Staffing Industry Spotlight: Sue Jagan, Associate Director of MeeDerby

Francis Larson:

Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Sue Jagan:

I am a nearly 20-year staffing industry veteran. I fell into the industry really because I was between jobs in Washington DC, and I fell back on the staffing industry because I always knew it was a great place to find temporary work. So, I started with an administrative staffing firm and was going out on assignments, and they liked my style. I was approached by one of the managing directors. She said, “Can you take a personality assessment? We're interested in you potentially for an internal position.” So, I did well on the personality assessment, and I was offered an opportunity to start as a recruiter. I had never recruited before and so was trained up. I was reviewing resumes, managing an inbox, conducting interviews, hiring people, and firing people. It was the full spectrum of HR. Within a year, I was running an office.

Francis Larson:

Like a branch of that staffing firm?

Sue Jagan:

Yeah. Our focus was administrative accounting and finance, more entry-level, clerical, but temporary. We also did direct hire. And I just really fell in love with it. I'll never forget, I was still in training. It was probably only maybe a month or two in. My old boss was just so excited about everything that we did, but I was still getting to know it. I am a pretty passionate person in general, but I remember the day that a woman came into the office to pick up her last paycheck because she had gone temp-to-perm. My boss, Maddie, said, “Oh my God, congratulations. We're so happy for you. We wish you nothing but the best.” And the woman had tears in her eyes.

Sue Jagan:

She said, ”I will never forget how much you all helped me, and I am so grateful.” And it was at that moment that I was like, oh my God, this is what I get to do. I get to change people's lives. That's really how we're affecting people. And that was it. I was just sold on the whole concept of staffing and its benefits for both candidates and clients. So, I spent 11 years with that staffing firm, and through that experience, my old boss was very encouraging and supportive of me making new relationships outside of our business.

Francis Larson:

What does that mean?

Sue Jagan:

Meaning he said, I think you should go networking to the Capital Area Staffing Association, which was a small chapter of the ASA in DC at the time. And so I was like, oh yeah, I think that would be great. Maybe I could meet some recruits that we would want to bring internal. So I went, and that was where I met Robin, and I was just blown by her. She was just so kind, so endearing, and wanted to know everything about me and what my aspirations were within the staffing industry. And so I thought, okay, she is somebody to keep me in touch.

And so as time went by, I was offered the opportunity to go to my first staffing event, which was Staffing World in 2015. And all the while I was getting married, starting my family, and just really wanting to continue to elevate myself within the industry. At this point, I was getting the feeling that I was outgrowing my old boss, but I wasn't ready to leave. And so it was at the staffing world event where I met my future executive coach, Loretta Penn, who unfortunately just passed away. But she really helped me realize that I was really ready to make a big change in my life, which was I needed to find something where I was able to work remotely, but also still work in an industry that I loved. So when I started looking for a new job, Robin was the first person I called. I wasn't looking for a job at MeeDerby, I was calling just because I wanted to have lunch with her.

Francis Larson:

Just to connect.

Sue Jagan:

What powerful words of wisdom she had for me. At the time, my son was two, my daughter was five. I was getting ready to turn 40. I had lost almost 50 pounds, and I was just really working on myself. I was this new version of myself. And so, I told her the whole story, and she said, “I think we need to talk about MeeDerby.” You can have it all as a woman, as a professional, as a mother; you can have it all. And I just was like, I never was told that. It was so validating to hear that. And so that's how I landed at MeeDerby.

So I asked her, I want to know what is an executive recruiter. I had an idea what it meant but at the time I was a regional manager, so I was overseeing two branches, managing recruiters and salespeople. I probably had 12 direct reports; six were recruiters, and six were sales. I had a lot of responsibility. Moving into an executive recruiter role was a big shift because it's 100% production. I would have to produce results, and there's nobody to manage. And so it was a hundred percent focus on me. So not only was I transitioning back into an individual contributor role, I was also learning how to work remotely.

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm also a very outgoing person, highly social. I thrive off other people and love being around people. And so I'm there in my home office that I had set up. I think that's really critical in remote work. You have to have a place that's dedicated in your home to work. And so kids are at school, husband goes off to his office, and then I'm there in my house and this quiet house all by myself, just set to work. It's like really being on your own. Because if I didn't have a one-on-one that I was conducting or a meeting that I was conducting in the branch or meeting with our president, I was off seeing a client. So, I was always somewhere, and my scenery was ever-changing. I could be in five different client offices in one day, and it was the polar opposite when I joined MeeDerby. I had to figure out a way to make it work.

