- Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Berkeley College Education drives opportunity.

Be inspired.

- Hello, this is John Hartman, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Thank you for tuning in the Pathway to Success.

Our guest is Vinny Nyak, director Operations of a PN Consultants.

We are just delighted to have Vinny here and we're gonna talk about his career and technology and staffing and all the things he's done in the various industries for a number of years.

So Vinny, welcome to Pathway to Success.

- Thank you John.

Glad to be here.

- So let's get right into it today, man.

You all ready to go?

And I want to get to know a little bit about you, where you're from, family, big, small.

- Sure.

So born and raised in India.

I finished my engineering in Mumbai University and I came to the US in 1991 to do my MBA in California State University at Bakersfield.

Moved to New York in 93, New Jersey in 98 and New Jersey has been home since that time.

Got married in 94, raised three kids, all adults by now.

And yeah, that's, that's my background - In contrast, the two United States versus India.

- Yeah, so interesting question because when I first came to the US it was a huge culture shock for me because moving across the oceans and coming to a completely new country and although we were educated in English medium in in India, the accents and everything was so new and so different over here.

So it was a big change and a big shift for me and a big, big adjustment.

But I think around two years into this country I finally was acclimate.

And, but just to give you a perspective, you know, things about India, we, we, we have about 485 dialects in India.

So many languages, and we don't really speak 'em all, but I would speak about four or five languages back then.

Wow.

And then coming to the US I think the biggest challenge for me was to really understand people's accents.

The different, I couldn't even tell a southern draw from a Boston accent, so, okay.

But it was a good, good learning and I think I've now spent more time in the US than I have in India.

And to me now, India is a culture shock as opposed to, because you know, it's changed so much back there and I feel more natural in these surroundings right now.

So.

- Well we welcome you.

So the two schools you selected, Bombi and, and California State University.

Can you speak to some of the nuances of those institutions?

- Sure.

Thank you John for asking that question.

Actually, it's a very interesting story why I went into electronics engineering.

I do happen to be the first engineer in my family.

My brother followed suit after me, but me getting into engineering was, and especially electronics engineering was a big dream of my father, if you believe it or not.

He grew up in a small town, did not study beyond fourth grade.

So he was not an educated man from that angle, but a very worldly wise person, very family oriented and very dedicated to the family.

He, when he was about to get married, finally realized that he has to pick up a, a profession that kind of feeds the whole family.

And he went to a electronic store and sat there and learned how to repair radios and TVs back then for a whole year without getting paid.

And finally he was able to do it and then he picked up a job and that's how we raised our family.

I can, I can tell you very proud proudly that even after finishing my own engineering college, I think his concepts in electronics were a lot stronger than mine.

And this person was the like fourth grade educated and I feel very proud about the fact that my dad had that dream and pushed me towards it.

And so engineering and electronics was kind of a natural bend for me just from being in that environment with my father.

And that kind of really set me up for my future career growth.

- So you have siblings?

- I do, yes.

So I have one younger brother, he's about seven and a half years younger than me and he works for Cisco, the very large tech company in, in California, San Jose.

- So would you say your dad was a big source of inspiration for you?

- Absolutely.

I think he's one of my biggest heroes simply because the, the man of very modest means has been able to accomplish so much in terms of raising a good family and great family values.

And I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that he was very clear about what he wanted and what we, you know, he should kind of raise us with.

I would ask him for money for going for a movie and he would say no, but no matter how much money it cost for a, for a book, he would very easily give me money for books and education and things like that.

So his priorities in the right place.

And I think those are some of the values I take with me.

I don't really want to extend that a little bit to tell you that the three children that we have, and you haven't asked me this question, but I'll tell you anyway, we have three kids, all adults now, they have all gone into private education, private colleges, and we have aspired and we are very close to that goal of getting them educated completely debt free.

And I think that's the value that I've gotten from my father and I'm trying to pass it on to my children.

- I think that is a phenomenal testament for, for our viewers to take into consideration as they look around their households and figure out how they get their, their kids, their grandkids to that next level.

But in India technology's big.

Talk about some of the industries there that people gravitate to and then, you know, if you could talk a little bit about the exporting of talent to the us.

- So when I grew up in India, I think traditionally India has been a more of an agricultural and less of an industrial nation.

