Amid explosive growth, recruitment firm IQTalent Partners relocates to Nashville

IQTalent Partners is relocating its corporate headquarters from the Bay City Area to Nashville, Tennessse. The talent acquisition and consulting firm also hired four directors as a result of 60% staff growth since January 2018.

IQTalent Partners was founded in 2009 and provides executive search, candidate sourcing and research, and full cycle recruiting services to clients in the tech, life sciences and healthcare, entertainment and digital media, automotive and industrial, and retail sectors.

Rather than working on the standard recruitment industry commission model, the firm instead employs a professional services model in which clients pay for services rendered.

IQTalent will move an expansive Nashville location with an office footprint of 24.000 square feet, including a 12,000-square-foot expansion that will be completed this month. Besides staff growth, the move to Nashville was motivated Nashville by the city's affordability. Nashville, like Austin and Denver, is a growing hotspot for tech companies and startups, as a growing number of firms seek to escape the high costs of setting up shop in Silicon Valley or New York City. "I never let go of Nashville after graduating from Vanderbilt in 1999," Chris Murdock, senior partner and co-founder of IQTalent Partners, said. "Although I worked in three different states and then founded a company in Silicon Valley, ultimately I wanted to return to Nashville. The people, the economy, the culture - all of it – just fits the way IQTalent Partners does business."

Before founding the recruitment consultancy, Murdock was a sourcer within Yahoo’s internal executive recruiting team, and an associate at Heidrick & Struggles, where he recruited for software, hardware, and semiconductor clients. 

With its move to Nashville, IQTalent will also be adding four new management positions to handle the firm’s growth in staff. The four new hires are John Beck, director of technology; Kendra Deas, director of human resources; Mark Israel, director of account management and business development; and Stacie Kinder, director of marketing.

"We are thrilled to have such talented and diverse leaders join the IQTP team,” David Windley, IQTalent Partners CEO, said. “Their combined experience and enthusiasm position us well for our next phase of growth as we celebrate the start of our tenth year in business."

Related: Executive search firm Strategy Source launches consulting practice