Reflections on 30 Years of Filling Shoes in a Bustling Resort Town
In 1995, while Whistler was busy opening its first High School and cutting the ribbon on what would become Marketplace and Town Plaza, Whistler’s Personnel Solutions was founded by entrepreneur and visionary Cathy Goddard. Cathy understood Whistler’s unique workforce challenges and created a company dedicated to “filling shoes” for local businesses. In the early days, Cathy’s focus was on recruiting skilled professionals, particularly for accounting, administration, and management roles. Cathy remembers that the concept of using temporary staff required an even bigger push as it was such a new concept at the time.
“When I started, most Whistler businesses had no idea what an employment agency actually did so there was a lot of groundwork needed to explain how it all worked”Cathy Goddard, Founder
Building Lasting Connections
In fall of 1995, the first fall of Whistler Personnel’s operations, one of the candidates that Cathy interviewed was a young manager who had just moved to Whistler named Jacki Bissillion. With Cathy’s help, Jacki landed a job as a Hotel Manager for Power Resort Properties and a friendship was born. Over the next decade or two, Jacki transitioned from candidate to client, using Whistler Personnel’s recruiting services to fill key positions at hotels and other businesses she was managing (spoiler alert – Jacki is the current Owner of Whistler Personnel)
“All of the people they recruited for us were total rock stars and I still count many of them as friends today including Karen Wooton, Bob Brant and Maria Cecutti. They certainly had a knack for playing match-maker! I was a total superfan of Whistler Personnel right from the start, ” Jacki recalls.
In 2008, eager to pursue a new entrepreneurial dream (Lighthouse Visionary), Cathy sold the company to long term local Sabine Bell. Cathy was determined to find a new owner who shared her values: “it mattered deeply to me that the new owner would carry it forward with the same tenets and values I had poured into it. Sabine Bell was absolutely that person.” Prior to picking up the Whistler Personnel torch, Sabine had served as the Human Resources Director at the Pan Pacific Whistler and the Delta Whistler Resort. Her background as an professional Human Resources manager and consultant brought a fresh perspective and a deep passion for helping people achieve their career goals as well as helping businesses develop a workforce that would lead them to success.
The Start of Something New
In 2015 Sabine found herself ready to rebrand and rebuild Whistler Personnel, which had been slipping more and more into the HR consulting realm. The resort was booming, businesses were again really struggling with high turnover and severe labour shortages. Sabine wanted to rebuild the recruiting and temp services divisions which had been taking a back seat for a while but she was just too busy to do it alone. She shared this dream with a friend over lunch one fateful day ~ Jacki had recently launched a brand strategy, marketing and communications company – Red Bus Communications. They were both excited by the potential of reinventing Whistler Personnel and decided to work on it together.
“I was constantly hearing from local business owners and managers who were hugely successful that they were burning out and even considering closing shop. They were working around the clock and desperately needed a break,” Jacki recalls.
Jacki Bissillion, Owner
Strategically, they envisioned moving away from a traditional pricing model and making the recruiting services way more affordable and accessible for small business. They expanded the Temp Division to include cleaners, labourers, carpenters, night auditors, bookkeepers and loads of other types of workers so they could offer immediate staffing relief. They built a new website that integrated an innovative job board with their candidate database, automated the application process and streamlined the entire recruiting process. And as the final cherry on top, they introduced a quirky blue owl as the new face of of organization.
A Team on a Mission
In 2017, Jacki officially purchased Whistler Personnel from Sabine and brought on a few new partners of her own including Wendy Kendall, who had just sold the Blenz Coffee Shop and was intimately familiar with the constant labour challenges of running a small business in a very busy world-class ski resort. Wendy had also worked as a temp through-out University so she had good ideas about how a great temp agency could work so she agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to help Jacki with the rapidly growing Temp Worker Division for the summer.
Together, along with the help of Payroll Coordinator, Olga Achiadi, and Recruiting Guru, Shannon Wiles, the newly reinvented Temp Division hired over 270 temp workers, filled more than 550 cleaning, childcare, activity, event, serving, construction, cooking and office shifts. They also sent out over $100,000 in paycheques to local families and workers who were enthralled about finding a very flexible, new way to make ends meet. They knew they were on to something that could really make a difference in their community.
“Once we started getting to know our temp employees and hearing their stories, we realized that while helping local businesses keep the doors open was super rewarding, giving local workers an easy way to earn extra incomes so they could stay in this fabulous town was even better! Even now, with cost of living hitting extreme levels, these two missions are even more vital for our community and they are still what drive us.”
Jacki Bissillion, Owner
A Squamish Owl is Born
In 2018, the Squamish community was also feeling the impacts of a regional labour shortage as well. Whistler Personnel had been recruiting for Squamish and Pemberton businesses all along ~ especially in the construction sector as both communities were experiencing some incredible growth. More and more Squamish businesses were reaching out for help so, thanks to a little nudge by a couple of core team members who lived there, Ashley Pereira and Chantall Howard-Wearn, Squamish Personnel Solutions was given it’s very own division – complete with a new brand, website and a baby sister owl who is very handy with tools. And over the couple of years, more and more businesses, hotels, shops, restaurants, construction firms and event companies starting relying on Whistler and Squamish Personnel to fill the gaps.
“Anytime we reached out to a business with a job vacancy to see if they wanted help, they almost always said “YES ~ please help!”
Jacki Bissillion, Owner.
Fostering Community and Connections are at our Core
Since its inception, Whistler and Squamish Personnel have been connecting people and fostering lasting relationships that ensure that the communities they belong to are thriving. Helping others with integrity, dependability, and equality have always been at the heart of the company culture. Every day, the team does what they can to help job seekers build their best lives while also helping local businesses build success with perfect-fit talent when they need it most.
“We try to meet with every applicant to hear their story so we can place them in a role that fits their needs and lifestyle. And we work closely with our clients every step of the way and do not quit until the job they have open is successfully filled. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to serve our community in this way“, Jacki reflects.
In honour of its 30th Birthday, the company decided to do a little math and discovered to their amazement that they have screened, interviewed and connected with over 19,000 job applicants, placed over 3,800 successful long-term hires and filled over 267,000 hours of temp labour. They have the big, audacious dream of helping each person who applies with them to find meaningful work they enjoy. This will, in turn, allow Whistler and Squamish to continue to resolve labour shortages in our community and ensure that local businesses can achieve organizational success for many more years to come.