On May 9th, OWL welcomed Ms. Judy Bishop as guest speaker for the first in-person Lunch Meeting of 2022. Ms. Bishop is owner, President and CEO of Bishop & Company, an award-winning recruiting and staffing firm. She has been named by Pacific Business News as one of the Top 25 Women Owned Businesses for the past 15 years, was honored as an Industry Leader by Pacific Edge Magazine, and named Outstanding Woman of the Year by the Organization of Women Leaders. She was also honored by the US SBA as the State of Hawaii Women in Business Champion, and was a finalist in the Hawaii Business Magazine’s Business Leader of the Year in their Best in Small Business category. Her firm, Bishop & Company, has consistently been named as one of the Top 3 Executive Search firms in Hawaii and as a top employer of women. Bishop & Company is also consistently one of Hawaii Business Magazine’s Top 250 largest companies.
Judy shared that when she was six weeks old, her mother left her in the back seat of a doctor’s car. The doctor’s wife had gone to play bridge that morning and when she returned to the car, she discovered baby Judy in the back seat. The doctor and his wife took Judy to the hospital, which was run by Catholic Nuns. The Nuns knew a woman who was looking to adopt a baby and that woman became Judy’s mother.
Judy grew up as an only child and her adoptive parents were loving and supportive. She attended Catholic School and for high school she was sent to an all-girls convent boarding school, which was over a hundred years old. The Nuns were from France and the original Nuns had made the bricks for the school all by hand.
After high school, Judy attended a public college and graduated with a degree in liberal arts. After college she was hired to work at a staffing company, helping organizations find talent. After a few years, one of her clients offered to help her set up her own business, which she did. After three years in business, she was approached by an international staffing company who sought her interest in becoming a franchise owner of their company. She said yes to this opportunity and after a few years expanded her business by opening a retail store, an art gallery and a child care center.
Everything was going well until one day the oil companies in her town decided to quit drilling. Within a few weeks the effects on the local economy became apparent. In 1983, this town went from having the most millionaires per capital to becoming the bankruptcy capital. At this point Judy sold her child care business, bankrupted the retail store, negotiated for someone to take over the lease for the art gallery and sold her staffing company back to the franchise organization.
After selling her business, she decided to leave and go to Fiji with her boyfriend. Judy stayed in Fiji for a few months then accompanied her boyfriend to Thailand, where he was hired to assist with the production of a commercial for Singapore Airlines. Judy was hired to supervise the cooks for the film crew. The Thai cooks didn’t speak English and didn’t know how to cook American food, and Judy didn’t know how to cook or speak Thai, but she made it work!
After the production was over, Judy’s boyfriend was hired as a Captain for a boat doing charters between Fiji and Tonga. Judy stayed in Tonga and worked in a small gift shop. She decided to approach the staffing company that she used to work for, Kelly Services International, and offered to conduct a feasibility study on the pros and cons of expanding in Australia. Judy was hired to conduct the feasibility study and moved to Australia. While there, she worked for several companies simultaneously: a rental car company that rented cars for people going to Europe, a boat mooring and repair company and a company that supplied fragrances for soap and detergent manufacturers.
In 1985, she decided to go back to America and approached the international staffing company again and was offered a job to manage their office in Hawaii. Judy grew the business and after 4 years in Hawaii, her company asked her start up their business in Australia. After two years, her company sent her to New Zealand to open up a business there and then later to Singapore to conduct a feasibility study. Judy then decided to move back to Hawaii where she worked for another staffing company. She later moved to Houston for five years to be closer to her mother. Her former boss in Honolulu contacted her and asked her to return to Hawaii, where she grew the company for five years and eventually bought him out and changed the name to Bishop & Company. She bought the company when she was 60 years old and said “It’s never too late ladies!” Now she owns a home in Lanikai and another home in Guatemala on a beautiful lake. She is still with her same boyfriend and shared that “Life is good” and “It’s been quite a ride.”
Bishop & Company recruits for all levels from entry level to Executive positions. Judy graciously shared the following recruiting tips:
· When you recruit in Hawaii it is the same all over the world.
· Search far and wide
· Screen very carefully – you must know exactly what skills you need
· Offer competitive wages and benefits
· Make sure you have good recruiters. Recruiting is a sales role. Recruiters sell the company, the position and the future within the organization. It’s about attracting candidates and making the organization appealing.
· Times have changed – recruiting is about admitting more candidates to widen the labor pool
· Consider dropping requirements for a college degree, five years of experience – Education and experience do not guarantee success.
· Consider dropping requirements for no criminal record and relaxing the drug testing policy
· Consider rehiring past employees
· Adjust job descriptions to reconsider expectations -Make sure expectations are presented clearly and early during the interview process
· Major employers make offers during the first interviews – consider shortening the hiring process
· Do not low ball offers. People have multiple offers now. It’s a candidate/job seekers market
· Reconsider requirement of a 40-hour work week
· Rethink expectations that you must work on site. A March report stated that 50% of Hawaii workers work remotely.
· Do not allow supervisors, managers or executives to interview candidates unless they are trained to screen in and make competitive offers.
· Use regular sales and business development teams to recruit employees. Make every employee feel like a recruiter
· Ask clients, customers and vendors for referrals for candidates. Ask employees to refer their family and friends.
· Build your company’s reputation internally with current staff. Then promote the company externally with a great reputation for products, services and as a great place to work
· Consider hiring internally when looking for candidates.
· Utilize social media to not only promote products and services, but to also promote jobs
· Consider analyzing your company’s compensation company wide and adjust it to make it insanely competitive. Do it now. Compensation analysis is important otherwise you will have an imbalance of equity with new hires demanding more money than your current employees.
· Improve training and development departments and courses so that you can hire people with innate intuitive ability who can be readily trained - even people you may not have considered previously
· Retention programs must be stronger than ever. It is easier to keep good people than it is to replace them
· Train hiring managers to interview and retain their staff.
· Retention typically includes attention, recognition, reward, competitive compensation, generous benefits, training, promotional opportunities, clarity about their roles, clarity about performance expectations, and frequent mini performance reviews
· Retention also includes shadowing someone above you, offering mentorships, and paying for employees to have professional memberships.
Thank you, Judy, for sharing your fabulous story and for the excellent tips on recruiting and retention!