Through strategic networking, industry affiliations and being a leader in the staffing industry, Mackey & Guasco Staffing Associates LLC has had the opportunity to be featured in a number of news stories.

How To Jump-Start Your Career When You’re Out Of Work!

Shepard Smith, News Anchor for the FOX National News Network, interviewed Maureen Mackey live on Studio B. The topic was “How To Jump-Start Your Career When You’re Out Of Work!” Maureen Mackey offered the following advice to those watching:

"The three key components to finding a job, in any job market, are to have the very best resume possible, stay positive at all costs and continually work on building your professional network."

This interview was a prelude to a reality show on the FOX National News Network’s “The Pulse News Magazine.” This reality show followed six job seekers and their different approaches to the task of finding new employment. One of the six job seekers featured in the show was represented by Mackey & Guasco Staffing Associates. Maureen Mackey and Lu Guasco were also featured as experts in the staffing industry.

At the end of the reality show their job seeker landed a phenomenal position with one of their corporate clients. This job seeker was the only one of the six that utilized the services provided by a staffing firm. At first the job seeker was averse to taking on a temporary assignment, as her main focus was to land a direct-hire position. Maureen Mackey and Lu Guasco explained to her that the current market place may not have many direct-hire opportunities. They suggested she take a temporary assignment which could open doors faster. Sure enough, at the end of two weeks, the temporary assignment turned in to a direct-hire position.

Featured Fairfield County Business Journal article written by Maureen Mackey in the May 2009:

“How’s your business? How’s the market? How are you doing?”
This is the opening line we in the staffing agency business get every time we turn around. With unemployment almost at double digits and at a 25 year high, of course the market and every staffing business are horrible! The real question and what everyone is searching for answers to is WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? I personally am in this profession for the long haul just like my investments...I have too much time and intellectual capital to roll over and pack it in!

Here are the facts: there are too many people unemployed and not enough jobs. For every 100 resumes we saw a year ago, we now have 300. 90% of the resumes are written poorly, candidates don’t interview well and a high percentage doesn’t have marketable skills. Yes, there is a better crop of unemployed candidates, but you still have to be a highly skilled recruiter to find them in the masses. So what are we in the staffing business to do and what advice do I have for Corporate America? Take a deep breathe, stay healthy, work harder, faster and gather some patience. Bottom line, deal with it...I have never been more confident than I am today that organizations need the services of reputable staffing firms more than ever before. As the months pass, only the “cream of the crop” will be left standing. Make it a priority to determine who you want your organization to partner with. Which staffing firm should represent your company and your opportunity to the best people on or off the market so that you can spend time growing and/or maintaining your business during these tough times? Staffing firms that have been around more than 15 years have deep intellectual capital at their finger tips. Utilize that information so that you don’t make a mistake when hiring. These Recruiters know who the reliable top producers are; they know the people who can get it done. They know which people will lead you down a negative path and bring your business down to negative numbers.

My advice to Corporate America is that now is not the time to be frugal when it comes to recruiting the very best talent. Massage your budgets; get the best service provider to help you make sense of the talent pool. Your company is only as good as the people who work for it. If you are fortunate enough to have a recruiter on staff 100% devoted to just the recruiting process and nothing but the recruiting process, then malzaltof! Good for you and I wish you a lot of luck. However, be warned, pay them well and buy them breakfast, lunch and dinner because they are gong to be working long, hard hours sifting through the thousands of resumes and listening to more than their share of stories of despair. Placing an ad out on the networking circuit is a lot like being a piece of flesh out in the open waters infested with sharks fighting for every last morsel. Is this dramatic? Yes! Is it the raw truth? Yes! Every shark that doesn’t get that piece of meat will come back angrier and more motivated for the next opportunity. It is called survival.

Organizations that think they can go it alone and not hire a recruiter have to be smart, think ahead, and crunch the numbers. Is casting a wide net really the best use of your time? Do you really want your line managers including your HR professionals to be spending all of their efforts on the recruiting process? Do your line managers really know how to recruit in today’s economy? Your HR Department should be focusing on keeping your existing talent engaged and motivated to be the best in class, to positively impact the bottom line and not sifting through thousands of résumés and booking endless interviews?

Time is money and recruiting the very best talent to get you out of this crisis will come from working with the very best recruiting firms.

Local Firm Helps Others Find The Perfect Employees

Locally, Mackey & Guasco Staffing Associates have been featured as a premier staffing firm in the business section of The Darien Times and The Stamford Advocate as well as The Fairfield County Business Journal and Fairfield County Jobs.com.