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Welcome back to #WeAreGreenKey, where we shine a spotlight on our powerhouse recruiting team.  

We recently met up with Meryl Schoen, Executive Director of the Professional Services team at Green Key. Meryl started her career at our firm 15 years ago, with 13 years of staffing and recruiting under her belt. As a seasoned staffing industry professional, she now works closely with the professional services and HR team focusing on both temporary and permanent business development.

How and when did you get started in your recruiting career?

Before becoming a recruiter, I worked in the fashion industry as a fashion buyer for a couple years and decided I wanted to change careers. So, I attended a couple of seminars on recruiting and working for staffing firms and decided that recruiting would be a good next step. Now I’ve been in the staffing and recruiting industry for close to 28 years.

What aspect of being a recruiter do you find the most rewarding?

Since I’ve transitioned from recruiting contract employees to the business development side of the business, the most rewarding aspect of my work is bringing in a new client that has activity across different platforms.

How do you ensure the successful onboarding and integration of temporary professionals into client organizations?

In terms of the successful onboarding and integration of temporary professionals into client organizations, I rely as much information in terms of the work environment, the day-to-day of the position, any information they need for the first day, start details as well as making sure they have all their payroll information and that they understand the process as far as background checks are concerned to the candidate recruiters as I no longer speak directly to candidates.

Can you describe your approach to building and maintaining relationships with clients?

To build and maintain relationships with clients I try to approach it from a personal aspect. Firstly, I’ll introduce myself but then I very quickly segway into either current events or something that I’ve read that’s going on with their particular company or their particular industry or I’ll market something that Green Key is working on that they may have a network for on their end. So, I’ll do the basic introduction in terms of who I am and the company that I work for but then I segway very, very quickly into another topic that would be of interest to them.

How do you foster a positive and supportive team culture within the team?

I work with the recruiters to acclimate them to my accounts, and clients. I refer business to different recruiters in order to help strengthen the relationship that Green Key has with clients and overall I work with the business development team sharing marketing techniques and any contacts and resources I have any resources to increase their presence within a company or give them ideas in terms of what types of companies to go for depending on what I’m hearing from my clients and what I’ve seen from the business that has been coming in.

2024 marks 20 years of Green Key, how would you describe your experience since starting your career with the Professional Support team?

Well, when I joined Green Key, we were a small group of about 50 people. We had an accounting division, a healthcare division and an office support team which is the team I started working on.  At that time, there were only about four people on the office support temp team and my main goal was to bring in clients who used temps because Green Key had just started their temp division two years prior to me joining. So, my main focus was to bring in and develop clients that would utilize us for temp services and then from there I would cross sell into the various divisions that Green Key had added on through the years. Now we’re a much more diverse organization in terms of the industries that we service and the types of roles that we can fill as well as geographically which is great because it interests me to see what kind of recruiting is being done in different parts of the country and it also helps with business development to be able to share that kind of market intel when I’m calling into new clients that may or may not have a presence across the US.

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