The first industry to notice job growth is the staffing industry, says Melissa Johnson, Sales Director for Advance Employment’s nine locations in Michigan.
She has seen a huge jump for more than a year now. The spike has allowed
Advance Employment to add seven new account managers in the past eight months to manage the influx of growing clients with staffing needs at the Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Three Rivers and Grand Rapids locations.
"2011 was the best year of business that we’ve had in the past 10 years," Johnson says. "We outgrew our Kalamazoo office on Stadium Drive and relocated to a space on South Westnedge that’s twice as big. We needed more room for internal staff and more room to process applications for the associates that we place for our clients."
Growth, Johnson says, begins with the need to fill unskilled positions and works its way up.
"If you have five machines running instead of three, you’ll need two more machinists, but more staff to support the additional employees and keep those machines running," she says. "That leads to the need for more skilled workers like tool makers. Then higher-end placements like engineers and HR professionals."
Advance Employment handles professional placements, short and long-term placements and trial hires, among other staffing services. Direct placement is another specialty offered to clients without the time or staffing to fill a position--collecting resumes, conducting interviews, drug screenings, background checks and more.
Johnson expects the movement to continue.
"We had steady growth from beginning to end last year," she says. "We are seeing indications of even bigger growth this year and I hope to be able to add three more internal employees by the third quarter."
Writer: Kelle Barr, Second Wave
Source: Melissa Johnson, Sales Director, Advance Employment
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