Jim Kavanaugh: WWT Will Add Over 1,000 New Jobs In 2021
World Wide Technology CEO Jim Kavanaugh talks to CRN about his plans to hire over 1,000 new employees this year to drive services sales in specific fast-growing and emerging markets.
Solution provider powerhouse World Wide Technology is investing millions this year in hiring more than 1,000 new employees as the $13.4 billion company continues to flourish despite the global COVID pandemic.
“Even during COVID we hired 600 or 700 people last year. We have a budget this year to hire over 1,000 people,” said World Wide Technology CEO Jim Kavanaugh in an interview with CRN. “The last two years we have grown 12 [percent] to 15 percent top line, bottom line which is part of our five-year plan. The largest areas of investment and growth that we’re looking at is around services and those areas would tie to things like software development in our digital portfolios.”
Kavanaugh said WWT will be hiring software engineers, data scientists and management consultants in a move to continue the company’s massive sales momentum. World Wide Technology is looking to also hire new employees to drive artificial intelligence, big data and security revenue.
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“We’re also watching some of the networking pieces as 5G starts to take hold. So the type engineers and architects that are going to be required to help customers build out some of their networks and leverage that capability,” said Kavanaugh. “The last [employee investment] area is cloud. We have a big focus on helping customer evaluate private, public, hybrid cloud and how that aligns with Microsoft, Amazon and Google.”
The St. Louis-based global IT services star currently employees more than 7,000 people worldwide and ranks No. 9 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 list. WWT is one of the largest Cisco partners in the world and is also a top partner for the likes of Dell Technologies, VMware and NetApp to Nvidia, Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks.
Kavanaugh said WWT is “doubling and tripling down” on being a services-led company as the channel industry continues to evolve. “From my view, we are leaning in aggressively around being services-led, but doing it in a way that you’re talking about networking, data center, security, voice, video, collaboration -- and then have the management consultants and software developers to enable the back office and the customer experience,” he said. “We want to help drive an outcome that positively impacts their business.”
Although WWT has bold hiring plans in store for 2021, Kavanaugh is still keeping a keen eye on market trends and the ongoing impacts of the COVID pandemic.
“We’re watching the market very closely as we still continue to work through the pandemic and some macroeconomic things both domestically and globally. With that being said, we have big plans to continue to grow this year,” Kavanaugh said.