BY SONYA MELOFF
Sorry in advance if I am overwhelming you with my prolific blogging. One in 2007, another in 2009, and now a 3rd in 2011! I really must take a nap after this. Hey, give me a break! It takes a lot of time and energy to run a small and growing company. A lot more than I could have ever imagined. Which brings me to the following question: are we still considered a small company? It feels small to me. Very intimate and entrepreneurial. We only have 14 Sales Talent Agents, which is about 30,986 less than CGI (one of our newest clients). In fact, we are smaller in employee-count than almost all of our clients at this point! Most of the team are long-time friends, and all of them have become people I love, root-for and trust. But we are exactly the size we want to be right now. Controlled growth – the best thing Sonya and I have learnt on this journey (Sonya clearly has not adopted this strategy in her home life: she is currently pregnant for the 3rd time since we started the company – at least this time she had the foresight to have a girl!).
We have carefully built our team over the last 4 years, and have found a formula that works: only hire people we truly believe fit our long-term goals, enhance our culture, and who we absolutely have to work with.
I think we all like being considered a small company, but we are hardly a start-up anymore. Now in our 5th year, we are clearly the “go-to” sales recruitment company in Canada. Our revenues are rising at a very healthy rate each and every year, our client list is insane, and it feels like every second sales person we interview these days wants to join us! It is a far cry from our first 2 years when we were all swagger and hustle.
So maybe we continue to wear the “small company” uniform for a couple more years: I like the way it looks on us.