The contemporary tech industry always seems to be on the lookout for emerging young companies with innovative ideas that can shake up the business landscape. In the dizzying news cycle featuring an ever-changing parade of buzzworthy contenders, it’s easy to overlook the older companies that have existed for decades. Yet many of them have evolved to remain competitive in the digital age.
IBM, for example, can trace its beginnings all the way back to 1911, when a number of even older businesses were consolidated into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. The Xerox Corporation, one of the key contributors to the computer revolution, can claim to have been founded in 1906 as The Haloid Photographic Company.
Another venerable business, the Hajoca Corporation, got its start in 1858 as an equipment supplier for plumbers in Philadelphia. Today, over 150 years later, Hajoca is a major wholesale distributor of plumbing, heating and industrial supplies. Indeed, it is the largest privately held distributor of such products in the United States.
Hajoca is the perfect illustration of how a company can benefit from modernizing its approaches and strategies to reflect the changing times. Hajoca’s management training program has sought to attract talented business intellects from the country’s pool of recent college graduates. Three years ago, they were still doing this the old-fashioned way: by relying primarily on personal, face-to-face interaction as part of college recruitment drives.
Hajoca could have stuck to that approach, but the company was advised that online recruitment could provide a boost to their numbers. Many long-running businesses are resistant to change, but Hajoca decided that its management training program needed to evolve with the times. The company launched its own online recruitment website and explored other web recruitment platforms.
The result? Hajoca’s management training program now sources 50% of its recruits from various web channels, including its own www.HajocaCareers.com website, glassdoor, Indeed, and other similar platforms. It’s a success story that highlights how a robust legacy can go hand in hand with a modern approach—and reap great benefits.