But really the shift started happening literally around the time that I started coming to the US a few years into this country.

I've seen how large tech companies and even manufacturing and other outfits over here have outsourced a lot of their work to India.

And a lot of it has to do with the fact that majority of the Indian education system is built on the English medium.

We were, you know, obviously organized by the British and that's one of the legacies that left behind for us is to have the medium of instruction and the language of commerce being in English.

And because of that a lot of the kids obviously speak English there and outsourcing happened quite a bit.

I think call centers were a big thing back then.

- So let's speak a little bit about, you've done a lot over, I don't know how many years, but you worked in a number of industries.

Let's kind of take us through that conversation a little bit.

- Sure.

Eventually I landed up the company called Tel as a recruiter IT recruiter and that's where I made my bones in it, so to speak.

After Sintel, I moved on to another small organization for being a director of recruiting, but sintel was the one company that gave me the opportunity to move from a recruiter role into a sales role.

Over the years I have worked with very large and some of the small companies selling IT, staffing solutions as well as IT services, just projects.

I had a long stint with a company called Tata Interactive Systems, which is where I spent about six years.

And if you may know, Tata is one of the very large conglomerates, which has recently posted global revenues of more than 356 billion and they're a conglomerate of many organizations.

So I was very fortunate to work on organization like that, that really had such a strong value system and gave me a really good springboard to success.

More recently I worked with one of the very, very large companies, the largest women owned IT staffing company called R Tech Solutions.

But coming to my current organization, A PN Consulting Inc.

I've been with them for about six years now, but I've known the CEO for more than 20 years and we go back quite a ways and over the years the association has been really good.

As director of operations, I was initially involved in more of the ops role in the company, but I really managed their entire new business development initiatives.

- When was a PN consulting established?

- So a PN consulting was established in 2002.

We currently support four geographies, us, Canada, India, and Mexico - All over the globe.

Here we wanna know what you actually do.

- We are a IT staffing organization, which provides staffing and IT services.

So a PN consulting was really started from the one simple idea that we want to make, give a better experience to our candidates and to our clients.

And this was one of the big gaps that was found in the industry back then, which is, which is why our CEO and founder with AK started the company.

Some of his clients were actually pushing him to say, no, why don't you do this because you do a really good job for us and you could do this on your own.

And that's how he started this company.

So in terms of our mission, we really want to be the preferred partner for IT staffing and services for our clients.

And that's been our goal.

And one of the things we want to also share in terms of like what our client values are, is what are the clients require from us?

We are very happy to support them in in any which way we can.

Some of our largest customers happen to be our oldest customers as well.

If you think of relationships which are 15 to 20 years old, that's really a testament to what we stand for for our customers, right?

We have seen a lot of ups and downs in the industry in terms of the economic ups and downs and yet we have actually survived a lot of the supplier rationalizations that they call it simply because, you know, we continue to be enjoying a merit-based relationships with our, with our customer.

- Can you talk a little bit about the types of clients that you have?

Sure.

- So the proximity to the Northeast region, we obviously got a lot of the insurance and financial clients in the beginning, but over the years we have found the largest industry vertical that we are supporting is actually healthcare.

- Okay.

So we're gonna take a break here on Pathway to Success.

We'll be back in a moment.

- The African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey is your pathway to success.

We encourage you to visit our website@www.accnj.com or call us at (609) 571-1620.

We are your strategic partner for success.

- Welcome back to Pathway to Success.

I'm John Harmon, founder president CEO of the African-American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Here with me today is Vinny Naac, he's director of operations of a PN Consulting.

What separates you from the others that are in this space?

- So just to give you a sense of how crowded the space is for IT staffing, right.

There's about 29,000 staffing agencies all over the US right now.

So we realize very early on that if you don't have a very definitive niche, there's not much of, you know, speaking we can do in terms of how we differentiate ourselves.

And it just became a natural progression that over the period of time, having worked with a lot of the payer organizations, you know, one of the initiatives we took on ourselves internally is understanding from our contractors what kind of work they're doing with our clients and being able to document that knowledge because that knowledge becomes very essential for us to understand, first of all how we are adding value to our customers.

