Bill Wilder, COO of SJV

Grab a latte and pull up a chair and join us for a great interview with Bill Wilder, COO of SJV.

Prior to the joining this industry, Bill had spent 11 years with Best Buy in various leadership positions. The last 4 of those years was leading their business to business direct sales division. He described most of his former career as helping organizations achieve transformative results.

In 2008, he was an executive leading a large division of Best Buy and their HR lead person left to become head of HR at Verifications Inc. Over the subsequent two years, Bill said he got to know the owner of Verifications through his friend and former colleague. Through those discussions, Bill was enticed to join the company and help shape their business.

With a smile he said one of the things that really stands out about this industry and amazed him the most is the collegial and collaborative culture that exists. CRAs tend to like and respect one another. Bill said in other industries he has been in, competitors were the enemy and your mission was to destroy them.

Bill summed up SJV’s mission and vision by saying that “we are the pre-eminent supply chain for the background screening industry. Our objective is to handle gathering and furnishing information to our Clients so they can focus on their core competencies related to adjudicating results, serving their customers, and ensuring compliance, which allows them to focus on growing their businesses.”

He added that at SJV, they are constantly looking for new and better ways to serve their customers. Bill said, “We are currently beta launching a suite of verifications solutions (academic, employment, military, references, licenses, etc.) with a number of clients across numerous software platforms. We’ve built this product suite using modern call center tools and techniques to maximize both turnaround time and completion rates, while allowing the customization that clients demand.”

He added, “Having been on the CRA side of things, I can tell you with confidence that SJV’s approach to managing their work is far superior in many ways to how we did it at either FADV or Verifications Inc. Their controls and technologies were beyond what I would have envisioned prior to working with them. I only wish that I knew back then, what I know now. I would have approached the partnership in a far more meaningful way, which would have delivered tremendous benefits for my clients.”

Moving to my favorite question regarding what he sees down the road for the industry, Bill said he sees, “continued consolidation similar to the recent announcements of TalentWise and EmployeeScreenIQ. However, for those that can live through it, there will be significant opportunities for smaller CRAs who can cater to clients with unique needs.” He added, ” I don’t see the velocity of litigation or regulation easing. This space has been far too lucrative of an industry for plaintiff’s bar. The wild card will be decisions and actions of our sources and how that impacts our world.” He paused and reflected for a moment and then said, “Our world continues to get digitized. If your only value prop is the acquisition of information, your existence10 years from now is questionable.”

Turning the conversation to him personally, Bill shared that he recently read Scale Up, which is an updated version of the Rockefeller Habits. He highly recommends it for any CEO of a company with less than 50 employees that dreams of becoming a large enterprise one day.

The person he most wanted to meet is Benjamin Franklin sharing that he was known as an inventor, diplomat, businessman, and for some of his less desirable traits. Bill said, “Franklin must have been quite the character and it would be great to see if the perception was true.”

Before ending the interview Bill shared his favorite quote “It is what it is” which for him is a shortened version of the Serenity Prayer. He said he had, “no idea if it can be attributed to any person. But it reminds him to not get distracted by things he cannot control.”

Thanks to Bill Wilder for a very insightful and informative interview.

Bill can be reached at Bill.Wilder@sjvassoc.com or (800) 203-0582

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