Staffing USA: A Mad Scamper

Anthony Iannarino’s post on the importance of ‘presence’ jolted me into action this last week as I met with more than a dozen staffing companies across the USA in a mad scamper that defied any logic other than making the best of the airline industry’s convoluted fare structure.

From Abilene to Ypsilanti today's staffing business reflects the same angst you get on CNN: an employment industry rocked by the credit crisis and rendered paranoid by the mob of union-backed, anti-employer lawyers about to take over our executive branch who CAN actually create change by making the job market worse than the massively wasteful crew they are replacing.

However in every dark cloud there are silver linings.

Memphis: a government staffing supplier

If you’ve ever been frustrated by long lines at airport security checkpoints, then you can empathize however slightly with the plight of defense contractors whose ability to execute has been castrated by the axe of the security Gods now firmly in control of our government.

There is no line too long for workers to get properly cleared to enter a defense workplace, no senator to complain to. Such inefficiencies do create opportunities, and so we helped our staffing company client make the best of them by automating time-keeping and new contractor intake. Such relationships require first that you have the right contact in the right place and it also helps to have an appropriate solution. 

Miami: an industrial staffing company

Feeling as threatened as as a republican interviewed by Stephen Colbert, I walk in wearing a suit and tie amongst laborers so numerous they can’t help but bump into one another or me as I make my way to the reception desk. It doesn’t matter how often I do it, I’m still always afraid one is going to punch me or get down on me like the media is currently doing with those bailed-out AIG directors at their posh parties. Next time – I always say – it’s jeans and a sweat shirt.

I meet with the owner who has successfully won large contracts formerly serviced by Adecco whose quality has eroded perhaps because of their low margins (or is it the other way around). He’s happy with our software. I try to pitch moving to our paperless applicant intake. He wants to go paperless, but they have too much going on now he says. We go out to lunch and he tells me about his growth plans.

a return to to quality?

Has the tortuous, circular path that big companies have put staffing companies through during the last 20 years finally come back to its starting point? Let me take you down memory lane:

In the beginning there were big staffing clients who valued their great relationship with their main staffing supplier.

Next came the ‘consultant’, the nut-cracker, who helped renegotiate rates, and took the negotiation to a global level, simultaneously killing local service.  The concept of global staffing captivated the giant staffing providers that went on a spending binge for a global operating system, spending hundreds of millions in vain. Note to Adecco, Kelly, Manpower and others who have gone the global route and now have stock prices low enough to prove it: if you want to conquer the world, do it one country at a time.

I'm back home now and rereading Anthony's post.  He's right of course but if you run a company with customers spread around the world, how do you not miss your wife, your bed, your kids, your gym?