SITE Staffing Recruiter Profile Series
Angel DeQuardo is a skilled recruiter who helps the SITE Staffing candidates find the perfect jobs for them.
What’s a typical “day in the life” for you as a recruiter?
Angel: Well, everyday is a little bit different, so that’s probably one of the perks of the job. Typically our day is used for sourcing – calls to candidates that are applying to ads we place online – which includes doing some targeted searches for specific candidates; we often have a wide variety of skilled positions that we’re placing with different clients.
You have to be able to switch gears quickly when you get a client that all of a sudden needs five people to start tomorrow in a warehouse order picker position, or sometimes we’ll have to switch just as quickly to find a manufacturing role for packaging bottles – it’s all about flexibility and your ability to be a chameleon, blending into the background to accommodate the needs of both employee and client, really juggling both sides to keep everybody happy.
We’re not just screening employees for the clients, we’re screening them to find the best possible fit for the employee as well – it’s always a little bit of both. In a lot of ways we’re just a go-between for all these different kinds of relationships. It’s not all just phone, email, and placing ads online either – there’s a lot of face-to-face with people, the kind of person-to-person contact that is essential and keeps things interesting.
I had never worked with an agency before working with SITE Staffing; I just knew I wanted to do recruiting full-time because in my past employment I’d done some recruiting. It was all direct hire though, so the world of staffing and recruiting and working with more than one client was totally new to me. I really love it because it does allow for that diversity: all walks of life walk through our door, everyone from a young college student, who I placed in his first job this summer, to someone who is extremely experienced in the bookkeeping and accounts payable realm where they’ve worked for years – it’s really rewarding to know that whatever path people are on, we can help them through it.
How did you get into this field/what appeals to you about it?
Angel: I was in restaurant operations/training and development for ten years before coming to SITE Staffing, working for the same company during that time, starting with crew and going through all the different levels of management. When it came time to move back home to Milwaukee to be with family again, after spending three years in Toronto, we had just had our first child, and I realized I needed a set schedule that would allow me to balance work and family life.
I still really enjoyed the social interactions of my last job and I loved the sales aspect of recruiting, where you have to represent a brand and pitch all kinds of different jobs, so I wanted to find something that allowed for a family life but maintained the energy and excitement recruiting brings to the table. SITE gave me a shot and I’ve been here ever since!
What do you love about working for SITE in particular?
Angel: We have a really good team in the office. I like that each of my coworkers comes from a different background so we all contribute something unique, but I also have great clients that I work with. It hasn’t all been peaches and cream of course – I’ve had to learn things on the fly as I’ve grown and developed in this position. But the manager of our West Allis branch, Liza, is definitely someone who cares about us doing right by the client as well as the candidates, while still having SITE’s best interests in mind since we’re representing all these different relationships with SITE’s name.
So, overall, I love the diversity within our office and among our clients. No one day is the same as the next, every day is something new, and it’s always a fun challenge.
How do you decide which recruiters work with different clients?
Angel: This is something that isn’t always just in management’s hands; everyone works together to figure out what makes sense for Site, the recruiters, and the clients, similar to how we work with candidates. If there’s a recruiter that’s handling a heavier workload with warehouse openings, for example, and there’s a new client looking for those jobs, that recruiter might have the most connections to fill those jobs.
But at the same time, we try to keep our plates diverse and not to get too specialized, since we share each other’s orders and work together to fill all kinds of positions – we’re not going to pass clients back and forth very often, but when a new client becomes available it’s always up for discussion. Like everything else, it’s all about negotiating relationships.
What do you like to do in your free time? Hobbies? Family?
Angel: I have a three-year-old and a seven-month-old now, so it’s definitely family over anything at this point! When I’m not at work I’m at home or out and about at playgrounds, because we’re soaking up every last little bit of summer, including a lot of camping and outdoorsy stuff. Once fall and winter come along it’s all about cooking in the warm kitchen and staying inside, haha. 🙂
Interested in meeting with a SITE Staffing recruiter? You can tell us a bit about yourself here!