Grand Rapids recruiting firm's growth in furniture industry puts more jobs on the table

Grand Rapids-based Palladian West recruits candidates for high-level positions in the West Michigan office furniture industry, and the company's unprecedented growth in the last 12 months has created a need to fill five recruiter/market research positions, with more openings on the way.

"We specialize in the office furniture industry, placing people in high level positions in sales and marketing, procurement, product design engineering, operations management, manufacturing engineering and finance," says owner Shelley Crooks. "We launched in January 2011, and I was planning to keep it small with just two people, but it just took off and now we have seven people."

Three of those employees joined the company in the last couple of months, Crooks says. They fill newly created market researcher, recruiter and data entry positions -- jobs created to keep up with the company's growth.

With NeoCon coming in June, Crooks says she'll need at least one more recruiter and another market researcher to allow the company enough flexibility to continue its personal, one-on-one relationships with the candidates they place in jobs.

"Once we place a candidate, we tell them 'We're your friends for life,'" Crooks says. "We meet with them, take them out to lunch, stay in contact. So, we [need to find] someone who's willing to have that personal relationship, who is very organized, able to make a lot of calls in a day and who can sift through a lot of potential candidates to get to the best."

For more information about the company and services it provides, click here.

Source: Shelley Crooks, Palladian West; Andrea Snyder, STUDIO3TWENTY
Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor