Three ambitious women who wanted to run their own companies and have time for their families are flipping the traditional model for staffing agencies on its ear.
Rachel Neill, CEO and founder of Carex Consulting Group; Madeleine (Maddy) Niebauer, founder and CEO of Virtual Chief of Staff (vChief); and Ashley Quinto Powell, founder of myVA Rocks, are all business executives and mothers who established new models designed for working parents and others seeking flexible schedules. Their approaches are finding success in Madison and around the country.
Each of their businesses fill a unique niche, enabling collaboration with each other instead of competition. One was just named to the Inc. magazine Female Founders 500, but all have made their mark in the staffing business.
All three believe they offer more flexibility for employers and employees than traditional staffing agencies. Carex Consulting Group is an employment agency that bills itself as a career matchmaker for people with more of a nontraditional background; Virtual Chief of Staff (vChief) provides fractional (part-time) executive support and staffing in a number of executive roles; and myVA Rocks employs virtual assistants (VAs) nationwide, catering to people who excel at remote work.
New role model
Quinto Powell considers Neill and Niebauer as mentors, and it’s easy to understand why. In 2016, when Carex was founded, Neill set out to challenge the staffing industry’s commission-based model, which she believed was too reactive and transactional and plagued by misaligned incentives.
“It doesn’t align incentives because the recruiters and the salespeople on the agency side are trying to get butts in seats because they’re relying on that for their commission,” Neill said. “It’s not always actually the best match for the candidate and for the company.”
Rather than pressure associates to meet a quota, Carex has salaried employees who are trained to build relationships on the way to finding the right match.
“We’re really looking to invest time with both our partners, which are the companies we work with, the candidates that we’re representing and the consultants that are working through us,” Neill said.
About 20 Carex staffers live in Greater Madison, some of whom are remote workers, and its additional 100 consultants can live anywhere in the country.
“I was pretty tired of the idea that everything’s got to be a 9 to 5 and a certain way,” Neill said. “Very early on, I thought we could be a little bit more flexible and we can meet people where they’re at.
“I saw a lot of people, primarily women, getting pushed out of the workforce because of this traditional employment model that was favored back when it was more traditional for a woman to stay at home with the family and for the man to go to work.”
That’s not to say family doesn’t come first. It does, but it’s the family structure that has evolved, and that requires flexible schedules. Neill, herself, has had three children since she’s been at Carex and for the first four months, her newborns came to work with her, which allowed her to be present for her company and her family. She has six children, five of whom still live at home.
One of Neill’s valued associates was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years and wasn’t sure she would be able to reenter the workforce or what that would look like. Since she joined Carex, Neill said she’s one of its top performers. It validates the company’s commitment to take chances on people that have a nontraditional background “but a ton of potential,” Neill said.
Commander-in-vChief
Neill’s approach represents the kind of understanding that inspires employee loyalty, which vChief, a staffing company also founded in 2016, also has built its foundation upon. Maddy Niebauer, whose fractional executive support agency has made Inc. magazine’s list of fastest-growing companies four times, employs a 20-person team in Madison that has a four-day, 32-hour work week, and virtual team of about 200 people scattered across the country.
Prior to launching vChief, Niebauer worked virtually as a chief of staff at Teach for America, so she was familiar with the world of virtual work. At that time, she knew the chief of staff role, a key support person for a chief executive, could be done virtually.
“That way, you get the best talent wherever it is,” she said.
The value proposition is that even if they are a new parent, they don’t have to leave the workforce completely, which has enabled vChief to build a sizable executive talent pool.
“A lot of them are working moms, but they also are people who are looking for flexibility,” Niebauer said. “That might be working moms or it might be someone who’s starting something new but just needs some income. They do this job part of the time and then they do their passion project or start their own business with another part of their time.
“There are only so many roles out there that are part time, flexible, remote, well-paying and interesting,” Niebauer said. “We never have a dearth of talent. We’re always drowning in talent, frankly.”
As the company evolved, it found that client companies needed fractional (part-time) executive support in a number of roles. Now, in addition to fractional chiefs of staff, vChief employs part-time chief operating officers, chief financial officers, executive directors and human resource executives, among others.
As long as they have a laptop and a smartphone, vChief can integrate its remote, part-time executives into whatever project management, customer relationship management or other business systems their client companies use.
“People can have someone for five hours a week, and they could have someone for 40 hours a week if they want it,” Niebauer said. “Usually if they have more hours, it’s often on an interim basis. If somebody goes on maternity leave, we might put someone there for six months.”
Rocking VAs
Following in Neill’s and Niebauer’s footsteps is Quinto Powell, who has built a business of human, not technological, virtual assistants at myVA Rocks. A big part of her motivation is keeping women in the workforce, especially through their childbearing years, but she also has employed VAs in her other businesses, including a sales consultancy.
The pandemic was a driving force for Quinto Powell because in 2020 and 2021, many women left the workforce, and she realized that “a lot of incredible talent needed to be remote and flexible.”
“My VAs are often caregivers, but they’ve also had a really big career,” she said. “Most people think of virtual assistants as sort of task-takers or people who can do really, really simple tasks, and that is mostly true. But in my model, because I’m so opinionated about what makes a good virtual assistant, they tend to have really, really good business acumen.”
Their know-how is paired with clients who are independent consultants — 80% of her clients are very small businesses of one to five people — or entire executive teams of large companies.
“We pair them with a virtual assistant who usually starts with email management and calendar management, but we can do all sorts of things,” Quinto Powell said. “We have graphic designers and we have copywriters who can help with thought leadership (idea generation), and then I also have a team that can write grants for small nonprofits. I even have a team that can help you get elected to local office.”
MyVA Rocks recently spun out an audiobook and podcast production studio as a value-added service to clients that also appeals to its remote talent pool.
“We have about 70 virtual assistants today, and we just can’t hire fast enough,” Quinto Powell said. “The clients that come to me tend to be really overwhelmed, and when you’re overwhelmed, the last thing you want is for someone just to stare back at you, doe-eyed, and say, ‘Let me know what I can do.’ That’s sort of a non-starter, and so we focus on VAs who can really jump in and understand what’s going on in a business … and who are more operations focused.”
Virtual insanity
Each company thrives in part due to the remote working trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With the pandemic getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, a growing number of employers demand that employees return to the office — full-time in some cases — which Niebauer thinks is “crazy” in most instances.
She plans to take advantage of their inflexibility because she knows there still is a large segment of the workforce that prefers a hybrid arrangement, if not fully remote work.
“People have had a taste of the good life of not commuting, and yes, there are some jobs that have to be done in person, but a lot of the things that they say need to be done in person do not.
“It’s absolutely insane that companies think they’re going to get people back in person full time,” she said. “It’s just not going to happen. Maybe in some businesses, yes, but you’re really going to sacrifice on the level of talent you get because there’s a lot of people who, at a minimum, want to work hybrid.”
