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Kelly Services Company Profile, News, Rankings | Fortune

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Kelly Services

kelly services

Carl, everybody is talking these days about leadership, whether it's in politics or in business, in sports. You're in the business of spotting talent. What would you say are the key characteristics that make a great leader? Authentic, engaged, and risk taking. You need to be who you really are, your people need to see it, you need to cry when it's time to cry. You need to show your emotions and be as authentic as you can be, you need to be engaged. You need to be part of the team not to stand apart from the team. Have our expectations of what makes a great leader change? What do people wanna see in a leader? There is a lot more today about vision. As I talk especially with the millennials, and I talk to college campuses, they want to know much more about what I believe. What's the vision of the company? What's our role in society? When I started the business I never got asked that. It was about how much economic opportunity? How fast can I be promoted? How much money can I make. Today much more, what's your role in society? What are you doing for people. What's the vision of Kelly's place in the world? You've been working at Kelly Services for more than 20 years. The last ten of them as the CEO. What are the important leadership lessons that you've learned? ya know one of the things that I learned most was that a plan is a plan but its not to be blindly followed. I have seen many leaders fail because they all agreed on a plan and they started marching down the plan, circumstances changed, but this was the plan. And I think that it's become very important for leaders to say, we tried it, we failed. This is what we learned from the failure. And one of my favorite interview questions, when I'm interviewing the next talent is, tell me what your biggest failure has been. They always want to talk about their biggest successes, but I want to know, what did they learn? Why do they think they failed? What happened? People who work for you describe you as a quote, really normal guy. They say that you eat in the company cafeteria everyday, and that you're easy to talk to. How would you describe your leadership style? Approachable. I want to talk. I want to know what they're thinking, what they're feeling. That means not just approachable to the ones who you sit with in the cafeteria, but you've got to be approachable to everybody. And social media has really made that possible. I understand that you have a reputation for being a very good mentor, and you enjoy mentoring. Tell us what is your key leadership message, that you tell your mentees. Take risk. Don't take the safe route. Safe route people Peter Principle out or move up halfway up the chain and then they fail. The people who I have seen who have had the worse business careers are the ones who had the most developed plan For what their life was going to be. Take risk. If you're not scared it's probably not worth doing. You've had a very varied career and I'm sure you've had a lot of mentors along the way. As you look back on that, what's the best leadership advice that you ever got and why'd it have a lasting impression on you? I think the best leadership exercise I got was to ask, not to assume and taken the the time to say let's ask some people, let's make certain that we know. Using my old scientific background, let's test the hypothesis before we move forward Turned out to be the best advice. I got so many mistakes. So many ways I could have been incredibly stupid as opposed to just lightly stupid. You know, as I moved forward. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Kelly Services CEO Shares His Secret to Success 

Leadership

Carl Camden doesn’t believe in taking “the safe route.”


Carl, how would you describe the US job market right now? The US job market is still good, but it is less good than it was. So, I talk about the rate of increase is decreasing. So, we're in a rough spot here and we don't know which way it's going to go. You know the definition by many economists of full employment is when the unemployment rate gets to around 5 %. Well right now our unemployment rate in the U. S. is 4. 9 %. So how much lower is this gonna go? Historically 4 % is a level at which, when you get to close to that. That wage inflation gets very high. That's what causes the fed reserve and federal reserve and other policy makers to start raising interest rates to cool down the economy. Four and a half, lower, are the trigger points. Speaking of raising interest rates, there's a lot of debate about whether the feds should start raising interest rates now or wait that the economy is too weak. When, as a job expert, Where do you stand in all of that? What do you think? I'd like to see the work force participation rate increase a little bit more before they begin tapping on the breaks. But in general, you want to encourage people to return to the workforce, which means you want an abundance of jobs When you raise the interest rates, that begins to tap on the breaks of economic growth and job creation. What would it mean for your company Kelly Services if interest rates went up? Companies they put together a forward plans, how much investment are they going to make in their own business as interest rates begin to rise they decrease The amount of forward looking investment, and that decreases the need for project work. Because that type of forward investment is usually project work, not as much permanent employee work. Is this a good time for your business? The temporary worker business? We are in a very modest growth. Phase, no rapid growth no rapid declines. And so it means the economy is basically moving along at a slow but steady growth. But we hear from many companies that they can't find workers, that there is a shortage. What do you see? Two groups of shortages. One is for the most highly skilled workers. The scientist The engineers and the technology people, especially, very short demand. Secondly, there is a need for people to work in the services industries at fairly low wages. And often, just barely above minimum wage but below $ 10 an hour in the United States. And there's a shortage of people willing to do that work. So at the highest level We don't have enough credentialed workers. And at the lower income levels not enough people re- engaging with the workforce employment and taking those positions. Uh- huh. We hear about this kind of temporary workers, what we call now the gig economy. Is this a fad or, Or is this a serious trend where people are working at companies maybe not getting the benefits and holding down more than one job? The idea of employment as a dominant work model only has been around for about 80 years. Since the great depression. It was the answer to the great depression and much of the world. Before that, we were a nation of craftsmen, tradesman, people who worked for themselves. We're returning rapidly to that as a dominant model around the world, as is how people will And want to work. The new name is the gig economy. But the old name was self entrepreneurs. People who worked for themselves. And we're returning back to that type of a world. Is it going to, is this gig economy trend going to be good for the economy? I think it's going to be great for the economy. Why is that? I think that it allows greater productivity for one. What happens is that when you deal with a core of full time employees, they're only productive when you have a sufficient amount of the task that they're best at for them to do. But in the greater economy you're concentrating on what you do well What you do better than anybody else can do and what makes you happy. You have a happier workforce and a more productive workforce. It's just harder for managers to manage. Managers like simple things. The [ UNKNOWN ] Economy is not simple.

Kelly Services CEO Cautions the Fed About Raising Interest Rates

Kelly Services

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