How FCi’s recent hiring spree reflects its growth strategy

When business is booming, it’s important to reinvest in your most important assets—your people—and one way to do that is to ensure they are effectively managed in order to bring out their best.

With that in mind, it makes a lot more sense why FCi Federal made not two, not four, but seven new appointments to its leadership team last week.

The company is a far cry from its beginnings as an IT consulting firm in 1991, then known as FedConsulting. Nowadays, FCi Federal is more involved with operations management, professional services, program management services and records management for agencies like the Homeland Security Department, State Department, and a number of other civilian agencies. The company reported 2015 revenue of $157 million.

The company has grown by 50 percent this past year, thanks in part to a $461 million USCIS National Benefits Center contract, said Sharon Virts, FCi CEO. That allowed the company to invest in its strategic goals, one of which is ensuring that FCi Federal is one of the best places to work.

To do that, the company has to make things work for its close to 5,000 employees and 2,000 subcontracted employees, and that requires strong management working for them.

“We can’t be successful here in the organization unless our people in the field, who do the work for us, know that they’re cared for and that we invest in them,” Virts said. “It’s all about the people first; if you do that right, the rest will come.”

That’s where four of the seven appointments—each a vice president—come in, with each overseeing critical areas impacting the company’s employees such as communications, human capital, talent acquisition and learning and development.

Another of the company’s strategic goals is infrastructure, Virts said, which went into the appointment of Jeffrey Leong as chief financial officer. Having a CFO on board will help the company remain profitable as it continues to grow.

To ensure the company remains compliant with regulations, FCi Federal also tapped Claude Goddard to be general counsel, extending a relationship that FCi and Goddard have had since 2002. Up to this point, Goddard had been serving as a consultant general counsel.

Last but not least, the company made a strategic hire in appointing Michael Mikuta vice president of technology and innovation. Mikuta will help the company transition its customers from paper-based records to electronic records, among other things.

“Most agencies think of themselves as already being in the electronic world, but frankly, when it comes to the records of the constituents that we handle, often times they’re still paper-based,” Virts said.

Moving forward, FCi Federal is interested in becoming more involved in the international space, and even currently has a bid out for an immigration-related opportunity in Europe, Virts said. The company already does a lot of immigration work with the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Service, she added, and would like to remain a dominant player in that space.

FCi Federal is awaiting approval to announce a number of other awards, but many are under protest. The company is no stranger to protests, though, having twice won one particular protest battle in August 2015 against a former USIS business unit.

Once these current protest battles are over, the company expects to continue its move forward.

“Our goal is by 2020 to be $500 million in revenue,” Virts said. “It’s a lofty goal, but so far, we’ve been successful in meeting [the goals] I’ve put out there.”