About Us

Our Company

Kimmel & Associates, Inc., established in 1981, is a national executive search firm specializing in the Construction, Solid Waste, Freight Forwarding, and Supply Chain industries. The Mission Statement of Kimmel & Associates encompasses the values and ethics that dictate the way we conduct ourselves.

Company History
The organization known today as Kimmel & Associates remains the same at its core as when it began in 1981, but 25 years of successful service and growth in the executive search industry have demanded and wrought significant changes.

In 1981, Joe Kimmel and a partner founded Gulf Search, Ltd., in New Orleans, Louisiana, forming a two-man operation that was one of the earliest executive search firms to concentrate solely on the construction industry. In 1984, the operation moved to Asheville, North Carolina, trading in the historic Crescent City for the beauty of the Appalachian Mountains. To mark the change, the company was renamed Kimmel & Fredericks and operated as a growing enterprise headquartered on a farm just south of Asheville.

By 1990, the organization had expanded to 30 people working as recruiters in the construction industry, and in 1991, the company moved to downtown Asheville. The other noteworthy landmark of that year saw the development of a philosophy of specialization, wherein each consultant focused on knowing his or her market and serving the clients in it with great dedication and knowledge.

By 1996, Kimmel & Associates felt the need to develop training programs specific to the separate divisions working within the company, so that specialists in, for example, the heavy-civil industry were trained specifically for that work.

By 2000, Kimmel & Associates was the largest search firm dedicated to serving the construction industry.

Kimmel & Associates is now home to more than 100 employees who are trained to meet the Mission Statement that drives our work. Twenty-five years after the founding of the company, Joe Kimmel demands the same commitment to service and professionalism that has been the trademark and the guiding principle of the company.

Our Goals
The goal at Kimmel & Associates is two-fold. First, we strive to assist companies in identifying candidates with outstanding records of success. Second, we strive to work with candidates who are exploring new long-term career opportunities which challenge their capacity for growth and innovation. To reach those ends, and to match a vital and growing company with a dedicated and able candidate, we rely on a network of long-cultivated business relationships and a database of more than 400,000 talented candidates, all available to the consultants and recruiters who concentrate on specialized industry segments within a specific location and marketplace. We are uniquely acquainted with top-level construction professionals across the nation. As professional consultants in the executive search industry, we have developed long-term relationships with the nation’s largest organizations as well as hard-charging smaller companies. We work closely within a client company’s market and respect their confidentiality..

We devote extra care and persistence to our searches; our diligence in interviewing and reviewing professionals ensures that we present a handful of excellent candidates who reach the level of ability and ambition which our clients expect. For these reasons, over 90% of our business is repeat business.

Our Training
Further, to maintain the best-trained, sharpest staff of recruiters in the executive search business, Kimmel & Associates demands that every recruiter and consultant be involved in its in-house Certification Program. During the 2-month long Certification Program, which is conducted twice annually, less experienced recruiters take 50 classes taught by the experienced consultants and team leaders here at Kimmel & Associates.

The Certification Program goes to the heart of the two-sided high standard to which we hold ourselves. That is, Certification does teach the technical side of recruiting but also places emphasis on doing things the right way, acting honestly, and working with an attitude of service. A Mentoring Program was established at Kimmel & Associates to pair veteran consultants with less-experienced recruiters.

Though an informal arrangement, the Mentoring Program allows the new recruiters to benefit from stories, do’s-and-don’t’s, and the hard-won wisdom of the consultants while also reminding the consultants to work with the energy of the new recruiters in order to develop clients and meet candidates.

Industry Involvement
The industries served by Kimmel & Associates represent growth and movement, development and progress. We have an obligation, therefore, to remain as well-trained and relevant as the companies in these disciplines. In the past few years, Kimmel & Associates:

Sent a team to the ENR Top 1000 Leadership Conference in Chicago, where Kimmel & Associates Executive Vice-President Frank Bruckner appeared as a panelist.
Published an article entitled GRAY POWER can give you an EDGE by Vice President Alan Laibson in the October ENR magazine.
Published an article: A Guide to Hiring Forwarder Talent by our consultants Anne Watkins, Allie Wall, and Keith Swayngim in the Spring 2004 CNS Focus Magazine.
Sent a delegation to the Owner’s Summit in New York City.
Sent a team to the Air Cargo 2004 Conference sponsored by the Air Forwarders Association.
Sent a delegation to the Waste Expo.
Sent a team to several NSWMA Regional Conferences.
Sent representatives to the Logistics and Supply Chain Forum.
Sent Frank Bruckner as a speaker at the New York Chapter of the AGC at their annual membership meeting July 13-16, 2006 in Lake George, NY.
Lynn Failing and Roger Cowan will attend the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) meeting in San Antonio, October 15-18, 2006.

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