Once Just a Temp Agency, Kelly Services Now Provides Entire Talent Supply Chain

By Jay Hipps, Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Kelly Services is currently celebrating their 70th year in business, and if there is a single theme to that impressive history, it is growth - both in size and in scope of services.

"Today we're delivering talent in more than 100 different countries. We connect with and employ over 600,000 people on an annual basis, and that number continues to grow," says Tami Troxell, Kelly's vice president for Northern California, Oregon, and Seattle. "We're still innovating. It's not just temporary staffing any longer - today we're really known as a very strong strategic workforce solutions organization. It's really about the whole talent supply chain and the solutions behind that, which entails everything from contract work to direct hire placements."

One of Kelly Services' strengths is in the organization's ability to form a symbiotic relationship with its clients, where the cooperative working environment provides the impetus for growth and evolution for both parties.

"Our customers really help us move forward with them in a very strategic way. We learn from our clients; we're able to share best practices from one client to another," says Troxell. "One area would be in the space of making investments and working with our clients to help them really grow their business in what's known as the MSP space, the master services provider, where we're going in with the whole supply chain and managing all of that for an organization. It can all be under one umbrella. We're managing the traditional temporary staff and the direct hire placements, but we are also managing them on a global perspective which could include 1099 management, internship programs, and those types of things."

Another area of specialization for the company is in science staffing. "Kelly today is the number one science staffing company in the world and the number one science organization in the U.S.," Troxell says. "They actually are the team that sits in Pleasanton right now. We work with a number of companies in the Pleasanton area, very large pharmaceutical and biomed-type companies. All of our recruiters are actually scientists - they went to school to become scientists, they've worked in labs, and now they have transitioned over into the staffing world. It adds a lot of credibility when they're working with our clients - they really enjoy that. We fill everything from general lab positions to chemists and things like that."

Kelly's Hacienda office, which is currently staffed by about 20 employees and is in the process of expanding, also serves as a base for their commercial team. "Our commercial team is managing companies all over the East Bay and staffing anything from administrative to light industrial to manufacturing and call center positions," Troxell says. "We also have some of our experts there who are recruiting in the I.T. realm. It's a very big office and growing. We service thousands of companies here in Northern California and we employ, just in the Bay Area alone, over 4,500 people on a weekly basis."

Kelly's Hacienda offices are located at 5990 Stoneridge Drive. Kelly Scientific Resources and Kelly Temporary Services may be reached at (925) 460-8370 and (925) 460-6113, respectively. The company's web address is www.kellyservices.com.

Photo: Kelly Services staff

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