I worked for Paces a few years back for little over a year. What an experience. Reading the above posting brought back many memories of how bad my introduction to staffing was.
Catherine or Kay Stanley was the owner at the time. She was called the Devil by the staff who almost all universally hated her. She would fly into a rage of a mad crazed person whenever she did not make a placement, especially with one of her special clients. She would do anything, including lie to make a placement. If a client told Kay to stand naked in Peachtree Street to place a secretary she would. She is considered to be crazy by a lot of law firms.
When we had a good week, the office environment was good. Sometimes, after a great month, we would celebrate in a local restaurant. In that sense, she could be generous. However, the only Christmas I was there, we went to her house for our Christmas party. Her house is a very big mansion in Ansley Park with a big swimming pool, the sort of house that anyone would love to live in. It was obvious that she was making a fortune and most of it was going in that house. I was amazed that even though she lived in such a mansion, we had to take our own food for the Christmas party. How mean is that.
I left Paces to work for the leading staffing recruiter in Atlanta. I was amazed at how little training I got at Paces. I really learned about recruiting after 14 months on the job at Paces. Paces is just a little mom and pop shop which she runs with her husband. (Her husband does her accounts. ). If it wasn't for the staff who were working there, I would not have stayed so long. Most of the staff I worked with went to work with other recruiters.