Fast-growing, women-owned search firm broadens its scope
Center City's Juno Search Partners has added accounting and finance, IT-placement services for clients.
VICKI SACK, 43, of Ardmore, and Mikal Harden, 38, of Kensington, co-own Juno Search Partners in Center City. The fast-growing firm provides placement services for human resources, administrative support, accounting and finance, and IT professionals to companies in the region. I spoke with Sack.
Q: How'd you come up with the idea for the biz?
A: Mikal and I both worked in the recruiting business, competed against each other and had some of the same clients and [job] candidates. We thought if we opened a business we could be successful. We started Juno in 2010 on a shoestring budget, worked out of home offices, met clients at their offices and candidates at coffee shops.
Q: What's the biz do?
A: When we started, we only did direct hire: A client paid us a fee to find someone to be placed at the company. But a growing demand for contract recruiters and temporary workers made sense for us to develop that. The temps we place are people covering a maternity leave at a professional level or more temp-to-perm, where a client will have a permanent job opening up but wants to check somebody out before hiring. In spring of 2013 we launched an accounting-and-finance division, and last month we started an IT division.
Q: Which division contributes the most revenue?
A: About 80 percent is still in HR/administrative support. A lot of our administrative placements are executive assistants to CEOs or CFOs. In HR it's compensation and benefits specialists and employee relations.
Q: The biz model?
A: With a permanent direct hire, a client pays us a percentage fee - typically 20 to 25 percent - of the person's annual salary. On the temp side, we have a temporary employee whom we pay to work at our client and we invoice the client weekly to cover all expenses plus a profit.
Q: Some clients?
A: We work a lot with Aramark, Catholic [Health] East, Hay Group and a lot of small-to-midsize investment firms.
Q: What's been the biggest challenge growing the biz?
A: Making decisions on hiring. We've always hired opportunistically. We struggle with the balance of running the business and being the face of Juno, which is a question of time.
Q: How big a biz is this?
A: We have eight full-time employees, and at any given time 30 to 35 temp contract employees working on-site with clients. Our revenue last year was about $1.8 million, and we'll be closer to $3 million this year.
Q: What's next?
A: The focus is going to be to drive the newer divisions, accounting and finance, and IT, so that we'll be more diversified and can offer clients more value.
Online: ph.ly/YourBusiness