I chose to because I saw the opportunity and I knew that out of the three areas, the three lines of business that we had at my old job, I loved direct hire the most because I loved closing deals, getting to the place where a client was saying, yes, we want to hire this person. No temporary engagement involved. Then also the financial reward.

Francis Larson:

Direct hire engagements can mean big deals.

Sue Jagan:

Potentially. And being able to control that. I really started to find my way because I realized that the way that I was going to be successful was to start collaborating with my colleagues. More than 80% of the placements that we do every year are partner deals. For example, if you worked for MeeDerby and you were an executive recruiter, you not only have your own clients, but you also have your own candidates. If I have a job and you have the perfect candidate, you can push them my way. It's a split deal. So, everybody wins.

Francis Larson:

Do you tend to be more sales-driven or more recruiting-focused as an Executive Recruiter at MeeDerby

Sue Jagan:

I would say that I tend to be more sales-focused. However, we are a very recruiting centric organization, and so we get a lot of referral candidates. We have candidates who have become clients who then refer other candidates back to us. So, it really has been a shift for me in that sense as well. But because I'm sales-focused, those sales skills allow me to be a very strong negotiator. I'm laser-focused, as are we all, on compensation, ensuring that the candidate is getting what they deserve, what they want, what they feel that they're worth, and all that. You have to be really good at the closing part of that. So all of those sales skills that I was really, really good at, because those often were referred to me by default as the senior leader in my old job, I was already a well-oiled machine for executive search.

Francis Larson:

Did you have to relearn your old recruiting skills from your previous job?

Sue Jagan:

Very much – at my old company--Keeper Staffing--we were only focused on administrative accounting and finance. We weren't into managerial positions. We weren't filling any C-level executives. At MeeDerby, I had to learn about the staffing ecosystem. I knew nothing about filling MSP jobs, VMS jobs, program managers, or onsite managers. It was a huge learning experience. I was not only learning about the individual jobs, I had to learn about the industry at large.

Francis Larson:

Staffing is more complicated than people think!

Sue Jagan:

It is. There are so many different avenues within the staffing ecosystem. It took me a year to really feel like I knew what I was doing. I started on business development manager roles that were in the 75K or higher range. It forced me to do a lot of interviewing. So I was honing my interviewing skills as well, but I began to gravitate towards the commercial staffing sector because I found the people within the commercial staffing sector to be more communicative, easier to communicate with, easier going. But we work in every industry, and for me, it really is about relationship-based selling. If I can build a good relationship with the client, I know that they're going to come back.

Francis Larson:

They're going to use you to hire the whole organization.

Sue Jagan:

Right. What I've also come to love is having an opportunity when a client comes to us and asks us to find someone like Mashell [Ascen’s Director of Payroll]; that's a unique position for us. However, I had a background in HR, so I felt very well-equipped to find someone like her. I just filled a VP of IT role for our client on the West Coast. We don't fill many of those types of positions, but those are industry needs. We call those kinds of positions “purple squirrels.” I filled a product manager last year for our client, MBO Partners, and she said, “Are you sure you want to work on this? Because we really need it.” I said, “Absolutely.” I wanted to learn about it. But I wanted something a little different on my desk versus just our core roles, which are director-level or above sales, operations, and recruiting.

Francis Larson:

So the variety at MeeDerby is what makes it interesting. There are enough specialties within staffing every once in a while. Our Director of Payroll, Mashell Fuller, that you found. She's been with us now that you found for almost two years. And she's been great and she's like a core to our team, coming from a very good firm.  What do you think are the most challenging parts of convincing candidates?

Sue Jagan:

There are a lot of hard parts. I think it depends on the situation. Over the last several years counteroffers were just running rampant. And the rule says, don't take the counteroffer, right? But people get dollar signs right in their eyes, and they find it hard to turn it down. Sometimes, we get turned down for that. It's not often, but that's a challenge.

Francis Larson:

What about moving the family across the country?

