Keeley Bieber

I would probably attribute my success to the good and the bad people that I have come across. The good people obviously help mold me in the right way and pull me away from all the negative things that you experience in this industry. But the not-so-great people really helped me see who not to be, and I am very grateful for them because it's kind of easy in this industry to get, to have a hardened heart. And I just am not that kind of a person, so seeing what that looks like and seeing how people transform into that, and what causes them to go down that path has really helped mold me into the professional that I am now. I think my work ethic, specifically, would come from my dad. He has just got a very strong work ethic, and he does similar work to that I do, just in a different kind of industry. So, he just has a thick skin, and he's just taught me, you know, sometimes you just gotta take it, and you just gotta get back up every morning, and do it again, until you get it right. It's not that you get knocked down, it's how you pick yourself up at that time.

If I had one piece of advice, I think it would be to stand your ground and just be your person. It happens a lot, especially as a female in a male-dominated industry. We're told a lot, like, if we push back on something, we're emotional. If we don't agree with something, we're combative, or we're difficult to work with. And I think sometimes we get pushed into a box, and if I had to just tell somebody, you know, it's okay to upset somebody. It's okay to say no, as long as you're doing it for the right reasons and in the right way. So just stand up for yourself, and stand your ground, and just be your person.

Staffing is all about our product as people, and the economy is just such a volatile economy right now. We have a market flooded with ghost applications. People are frustrated. We have a market that's also filled with people that are kind of not really looking for work, and so our job here is to separate the ones that are really looking for work, and we have to go find them, too, because they're not out in the open like they used to be. We have to go find them, and we have to build a name for ourselves in order to be trustworthy to receive these quality candidates. So, our issue is not just the quality of the candidates, but also the competitiveness of the market, and like, how do we take care of our clients in ways that other companies or other staffing agencies aren't taking care of them. Since COVID, it's just been such a different dynamic. It's been such a different market, different conversations. We've had to evolve so quickly, that it's almost hard to keep up. If I wasn't with a company that I am with now, with all of our ability to be flexible and versatile, I don't think we would have made it. I really just don't. I think other agencies are kind of failing, and they're falling out because they try to hang on to the old ways in the past. I'm just really lucky to be where I'm at now with a company that pioneered and just said, we're just going to push forward, and we're going to do the hard things, and we're going to do it now. And if we fail, we fail. If we don't, we don't, and we're going to learn from our failures. I think definitely candidate quality and definitely service. Our service line is just getting too expensive out there, so we have to kind of figure out how we fit, how we can make our service into our clients and still become valued partners with them.