We educate our recruiters in terms of what the industry's all about, the whole ecosystem, what the systems are and how they actually make money and how the value system works within the organizations.

And that's what improves their business peak when they talk to their own candidates.

And it improves my business peak when I speak to with my customers.

- So Vinny, you know, niche products, can you elaborate on that a little - Bit?

Yeah, so healthcare domain happens to be one of our niches for sure just because we are an expert in, in in that field.

And the second one would be ServiceNow.

The ServiceNow is a company by its own standing.

It's about an 8.3 billion revenue company.

And we support the technology needs in in that technology.

It's a digital platform that unifies all the different processes and organizations and help them move faster, do things, better, things of that nature.

With more than 8,100 customers, more than 85% of the Fortune 1000 companies use ServiceNow and they have a very formidable market share of about 45%, which was reported back in 2022.

Wow.

Now coming back to the healthcare aspect, right?

You can well imagine that when you're trying to recruit technology talent, they could be working in any of several industries and they could be working on several different types of software systems.

Now the confluence of having a person who's worked in the healthcare industry so that their learning curve is very short and the fact that they have the right technology that the customer is looking for, that confluence is what we are looking for.

And we, we make sure that we find contractors for our customers who can actually learn the systems very quickly and be productive from almost from day one.

And I think that over the period of time has been a big differentiator for us.

Our, our clients do see that we are very quick in terms of understanding what their needs are and being able to support that.

- But you said in the outset there's over 29,000 players in this industry.

So does that create challenge for you in executing your business model?

- It it, it does.

In fact, yeah, the, the pie is pretty big, but also the eaters are quite, quite a lot as well.

One of the things that becomes a challenge for us is talent engagement and retention.

As you can well imagine, you know, we'll talk about it.

Covid was hit and then a lot of the work went remote.

So people had the op opportunity to choose and pick what employers they will work with.

So this industry has seen a lot of what they call as ghosting, where the candidates take on a job and then they, they don't show up because they found a competitive offer.

So you can imagine that staffing companies typically have to, it's a big war on talent, so to speak.

One thing that definitely helped a PN consulting over these years is the fact that we remain very steadfast in our value that we offer for our, for our candidates.

So caring for our constituents is really big for us, which means caring for the candidate as well as caring for our customers.

- So Vinny in operations, I know there's no such thing as a typical day, but, you know, give, give us a sense of what is, what is a typical day for you?

- Yeah, sure.

So we definitely start off our day by having a very short huddle with our, with our team.

We talk about what we have accomplished the, the day before and what are we going to accomplish for the next day.

But that really cascades into what our weekly and monthly goals are.

And we actually have a pretty detailed tracking system in terms of what our entire year's goal is and how are we breaking it down into a monthly.

I like to create dashboards because that really becomes a good indicator of where you are actually going vis-a-vis your goals.

And it has served us very well.

So we, we always try to find out what are the, some of the key metrics that we have to be tracking.

So for example, how many client meetings we are having, how many meaningful conversations we are having, which can potentially convert into business.

And you know, based on our overall yearly goal, how are we tracking against that After the huddle, we typically have our daily activities that we have lined up for ourselves.

We don't believe that consistent activity is what actually brings your reserves.

I like to bucket them into urgent and important, handle them first, not urgent, but important.

Make sure that they, they get done in a, in a timely manner.

Very urgent, but not important.

We just let them go.

- Benny, you guys are very busy.

Based on what you've articulated during the course of our conversation today, speak to some initiatives that you all are doing outside of day-to-day activities.

- You know, lemme speak a little bit about the value system of a PN outside of what our mission.

That's good and vision and values are right.

Family first is one of our key values.

We openly talk about it, which means that if your family needs you just go don't, don't worry about the work work expert.

And there's, there's no questions asked.

The second one is integrity, which means even when the one is looking to the right thing.

And the third one is transparency.

These three are the very top and very important values for a PN and I think that it has served us well because all of us like to remind ourselves is are we really adhering to those values?

And yes, that always works out well for us, right?

But outside of our very busy work schedules, we have consciously gone out and did CSR initiatives, one of them being the Trenton Soup Kitchen.

We routinely volunteer there.

And the second initiative we have done is we have been funding some schools in India, especially for girls who do not have the opportunity to get into schools because of economic hardships and things like that.

