Her Story
About JoEllen
I've been in sales for my entire career, and after COVID, things changed with my previous company, Aerolift, so I was looking for another opportunity. I had always been interested in the staffing and recruiting business, although I had never worked in it. When I saw there was an opening at Spherion, I looked into the market and realized that most of the competition had left when COVID happened, so I just looked at it as a real good opportunity. My key responsibilities revolve around generating new revenue and new clients for the business. I work with companies, calling on different businesses to see whether or not they could use our staffing services for either temp-to-hire positions or direct hire positions. My day consists of making phone calls, following up with people I've talked to before that may have staffing needs, doing emails, and providing information like salary guides. I work with management at a variety of businesses, anywhere from entry-level jobs all the way up to corporate level. In my first two years here, I won the national Top Business Development Award for the entire company two years in a row, and the growth was closer to almost double the business. Before this, I was in the brokerage business, working on the institutional side.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with JoEllen
01What do you attribute your success to?
I'm a very honest person, and I love being able to bring some kind of a solution to people. The honesty part is necessary for my position, because I would never be able to bring a product to someone if I didn't believe that it was a good product. I love people, and so I love talking to people, and I usually get to know my clients on a pretty intimate enough level so that people end up trusting me, because they know I'm working with someone that has integrity. People just know if you're working with someone that has integrity and that type of thing. I think that's probably the main thing, and then I'm real stubborn, so I don't give up.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say to plan on being in a learning curve for at least 2 years. It's a real long learning curve - the business, I didn't realize or think it would be until I got into it, and there's just so much to learn about how the whole industry works. That's something you kind of have to brace yourself for.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think the biggest challenge is helping a business understand where the value added is in using a staffing firm. What they'll look at is, well, if I'm paying an employee $30 an hour, and I hire a staffing firm, then it's gonna be like I'm paying $45 an hour. You have to be able to explain where what creates value there, why it makes sense for them - it ends up being things like the amount of time that's spent trying to hire someone, and how many people get involved with that, and the hours spent, and that type of thing. As far as the flip side of that, the businesses - pretty much the sky's the limit as far as where you can go with it, and what you want. One of my colleagues, who has been working with the same company for I think 13 years, just bought the franchise from the person that owned it when I first started working, and so she went from being in an entry-level position over 13 years to becoming a franchise owner. So, like I said, the sky is the limit.
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