Signature Placements principal, Tom Plihcik, spent the first seventeen years of his career in the marketing arena of the apparel industry rapidly rising to the vice- president level of a company recognized in the book In Search of Excellence.  During his thirteen years at this Fortune 500 firm, he served on manufacturing R&D committees, retail merchant associations and became a trade association board member. He also co-authored the company’s strategic planning manual, developed a marketing intern program, created methods and wrote standard procedures that brought profitability to a heretofore "unmanageable" part of the business. He completed Stanford University's Marketing Executive Program and worked as a liaison with an internationally recognized consulting firm. It was this last role that gave Tom his career direction after a corporate downsizing encouraged him to start his own business.

The Thomas A. Plihcik Company was established in 1984 as a marketing consultancy. It was while working on marketing projects for clients that Tom became aware of another contributing element to companies’ successes or failures. His clients were having problems finding new employees that really "fit" into their organizations. The "misfits" were disrupting team efforts, not understanding the company strategy, and generally costing more than that they were contributing.  Although these companies were using industry and skills based recruiters, as well as sophisticated profiling and other "screening" techniques, they were still having problems finding the right people.  Everyone was looking at what people do; no one was paying attention to how these potential hires do what they do. The how, Tom discovered, provides real insight into an individual.  How someone does something tells you what their core values and ethics are.  Finding people, with the right skills, that match the principles and values of our client companies is what we do.