Meet Mary Massad
Mary Massad is managing director of Recruiting Services for Administaff. Responsible for operational leadership for corporate and client recruiting programs, she is committed to developing a proven way to attract the best talent and, ultimately, ensure the highest possible level of customer satisfaction. When she joined Administaff in 1994, the company had 134 corporate employees and served 15,000 employees of small business clients – numbers that have grown to 1,800 and 120,000, respectively.
Q: What do you love about your job?
A: Recruiting is an opportunity to change somebody’s life. I try to convey that to our recruiters every chance I get. They have continual opportunities to make a difference for people. For any given individual, our recruiters might be the difference between it being difficult to put food on the table to all of a sudden having a plentiful life.
Additionally, because we are advocates for small business at Administaff, we realize how finding the right person can significantly change the success equation for our clients. Our clients trust us with this enormous responsibility, and we’ve made a big difference for them. That’s been truly rewarding for me.
Q: How has Administaff been good for you as a career woman?
A: As a mom, one of the hardest decisions is, “Do I work, or do I stay home?” It’s daunting to think that you may have to make decisions that take away from your family, but I’ve never experienced that here. I have two children, 20 and 13, who mean the world to me, and I’ve never had to choose between them and my career. At Administaff, from the top down, the expectation is that your family comes first because a work/life balance is essential.
Furthermore, when I was first promoted to the director level, I was given an opportunity to take part in a year-long mentoring program specifically geared toward women. Administaff invested thousands of dollars in this program for me and for others, so as an organization, Administaff is committed to helping women move forward in their careers.
Q: The sister to recruiting is retention. What is important for any organization in terms of keeping and growing its people?
A: Retention really starts on the recruiting side. You have to hire people who are qualified for the job, will be a good fit with the culture of the company and will work well within the framework of the department they join. Once they’re on board, it becomes a matter of revealing the opportunities they have to grow. For me, I was a young mother when I joined Administaff, without many of the typical credentials a company would look for in the roles I was offered, but people here believed in me. It paid off for both of us: I started as a recruiting specialist and am now the managing director of a multibillion-dollar corporation. When a company can promote that kind of nurturing culture, both the company and its individuals will flourish, and retention is assured.
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