Type of business: Professional recruiting firm
Connecticut employees: 60
Connecticut locations: 1
Headquarters: Stamford
Company contact: Kevin Fitzgerald, marketing manager
Top local executive: Alexis de Bretteville, CEO of the Americas
Founded: 1976
Michael Page is unique in the recruiting world. According to Kevin Fitzgerald, marketing manager for Michael Page, all of their recruiters are salaried, not commission-based. That creates a special opportunity, he said, to foster teamwork and long-term collaboration with their clients. Second, all recruiters must have previous work experience in their specialty areas.
“We don’t have any generalists,” said Fitzgerald. “If someone recruits in finance, they must have a finance background. If someone recruits in marketing, they must have a marketing background. This gives us a very unique insight into both the jobs we are looking to fill and the experience of the candidates we work with.”
This approach ties right in with Michael Page’s long-term approach to client and employee satisfaction, Fitzgerald added.
“We provide a much stronger match between a candidate and company, and this translates into a much stronger retention rate of employees placed in new roles,” he said.
With locations around the world, Fitzgerald said, maintaining a stable, satisfied work force is a primary focus in each office.
“We do this through a combination of things,” he said. “We provide an excellent salary and benefits package, including 401K matching, health benefits, commuting cost assistance, up to five weeks vacation, ample career training and development opportunities and more. We’re very generous in rewarding our employees for their accomplishments and we ensure they are recognized for their hard work. Our internal trainers and staff leaders are always working to ensure that employees know how their contributions are impacting the firm. And we tie it all together by instilling in our employees an adherence for our five company core values — passion, price, teamwork, resilience and fun.”
Past rewards for employees have included trips to Rio de Janeiro, Costa Rica, London and Paris and the Super Bowl, to name a few. Day trips have included helicopter trips around Manhattan, lunch at the 21 Club, golf and paintball excursions, and more.
Their formula seems to work. In addition to being named among the Hartford Business Journal’s Best Places to Work in Connecticut, Michael Page has garnered similar honors by being voted the number one Best Recruiting Firm to Work For in New York City for 2010 by Crain’s New York Business, and, for the fourth straight year, is ranked by Crain’s as the number one executive recruiting firm in New York.
“The best endorsement, however,” said Fitzgerald “comes from our employees.” In addition to the Best Places to Work survey, he said, Michael Page regularly surveys its employees, practices a strong open door policy between its directors, senior level executives and direct reports, and makes communication and team building skills a top priority everyday. The result is a highly career oriented, organically grown organization where promotion from within is the norm. A full 100 percent of senior directors achieved their current positions through company advancement, Fitzgerald said.
