Our Senior Vice President Southern Region, Mihaela L.Pla, Shares What She Experienced at the Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the SIA (Staffing Industry Analysts) annual Executive Forum North America for the first time alongside our President, Tim McPherson and SVP National Operations, Jim White. (Both will be sharing their insights in later blog posts so stay tuned!)

HSS is a proud corporate sponsor of SIA. This year’s conference was titled “The Next Generation of Staffing.”

The conference was held at the beautiful Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach and started with a great welcome reception where we had the opportunity to mingle with other leading staffing companies as well as vendors. As a top 100 staffing provider, top 20 industrial staffing firm, and a 2023 Best of Staffing award-winning company specializing in the Hospitality Industry, let’s just say we were in excellent company with many peers eager to meet with us.

The conference really got going the next day with SIA President Barry Asin’s speech recognizing everyone that worked hard to put the event together. That was followed by a phenomenal keynote address titled “Navigating What’s Next: Insights for the Future of Work” from Seth Mattison, Founder and CEO of FutureSight Labs. Seth’s message was not only engaging but was something that set the tone for the rest of the conference.

The message was simple: “LOVE.” Find the love in what you do, help others find the love in what they do, show love and compassion to the people that you work with as well as clients. It was a powerful message and it’s one that in hospitality we are no stranger to.

Throughout the conference, there were many exhibitors in more than 50 product and service categories. They covered a variety of products and services needed by staffing, from training and development to workers comp and everything in between. The booths were well decorated and staffed with friendly and knowledgeable professionals ready to answer questions.

There were a series of concurrent sessions where we were given the opportunity to pick and choose what to attend. Here were some of my favorites:

•             Making Technology Work for You: Getting the Most Out of Your Recruiting Tech Stack
•             Power Couple: When Staffing Meets Marketing
•             What’s Working in an Age of Extreme Recruiting?

Each session was engaging, informative and we all had the opportunity to ask questions and challenge some of the ideas. A common topic throughout the conference was Extreme Recruiting – it is the first time I heard of it, and it means exactly what you think it does! Doing everything possible to get the candidate’s attention, get them hired and placed before anyone else.

There were interesting discussions around ideas to attract and retain candidates. Mmany are things we are already doing, but besides great marketing, recruiting tools and systems it all came back to caring about people, not moving away from the human-to-human interaction, which is something I know HSS focuses on!

The second full day started with an amazing Keynote Session titled “Beyond Breaking Through: Building and Sustaining a Top Performing Staffing Firm.” The panel had CEOs, presidents and founders from different staffing companies sharing the way they have been able to build their company, things they wish they did differently and how they are preparing for the future.

Regarding preparation for the future, everyone emphasized the importance of training and development  – from recruiters all the way to top management – having a clear vision for the company and the ability to communicate that vision in a way that gets the entire team excited.

This has been an amazing experience for me, it has energized and given me ideas that I want to implement with my team. It is powerful to surround yourself with like minded people and share ideas. I am looking forward to the next one!