So we, we evolved that second initiative.

The third one, which I'm really happy to talk about is having summer internships.

When we initially started this program about five years ago, it was a not paid internship, but the kids really had fun coming into the office, learning about how to keep books or getting into a marketing program with our company and things of that nature.

But for the past two years has become a paid internship for us.

We have anywhere from one to four interns in our offices in the summertime, and these are all high school kids who are looking to maybe use this as a platform to get into a certain major that they are aspiring to.

So interestingly enough, one of our summer interns ended up becoming an employee of the company and she currently works for us.

- They say you can do well and good at the same time and reinvesting back in the com community is great.

And so, so Vinny COVID-19, the environment, how did it affect your business?

- We did actually better in Covid than other times.

I think one of the things is for that is because the fact that we have so many healthcare payer customers and some of the provider customers they were looking to, they got very busy right in this time because ev everything was around healthcare and we got called upon to support them for their IT technology needs and things like that.

- We're gonna start winding this, this conversation down.

So next five years, what's on the horizon for a PN consulting?

- So the three things we are doing is, one is continuing to focus our energies in the ServiceNow domain, which is where we want to be.

The second one is definitely focusing or continuing to make investments in the healthcare domain, which is where we are definitely already growing.

And the third area that we have actually now start investing in is getting into the state and local governments.

So 2024 is our year to set the right stage.

And from here on we want to continue doubling our revenues every five years.

And that's one of our goals for sure.

- I like that Pete, the cash register ring and for sure.

Last question, I really enjoyed this conversation.

You are a President's Club member of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Can you speak to our relationship and encourage others to consider?

- Absolutely.

I'm very happy to talk about that.

John becoming a President's Club member was a complete no brainer for us because getting involved in more and more of the activities of the chamber and you know, that kind of gives you back, you know, the whole networking opportunity.

We really appreciate that the kind of programming and you have, you have and the kind of advocacy you do within, within the chamber.

I I think it's really commendable, ex exemplary and you know, the fact that you have, you fight for so much of the rights of the community, it gives us a lot of hope in terms of joining the organization, being able to volunteer and, and give back.

And we also grow along with that.

- Hey, we are delighted to have you as a part of the organization and at the end of the day it's about a mutually beneficial relationship.

So I wanna thank you for joining us today.

- Thanks John.

- And we're gonna continue to build on our mutual success and for those who who've tuned in today, we're just delighted to have you in until the next time on your pathway to success.

This is John Harmon, founder, president and CEO of the African-American Chamber of NCE of New Jersey.

Thank you for tuning in today.

The message for today, we are at a defining moment in the state of New Jersey.

As I reflect on Dr. King, when we talked about difficulties ahead, we are in those difficult moments now in our, in our great state.

So recently in New Jersey we had the conclusion to a, a disparity study that took several years to get done and the disparity study looks at the availability in the utilization of businesses on state funded contracts.

And so when we drilled down on the numbers, we saw that black businesses, for example, received about $3.3 million in contracts versus 10 billion for white owned businesses.

So we have to figure out, is this working for us?

We know the black vote helps many men and women get elected and while they're on the campaigns, they're talking about what they're gonna do for us.

And then there's other people who write the checks and it appears that those who are writing the checks are getting a better return on their investment For those who are casting the votes.

And based on this disparity study, black people are getting nothing.

I will say to you, in all fairness to Governor Murphy, he's been engaged, he's acknowledged where we are, and he is made a commitment to work with us in our newly established task force to put some best practices in place so that we will not have this happen again.

When we look at network for blacks today with 17,000 versus 322,000 for whites, blacks as homeowners are between 35 and 40%.

Blacks have not benefited from the state's economy in an appreciable way.

So I'm challenging black leaders, black people as well as others because all of us moving up appreciably in the state's economy produces a win-win for us all.

This is not just about me talking about black people, black businesses, this is me talking about New Jersey.

We either all new Jerseyans or we're not.

And right now, as we look at the data, and so my challenge is join us.

Join us in advocating for a more inclusive New Jersey.

Join us in making sure that policies in New Jersey don't just work for a few, but work for us all.

Thank you.

- Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Berkeley College education drives opportunity.

Be inspired.