Client Case Study • Paramount Home Group • Tampa, FL
Ryan Murphy • COO • Paramount Home Group • Placed December 2025
Keegan, founder and CEO of Paramount Home Group, had built a real estate team spanning five markets across Florida and into Illinois. Over 200 agents. A mortgage branch. An insurance branch. Three companies running in parallel, all pulling on the same hour of his day.
He knew what the next hire needed to look like: an operator who could step in, take ownership, and remove him from the day-to-day filtering of decisions. What he did not want to do was spend the next several months reading resumes and running first-round interviews. He had done that before, for every other hire in his career. This time was different.
For the first time, Keegan turned to outside help. Team Architects took the search.
What Keegan Was Looking For
A COO capable of running three separate companies: a real estate team, a mortgage branch, and an insurance branch. Culture fit was non-negotiable. He wanted someone who could lead, build processes, and match the standards already in place at Paramount.
Ryan Murphy had spent 18 years in commercial construction management. No real estate background. No mortgage experience. No insurance background. On paper, he did not fit the job description.
But he applied anyway.
Within 48 hours, Sarah from Team Architects was on the phone. Over the next two months, Ryan met with Keegan a half dozen times: meetings at the office, offsite conversations, a Saturday working session. Mid-December, he started. His TA-12 match score for the COO role: 97%.
The assessment did not care about his industry background. It measured the traits that predict whether someone can actually do the work: cognitive speed, structured thinking, assertiveness, adaptability, responsiveness. Ryan had them. The score said so before the first meeting happened.
"To see where I was as a match for this role was a good feeling. It's a good fit still to this date. And I know Keegan would be the first to tell me if it wasn't."
Ryan Murphy • COO, Paramount Home Group
By Q1 2026, Ryan was not just running Paramount. He was spearheading hires across all three companies: branch managers for the mortgage branch and the insurance branch, roles that required the same rigor Keegan had applied to finding Ryan.
He went back to Team Architects. Not as a candidate this time. As a client.
This is not a coincidence. It is the system working. When someone has been through the TA-12 as an applicant, experienced the quality of communication on the candidate side, and then stepped into a leadership role with their own hiring decisions to make, they already know the answer. They have lived both sides of the process.
Ryan had. And when the pressure of filling two executive-level positions landed on his desk, he did not guess. He filtered.
What Changed on the Employer Side
Ryan used the TA-12 assessment results to frame his interview questions around the specific traits each role required. Rather than running broad conversations, he came to each interview with targeted questions built directly from the behavioral data. The assessment told him where to probe. The interview confirmed it.
One of the clearest takeaways from Ryan's experience on the hiring side: the TA-12 is not a gatekeeping tool. It is a targeting tool.
When a candidate's assessment flagged specific behavioral tendencies for a branch manager role, Ryan did not dismiss the candidate. He built his interview around those signals. He asked directly about management style, comfort with confrontation, and how they responded when a team member was not delivering. The assessment told him where the risk was. The interview let him assess it in person.
That is the actual value. Not a score that makes the decision for you. A behavioral map that tells you where to look before you ever sit down across from someone.
"The reporting you guys offer from the hiring side is more robust and more targeted toward providing a concise evaluation. It matches to the job description better than anything I've seen from the other side as a hiring manager."
Ryan Murphy • COO, Paramount Home Group
Ryan started December 18, 2025. By the end of Q1 2026, Paramount had opened two new sub-market offices, placed new branch managers for both the mortgage and insurance companies, and set a trajectory that has Ryan looking toward 2027 with confidence.
The staff he inherited: a team he described as full of competent people, with strong retention. The culture Keegan had worked to build: intact. The operational load that had been sitting entirely on Keegan: distributed.
One hire. Two months from application to start. Three companies now running with leadership in place.
That is what the filter is supposed to do.
On the Flat-Rate Model
Ryan also highlighted what sets Team Architects apart from traditional recruiting firms: the flat-rate pricing structure. Having worked with percentage-based agencies on both sides, he called the TA model "hard to beat" for companies in growth mode. At roughly $5,000 per search, the cost-to-value ratio was clear, and the time saved filtering through unqualified applicants made it easy to justify.
Most people who go through a structured recruiting process move on and forget about it. They take the job. They get busy. The tool that placed them fades into background context.
Ryan did not forget. When the hiring landed on his desk, he remembered what a good filter looks like from the inside. He remembered the communication. He remembered the score that matched before the first meeting happened. And he came back.
That is the system doing what it is designed to do: produce results that speak for themselves, on both sides of the table.
"Give it a shot. For roughly $5,000, I'm sure you'll see the value in the time it saves you from sifting through candidates and doing all that vetting yourself. Leave it to a professional."
Ryan Murphy • COO, Paramount Home Group
Team Architects places data-scored candidates for real estate operators who are done guessing. One assessment. Every candidate. No exceptions.
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