. “For me, it’s always been, if you learn something shareable, you’ll learn to make the community a better place. RecruiterCentral gives me more freedom to do that.”
Launched in 2017, RecruiterCentral now boasts a staff of 12 and 50 clients located in the U.S. and around the world.
Luke when he was 20 had grand plans for “impacting the world,” as he described it. But his teacher’s salary did not make him a wealthy man and the position restricted his ability to achieve his goals. He had always been interested in business, so when a friend opened his eyes to recruiting, his attitude was, “Sure, I’ll give it a shot.”
Luke’s first job in corporate America allowed him to double his teacher’s salary. And while he enjoyed teaching, he continued, “I wanted to lead teams. I wanted to grow.”
And grow he did.
In the process, Luke has repositioned the recruiting industry through his company’s comprehensive approach to linking candidates with companies, an approach that goes far beyond resumes and interviews.
“There’s more than just the job description,” he said. “There’s the team dynamics, there’s the impact of this role in the organization. So it’s often a complex assessment that we have to do. It’s much more than, ‘Do you want to work here?’”
Luke said the best recruiters place an emphasis on listening.
“The best recruiters I’ve ever worked with listen the most and say the fewest words,” he said. “When I talk to someone about a job, I have no idea what their motivation is. I need to find out what the ‘it’ is for them. Maybe they’re looking for a better work life balance, maybe they need more money, maybe they don’t like their boss. What is it? So the best recruiters talk a little and listen more.”
So what does the future hold for RecruiterCentral?
As with any business, any entrepreneur will tell you that no company ever stops expanding or stops looking for that next opportunity.
Luke said his immediate goals include cracking the top four list of recruiting firms in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, growing his team to 20 employees and earning annual revenue of more than $10 million.
“Then,” he said, “just continuing to grow from there.”
Visit www.recruitercentral.io to learn more.