Sue Jagan:

Yes, relocations are very hard. You get the candidate on board. You ask them, do you have somebody that's going to be joining you? Have you had a conversation with your partner, spouse, whomever it is. And we've been assured that, yes, the person has been bought in. Then, the candidate flies out to wherever to meet the client and it's getting more real, then we get the call, can't do it. So that can be relocation positions can be really, really challenging. I would say confidential searches can be really challenging as well. For whatever reason, the client says they don't want us to publish it. That is challenging because then we're not getting an inflow of candidates. So we're sourcing, we're digging in LinkedIn. We're digging through our candidate pool to see if there's anybody existing in our database. It's kind of the old concept. No stone left unturned. Right? You're digging. And I think sometimes it's hard when we aren't successful, and we have to tell the client that we will suspend the search because we haven't been able to find somebody.

But what I found is that the clients respect you more when you actually say, we are challenged. We're not having success. Let's see if there's something else maybe we can do. Is there something that you would suggest? So get the client, buy-in, if you will. I personally have not had an experience where a client said we're never going to use you again because you didn't fill our job. They get it.

Francis Larson:

Do you think anyone who's a good at sales can do well in executive recruiting?

Sue Jagan:

I think it is a learnable thing. I think it's a matter of preference because when I interview a candidate, I will oftentimes say that if you had to choose one of three competencies, recruiting, operations, or sales, which is it going to be? A lot of sales candidates are, they're straight sales. They don't want to do anything else. They want to sell the deal and they want to turn it over to their ops team and recruiting team and have them fill it, and then they want to go back to the phone and meet with clients. But I would say that because executive search is such that you are dealing with both candidates and clients and that you're dealing with executives, I feel like it's like recruiting on steroids. You really do have to be in constant communication with the candidate, constant communication with the client. You're keeping a lot of balls in the air. I mean, that's staffing in general. That's the staffing industry.

Also, in executive search, there are longer deal cycles. Even though deals have sped up since the pandemic, it's still about three months to fill a position from the time that we take the order to the time that we start recruiting, and the candidate starts. But coming from temp staffing where there is the constant reward of filling an order. I just closed another deal. I have another start. Whereas an executive search, it's not like that.

Francis Larson:

Do you ever get discouraged with the longer cycles or if it doesn’t work out?

Sue Jagan:

When I first started, I did allow myself to feel those frustrations because you're not going to win every deal. What I realized was that I had to learn the metrics. We generally do 15 to 20 interviews per week of new candidates. That's just for one person. We're interviewing hundreds of candidates every single week. Then you want to have at least five to seven candidates that are out interviewing in front of clients every single week. We then want to have at least five to seven submittals out to clients each week. So that's you looking at a brand new resume for the job that I'm trying to fill for you. And then the number that I rely on is I need to have 12 to 15 people in different stages of the interview process at any given time, because only a third of those will close. If I have 15 people in play, I will only close a third of those. But if I close a third of those, I will hit my billing goals for the quarter. If I get a rejection, it is not as painful. I really just learned how to play the game.

So, I just kept and I continued to keep getting better at it, honing my craft, and having been promoted this year, I was promoted to Associate Director. Now I have a couple folks that are reporting to me. I have that leadership path back on, and I find it so rewarding, to help people that are really looking for guidance on how to now manage their relationships with their clients, how to handle situations with their candidates, and this as a leader, that when you're teaching someone something and you see those lights come on, the lights in their eyes where they got it, that is so incredibly rewarding to me. And so now I have that to continue working on in my trajectory at MeeDerby. It's been a great run.

Francis Larson:

What is one piece of advice you have for somebody getting into executive recruiting?

Sue Jagan:

I think believing in yourself and believing that you can really make a difference in somebody's life. That's really at the core of it for me. I do think that is really what has made me successful. I don't think about it as the transaction itself. That's the reward.

Francis Larson:

It's very meaningful.

Sue Jagan:

It's the meaningful part of it that gets me excited and the gratitude that just floats around from the candidates, from my colleagues, from leadership. It's so many different things. So I would say: be resilient, be confident. Focus on the mission of the organization, and you will be successful.

Francis Larson:

Well, your excitement is definitely palpable, and the meaning is overflowing. Thank you for speaking with us.

Sue Jagan:

You're so welcome.

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