Austin Nichols is a direct hire and contract recruiting firm in Kansas City that specializes in engineering and manufacturing. We have been recruiting top engineering professionals since 1988 and currently do the most engineering jobs and manufacturing placement work in Kansas City. We have been named Kansas City “Small Business of the Year” five times and a National Blue Chip Award winner (National Small Business of the Year) once. Three times we have earned recognition from Ingrams’s Magazine as a “Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Kansas City.” We are the only company to earn Top 15 in that recognition three consecutive years.
Our History
Dave McDowell founded Austin Nichols Technical Search, Inc. (ANTS) on March 2, 1988, as a one-man-show in a small office located in Saint Joseph, Missouri. After leaving the recruiting firm he was working for at the time to strike out on his own, he found himself bound by a non-compete contract. The contract precluded McDowell from recruiting anywhere within a 50-mile radius of the Kansas City metro. His St. Joe office sat exactly 52 miles away. After a year of commuting back and forth, McDowell’s non-compete contract expired and he moved Austin Nichols Technical Search to downtown Kansas City. He spent 12 years at City Center Square before moving the company to the office in Crown Center we still occupy today. Austin Nichols Technical Search continues to do more engineering and manufacturing placement work than any other job placement firm in the Kansas City area.
In 1994, McDowell founded Austin Nichols Technical Temporaries, Inc. (ANTT), a sister recruiting company designed specifically for contract and contract-to-hire placement of engineering specialists including drafters, design engineers and technical professionals. Within three years, ANTT grew into a $4.5 million business. Shortly thereafter, McDowell sold the temp business to a publicly traded company based out of New Jersey. Unfortunately for them, the new owners did not experience the same level of success. In 2001, McDowell bought back the rights to the Austin Nichols name, the database and the existing non-compete contracts. After a brief period of some confusion regarding our name and ownership, ANTT has once again become a thriving temporary and contract manufacturing placement organization that remains a prominent name in the Kansas City engineering contract industry.