Since she was 17, Megan Carmean has always had a job, so when she moved to Starkville from the Jackson area in February and found herself unemployed, it was hard to get used to.
Pretty soon, Carmean said, she began to go a little “stir crazy” at home.
But within just two weeks of seeking a job through Express Employment Professionals, a local staffing firm, Carmean found administrative and sales work in the area.
A couple months later, she was hired by Express full time to help job seekers through the application process and work on sales projects.
Carmean’s experiences make her uniquely qualified to extol the virtues of staffing firms like Express, and she does so in no uncertain terms.
“It is the best way,” she told The Dispatch on Tuesday.
And during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exploded in the U.S. toward the end of Carmean’s application process, Express and other staffing firms in the area have taken on a major responsibility for people looking for work.
“I have never seen something so beneficial for our times like right now in a staffing company,” Carmean said.
From standstill to surge
Unemployment in Mississippi shot up from 5.1 percent in March to 16.3 percent in April as furloughs and layoffs abounded in the pandemic’s first days.
Thousands of Golden Triangle residents were suddenly without jobs, and no one was hiring. Business at Express was at a standstill, Starkville franchise co-owner Anna Dodd said, as the temporary workers Express found for some of the manufacturing companies it works with were the first to be laid off when the industries scaled back or shut down operations.
At CPI Group in Columbus, president Mark Smith said hirings were down 70 percent for the first couple months of the pandemic. In addition to the general dearth of job openings, people shied away from seeking jobs for two principal reasons: They feared contracting the virus by coming to work, and they were able to pull in $600 per week from the federal government in unemployment benefits on top of more than $200 per week from the state.
“Those two motivators right there are pretty strong for a great deal of the workforce here in Mississippi,” Smith said.
Both firms stayed afloat with the help of federal loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, aimed at helping small businesses keep workers on their payroll during the pandemic. CPI received a loan in the $350,000 to $1 million range. Express received less than $150,000.
With time, things improved. Many of the large manufacturing companies in the area have rehired the workers they previously laid off. And since the $600 per week federal unemployment benefit expired July 31, both Smith and Dodd said clients have returned to their respective staffing firms in greater numbers.
The Starkville branch of Express added 89 new associates (job seekers) in July alone to make a total of 472 so far in 2020.
“We’re busier than we’ve been all year right now,” Dodd said.
She said job seekers know they can’t live on state unemployment payments forever and are trying to get back on the market before it’s too late.
“Our big thing is, ‘Do this, go back to work now before everyone is trying to get after the same job you’re getting,'” Dodd said.
Applicants’ references and background are checked before hiring, and they’re told to call Express once a week to verify they’re still looking.
Getting people to work
Once Express finds a match, they call to offer a job. Employees are initially on Express’ own payroll during a probation period that depends on the client company’s needs. Many use a 15-week range, but Dodd said some of her bigger clients extend the period to six months.
At the end of the probation period, if the client company is satisfied with an employee’s production, they can hire them directly to their own payroll. But that doesn’t always happen, and Dodd said Express does a lot of job coaching for applicants unsure why they weren’t offered a permanent position.
“If it’s a coachable situation where they just didn’t know, that can be resolved, and we try to help them,” Dodd said.
When a job seeker fills out an application with CPI they begin a process that includes testing on skills and interests, an interview and — if successful — an orientation specific to their new employer that includes information such as safety procedures and how to report their time worked, Smith said.
Employees are initially on CPI’s own payroll during a probation period that depends on the client company’s needs. Three months is common, Smith said, but it can be longer. More than half the time, Smith said, client companies eventually transition placed employees to their own payroll.
The agency’s typical pay range is between $8 and $14 per hour, but it’s a “moving target,” Smith said. As recently as Wednesday morning, CPI filled an order for 25 workers at $13 per hour at a Golden Triangle company.
There are what Smith described as “white-collar” jobs — including human resources, accounting and finance — available, too, though they typically require a four-year college degree and reasonable experience.
Express has a similar situation, with jobs that offer an average rate of pay of about $13 per hour, Dodd said. On the high end, it currently has an opening for an environmental health and safety manager that pays between $80,000 and $120,000 a year.
Temporary, full-time employment both available
According to Carmean, employment seekers who contact her at Express fall into two camps. Some are very worried — almost desperate — about finding employment. Others have been more fortunate, able to stay at home with their families for a while.
Dodd said staffing firms — like Express and CPI — offer opportunities for people in both categories. Express has had several openings for management roles, and not just low-level ones. Those positions are direct, full-time hires, she said.
But opportunities remain available for those looking for a job in the immediate term, too. Dodd said she’s seen people start working for an Express client just two days after an interview. It’s a rapid turnaround, she said.
“We’re a great way to get people to work quickly, to try them out and make sure they’re good employees and that they come to work,” Dodd said.
Smith also said the opportunity for CPI clients to see how employees fit in is important, as is the ability to adjust on the fly if the need arises.
“We offer the opportunity for our client organizations to take on additional personnel without having to necessarily commit to them until a number of things have been accomplished,” Smith said.
Currently, industrial work — 80 percent of Dodd’s clientele at Express — is most widely available at CPI, where Smith said there are “dozens and dozens” of openings. CPI serves eight counties in Mississippi and west Alabama, but Smith said the Golden Triangle area has placed a unique emphasis on industrialization.
“Really, across the board, I would say that the Golden Triangle has been probably the most robust for us since COVID,” Smith said.
With the recent uptick in business, Smith stressed that CPI has renewed its efforts to get the word out about its open positions.
“We’re trying everything we can to advertise — social media, newsletters, everything you can imagine in order to impact the potential workforce as much as we can,” he said.
Express is doing the same, Dodd said, touting the ExpressJobs app that allows employees to access their paychecks and even clock in and out.
Carmean, who walks new Express customers through the application process, said she’s happy for both the employee and the client company any time a match is made. After all, it harks back to her own experience not so long ago.
“It pays off in the end,” she said. “It really does.”
She calls herself the “middleman” in the process, saying the role of Express and its fellow staffing firms is to calm the financial anxieties wrought by the pandemic — something she knows won’t always be easy.
“We just don’t know what the times are going to bring,” Carmean said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 31 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
