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Press
Recruiter stuck with it, succeeded
June 26, 2003
BY DAVE LUNDY
Jack Downing learned very quickly about the entrepreneurial roller coaster. After college, he took his first job selling fax machines. He hit it big and quickly spun off his own successful fax machine business, which he sold back to his old boss for a hefty profit. But Downing's next business venture, an ill-fated clothing store on Halsted Street, had him "eating humble pie" within months. He lost all his previous gains and buried himself $70,000 in debt.
Lonely and depressed, he took a sales position with an executive recruiting firm that paid him just $20,200 in his first year. He stayed inside, ate canned food and became best friends with his dog. "I was literally a hermit," he said. Eventually, through persistence and hard work, Downing's star rose again. He became the leading recruiter in the Midwest, and after six years, started his own firm.
Now called WorldBridge Partners, the firm has grown steadily, and even survived the dot-bomb debacle. With success firmly in hand, Downing wants to give back. As chairman of the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, he focuses on helping expand one of the most well-known one-on-one mentoring programs in the country. Through his leadership, Downing hopes to inspire disadvantaged members of the next generation to succeed.
Q. How did you get involved in business?
A. I started college at Butler University, but after a year I transferred to Loras College, a small Catholic school in Dubuque, Iowa, where I studied business.
I got my first job selling fax machines and eventually opened my own business. We did pretty well. I ended up selling that business back to the guy I used to sell for. I then opened a clothing store.
Q. Why a clothing store?
A. A friend of mine had a clothing business, and he had some relationships with Girbaud jeans. They were hot back then. So I figure, "He's doing it. I can do it." But I hated the business two weeks after I opened it.
It was also right when the Gulf War broke out and right before they ripped up my sidewalk on Halsted--which made foot traffic kind of hard. Seven days a week I couldn't leave. I couldn't do anything.
By the end, the store had sucked up all the money I made on the first business and left me $70,000 in debt. I ate a lot of humble pie, which was probably a good thing, because they say an entrepreneur needs to fail at least once.
Q. What's the most important thing you learned from that failure?
A. I learned that I wasn't as good as I thought I was and that you need a strategy beyond just hard work. I also learned about business planning, negotiation and the day-to-day operations of a business.
Q. Why did you get involved in recruiting?
A. I needed a job to start paying back my debt, and a friend's girlfriend's uncle, Gary Miller, owned a search firm, so I took a job selling recruiting services. I figured I'd go into sales, work my way out of debt and then decide where to go from there.
My first year was miserable. But this was 1992 and we were still in a recession--something I didn't quite grasp at 26.
I couldn't sell anything. I was $70,000 in debt and I made $20,200 gross. I delivered pizzas at night because I needed the extra cash. I moved into a shabby place and stayed home every day. I didn't go out on the weekends. I didn't do anything. My dog was my new best pal, and my dog and I went out everywhere. I literally became a hermit.
Q. How did you deal with the inevitable self-doubt?
A. I sometimes got depressed, but I kept focusing on the plan. I set little goals and tried to celebrate the little victories. I woke up every day trying to fix the situation I'd gotten myself into.
The firm I worked at--Sales Consultants of Oak Brook--was a franchisee of Management Recruiters International (MRI), the world's largest executive search and recruiting agency. Even though I didn't have a lot of money at that point, I called the most successful MRI recruiter in the region and asked him if I could fly up and watch him for a day. I just wanted to see if I was doing it right.
That experience was very reassuring, because I realized I was doing it right. So I just kept at it and after the first year, I became one of the top recruiters for MRI. For three years in a row, I was the number one recruiter in the Midwest.
Q. What was the breakthrough that made you so successful?
A. Over the years I've realized that no matter what you do, it generally takes three to five years to build a business and two to three years to develop a recruiting practice. It's just the way it is. So the breakthrough was realizing that it was going to take time to build the relationships.
Over time, my network started to grow and then I began to work with SBC Ameritech. It took me about a year and a half to break into that company, and we've helped them hire over 260 people over the last 10 years.
Q. Why did you set up your own firm?
A. I always wanted to run my own shop. In fact, when I started with Gary, I told him, "I want to work for you for five to seven years--however long it takes me to pay down my debt and save enough money to buy my own MRI recruiting franchise." Within six years I had taken his technology recruiting practice from zero to over a million dollars, which is about five times what a successful recruiter does.
Initially our firm, Sales Consultants of Chicago, came flying out of the gate. We tripled revenue the first three years. At the time, there were 800 MRI offices. We were ranked number 15 after three years. Then the dot-bomb hit.
Q. How were you affected by the collapse of the tech bubble?
A. When the dot-bomb hit, I immediately had flashbacks to my clothing store. I thought, "No, not again!" This can't happen again!"
Thank God for my clothing store experience, because I would probably have mismanaged my funds otherwise. We persevered, and actually we're still the number 15 office. We haven't grown, but our revenues have remained steady, and we're still profitable. So, considering the massive hemorrhaging in the industry, I think we're doing pretty well.
We recently rebranded ourselves into WorldBridge Partners, which is what MRI calls its elite offices. We share information and databases and have developed ClientCentric Search to better adapt to our clients' recruiting needs.
Q. What advice would you give to out-of-work technology job seekers?
A. First, I would say think outside of the box in terms of what they are looking for, because they're probably not going to get exactly what they are looking for.
Network, network, network. Your number one job is to be a recruiter for yourself. Don't call the human resources person. Call the person you'd be reporting to and tell them why it would be worth spending 45 minutes with you to tell them how you can affect their bottom line. Explain it in terms of how you can save the company money or help increase revenue.
Q. How did you get involved with Big Brothers/Big Sisters?
A. After I started having some success at Sales Consultants of Oak Brook, I really wanted to start giving back. But I didn't just want to write a check. I wanted to find something that took my commitment of time, because I think time is more valuable than money.
So I called Big Brothers and said, "Stick me in the thick of it. I want a poor, hard-core kid with really severe problems," and they matched me with my little brother, who I was matched with for over seven years.
I saw how mentoring a child for just three or four hours a week can make a huge difference in influencing a child. I wanted to get more involved, so I asked to be on the board, and in December 2001, I became chairman of the board.
Q. What are your goals for the organization?
A. We want to expand one-on-one mentorship so that every child has an adult they can talk with, somebody they can hang out with. We've partnered up with companies like Hyde Park Bank, Bank One, CDW, so they'll give a portion of their staff time off around 2 p.m. once a week to go spend the afternoon with a child for the school year.
And it's gotten resounding results. About 97 percent of the students who get into this program have improved grades, and they are 46 percent less likely to do drugs. Their likelihood to skip school goes down. Their likelihood to try alcohol goes down. Their likelihood to hit somebody goes down.
Q. Why did you launch their first-ever capital campaign?
A. We're trying to raise at least $1 million to help us make even more matches, get the Mentoring Institute up and running, improve our technology and build our endowment. We've already reached two thirds of our goal. We're trying to operate less hand-to-mouth. We want to help as many kids as we can to get a better life.
Dave Lundy is president of Aileron Communications, a Chicago-based strategic communications firm. He can be reached at dsl@aileroninc.com.
