By guest writer Owen Wiese
We were at the Band Concert where the Junior High and High School bands presented their fall concert. Brett Williams and his wife Lisa Vande Berg took seats next to us. They were at the concert to see and listen to their daughter Jordyn play the saxophone in the program. Although I had seen Brett in church many times, (Lisa is completing two successful years as Congregation President) I had not spoken with him.
During intermission I asked him what he did for work. He replied that he is a Headhunter.
Although I had heard of Headhunters, I did not know what they do. I met with Brett and found that he works for a $30 million-dollar nationwide company, GPAC, that finds employees to fill jobs in many different areas. Because most jobs that are filled are for individuals or small numbers of people, GPAC specializes on those hires.
Brett had previously worked for Service Master, but he has worked for GPAC for thirteen years now and loves his job.
The first year of work was the most difficult because he had to learn how to evaluate and judge individuals who were applying for jobs. Their work records must be reviewed, how many years had they been in a previous job, why were they changing jobs, and how the person impresses the evaluator. Changing jobs very frequently is not a good sign.
Working for GPAC is strictly a commission job. If a person takes a job as a result of the work done by the CPAC representative, the hiring company pays GPAC a sum equal to one third of the amount of salary the worker receives. The GPAC representative receives a portion of that amount. An example of this would have the hiring Company pay the worker $60,000. The Company would then pay GPAC $20,000 and the representative would be paid a portion of that.
It is obviously very important that a GPAC representative (Brett) be very good at evaluating a worker to make sure they are a good fit for the hiring company and would benefit that company.
Brett laid out a scenario involving a company (not in Garretson) that used sprayer equipment to apply chemicals on farm fields. The sprayers are very expensive, and the chemicals they apply are expensive. They must be applied carefully, following specific directions. It would not be advisable to hire someone to operate a sprayer who just comes in the door and claims to be qualified. Another way to hire a person and be sure they are qualified would be to engage GPAC to select a person who is qualified based
on their screening and researching of their work record.
There are many companies throughout the U.S. who routinely hire one worker or workers in small numbers and can do so with the assurance they will have good workers if they use the hiring method outlined above. Brett Williams has a very good future to accompany his past good record.
