Staff Insight is celebrating 10 years in the staffing industry with a special blog series including company history, career advice, and how to succeed as a small business. In this first section of 10 questions that are often posed to our team, co-founder Rich Bono shares more about his experience in the staffing industry and how the business has adapted to changes over the years. ​ How did you get in to the staffing industry? Like most of us doing this, I certainly didn't go to school for it. It was the late 90's and the explosion of the internet and dot com's. I was in a managerial role at a call center and just out of college a couple years. I wanted to make a career change and enjoyed interviewing potential employees and being part of the hiring process in that position. At the time recruiting was "the field to be in" because of what I consider to be an industrial revolution (The Internet). I posted my resume on what was then a very new job board site called Monster.com with the title "Sales guy dying to recruit!" and had well over 100 responses in less than 24 hours from staffing agencies and companies wanting to train recruiters. I’ll never forget that number of responses in such a short time. It was not hard to get a recruiting job in those days. Getting the right recruiting job proved to be a bit more challenging, but I will save that for another blog entry. How did you meet your business partner, Lori Prickett? In 2002 I was hired at a small staffing agency in Boston's Financial District. Lori was a manager there and I worked in the division she oversaw. We worked side by side for the next 7 years until that agency closed its doors. We already had formed a partnership if you will (just both of us working for someone else), and a mutual trust and respect. When the timing was right and opportunity presented itself, opening our own agency together seemed like a natural progression. It was a horrible time in the economy (2009) and many of our friends, colleagues and family members thought we were crazy. On the flip side, we had some great supporters, a bit of good luck, and willingness to work exceptionally hard. (Working even harder during the harder times, I always say, is what helped us succeed). Lori is my partner now, but I still consider her one of my mentors in my early years in staffing. When I started working with her and my former employers, it was an immense time of growth for me professionally that I look back on as really a great time with great people. What has changed in the industry that you could not have predicted in those early years? I never would have predicted the impact of social media and the continuance of advanced technology to this extent. Those early years for me were the days of it being a phone driven business. Emails were a secondary form of communication and marketing and advertising were all just starting to be implemented on line rather than print. Now what you can accomplish in so much less time and off site due to technology really is amazing. Social Media allows your brand to reach numbers that were just not at all possible when I started. That kind of change is really exciting to have witnessed and benefited from professionally, but it also concerns me at the same time. I focus every day on not compromising the quality of what we do, as that can decrease by getting caught up in the speed technology grants us. At the end of the day my business is a "people" business and making a human connection is what helps determine what will work in any talent and job search. We have worked hard to let the world of Social Media and CRM enhance what we do rather than replace it. Keep an eye out for more career tips and advice in our next blog post in the anniversary series.