Helen Stefan Moreau was 22 years old and two months into her job at a Washington staffing firm when her boss sat her down.
“I like you, and I think you are great,” Moreau recalls her boss saying at the life-changing meeting in 1989. “You have great potential, but it’s been two months and you haven’t had a deal. I can’t afford you under these circumstances.”
Moreau’s boss changed her compensation from an $18,000 annual salary with small incentive bonuses to zero salary but up to a 50 percent commission on each job candidate she placed.
It was higher risk, but Moreau could make a lot more money — up to $2,500 for every candidate she placed in a job — if she could close her deals.
“It was a healthy dose of fear that gave me legitimate skin in the game,” said Moreau. “Later that week, I had two deals and never looked back.”
She was soon earning $2,000 a week. Six months later, Moreau quit to start her own placement firm at McPherson Square in Washington.
Moreau’s story reflects the powerful incentive of making money. Like it or not — whether you call it the American Dream, advancement, getting ahead or greed — cash drives many of us.
Twenty-two years after striking out on her own, Moreau’s Midtown Group in downtown Washington has grown into a firm with 24 full-time employees and more than 300 part-timers, with an office in Chicago. Midtown just completed its most lucrative quarter ever and is on track to gross $15 million this year. That’s about 50 percent above last year.
At 45, the entrepreneur, with her pastry chef husband and two kids, live in a sprawling Chevy Chase McMansion. She throws a mean Christmas party, rents suites at Verizon Center, and rewards top employees with cruises, lavish trips to the Caribbean, and Las Vegas bashes (where she and 12 stars were headed last week).
She has turned down several offers to buy her company.
Moreau’s employees, known as recruiters, find qualified candidates to fill various jobs, whether it be an assistant to actress Linda Carter (Wonder Woman) or a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis. Other clients include the White House, U.S. House of Representatives, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, National Geographic and McKinsey & Co.
It doesn’t sound sexy, but this is high-pressure, high-reward work where stars earn $250,000 a year.
A successful recruiter makes dozens of calls a day to employers and has a deep bench of qualified job candidates to offer. To keep their rosters fresh, recruiters constantly troll social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to look for talent.
Midtown is built on two revenue streams: Its direct hire division finds and places candidates for all kinds of jobs. Its “temp” division fills temporary slots that can be as short as a day or as long as a year.
Direct hires make up about 10 percent of revenue and represent the high-risk, high-payoff portion of the business. A search to fill a lawyer’s slot at a top D.C. firm may take three months, but it could also yield a $50,000 fee (about 15 to 25 percent of the salary for the position being filled), which is shared between Midtown and its employee, depending on each employee’s agreement.
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