Stuart Ray: Hi, my name’s Stuart Ray. I’m the Executive Director at Guiding Light Mission. Guiding Light was started in 1929 as the West Fulton Ministry. In 1985, we then started doing overnight, residential care. It’s at that point in time that we actually get into substance recovery. We do lots of spiritual direction. We really encourage people to have a higher power. Some have family. They can apply for time off. We would drug test them when they come back; they have to be drug-free. They have to save their money with us. They all have chores. It’s gonna start sounding like home. They have to get up on time. So, we end up putting people back to work. And we now run a - what we call a Back To Work program. People show up, they’re expected to find work. They can find it through The Job Post if they like. Our mission statement is to help men understand their special gifts and talents, their God-given special gifts and talents, and make them contributing members of society.
Cory Smith: Hi, my name is Cory Smith and I’m the Business Development Manager for The Job Post. I’ve been working there since January of 2018. My number one goal in life is to help people. Being a part of The Job Post, which is a social enterprise of the Guiding Light, really positions me well to be able to help people. It’s in the DNA of the Guiding Light to really help people. They’ve been helping folks for over 90 years and it’s just an honor to be a part of this organization that has been such a strong pillar in our community, that has really been helpful to others. What we want to do is, we want to line up and work with organizations that have similar value systems that we have - which is to be productive in society and to partner with others to ensure that the work gets done. So we really place an emphasis on meeting each candidate at their place of need. The Guiding Light is very transformative in what they’ve done for individuals in the community. And The Job Post’s purpose is to reflect those same initiatives. That’s what we’re about.
Tricia VanderHaar: Hi, I’m Tricia and I am the HR Manager at Professional Metal Finishers. Cory came in and cold-called on our business and we really had a great dialogue with Cory. We were very excited about working with him and we signed up for The Job Post. The problems we were trying to solve was, from a hiring perspective, getting good talent in the door. From a community perspective, we were really hoping to do things that impact the West Michigan community and that includes working with people who otherwise might have a hard time finding employment.
Understanding that the profits The Job Post receives are filtered back into the community was important to us. The greatest benefits we received from The Job Post, in addition to the amazing talent that we’ve gotten in the door, is the ease of the customer service experience. Everyone who I’ve worked with is very accommodating, very friendly, and that’s very important from a hiring perspective to know and have that faith in who you’re working with. So, the process is I usually talk with Jeremy first and open up an order and I tell him what the job is, send him a job description. He may ask a few more questions to make sure we have the right fit. Cory comes in a couple times a year to do a walk-through, to make sure that they are meeting our staffing needs and that there’s nothing missing from the job descriptions when they put them out to the community. And everything from then on to follow-up to job coaching and billing and invoicing is really smooth. The people that we’ve gotten, they’re just really wonderful guys. We have two gentlemen here right now and they just do a really top-notch job in their work. They’re really conscientious people. They tend to share the mission of Professional Metal Finishers and the Guiding Light, which is really nice because, from a values perspective, we’re all on the same page. I would tell them that experience is, again, very seamless. It’s very user-friendly. It’s very friendly from an employer perspective, employee perspective, everything is just really accommodating.
So, The Job Post offers a lot of additional services to ensure that their employees are successful. And that is helping out with everything from transportation needs to job coaching to following up and saying ‘hey, I think this person has potential but we maybe need to work on these areas.’ Stephanie and Jeremy follow up with the employees and that’s very helpful from an HR perspective and it’s also very beneficial for productivity. So my family started this business with the hope of impacting the West Michigan community, to give chances for opportunity and employment to people who otherwise might not get those chances. The Job Post, because their partnership with Guiding Light, and working in more urban areas of Grand Rapids really touched on exactly what we were trying to do with our business. So it’s just been a perfect combination of our vision and their vision and our needs and the needs that they can fulfill for us.
We’ve used other temp services and we have had decent results. I would say the difference with The Job Post is it’s much more personal. So I can talk to Cory or I can talk to Jeremy and say ‘hey, this is exactly the type of person that this role needs.’ And they will find that person as opposed to just finding somebody to send us. And that really helps our productivity. When we met with Cory it just became very obvious that we had a shared love for humans and we wanted to help. And from the very onset of our partnership, we had the same values and we wanted to do and work towards the same things. I absolutely would recommend The Job Post for anyone, for hiring needs.
