Filling the gaps

NO MORE UNDERDOGS

“All of us have student debt. It was a big deal for us to compete on a level where there was some real reward. It was a great experience.”

— BRETT DANIELSON (’18)

really important. I think it mattered to every single person on the team. You know, all of us have student debt. So, it was a big deal for us to compete on a level where there was some real reward for us if we did something good. It was a great experience.”

Rainey said many business plan competition alumni are now decades into their careers and have gone on to achieve great things. “And it’s wonderful to talk to them too,” he said, “to see that they remember it, and that they, in many cases, treasure it and feel it helped propel them.”

Only the best student business plans from CoB 300 are eligible for the annual Rainey-Shepard competition.

Startup approaches the recruiting space from a

different mindset By Andy Perrine (’86)

WWhere are all the workers? Procession Systems knows.

As the United States emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, employers have been desperate to hire. While demand for goods and services has rebounded, the supply of labor has not. According to Bureau of Labor

Statistics data, more than 10 million job openings in the U.S. went unfilled for most of 2022. Employers in all sectors are having a tough time hiring as the economy recovers. “A lot of people say this is something they’ve never seen before,” said Joe Barletta (’19), managing partner at Procession Systems, a red-hot, employee-recruiting startup.

“I think the main core driver is that it’s an employee-driven market. And employers have to react and adapt to that. People have options, and employers are feeling a lot of that pain, which is causing more urgency to hire.” Barletta started Procession Systems with his friend, Kyle Blackburn (’15), in 2016 with four employees. Today, the company employs 44 people, and business has grown by 690%, undeterred by the pandemic.

Barletta said their rapid success is a result of approaching the recruiting space with a completely different mindset. “It’s a very transactional-heavy industry,” he said. “But our business philosophy — and how we’ve been able to grow — is not on extreme, short-term profits. Instead, it’s building deeper and longer-term relationships with our clients, and solving problems for them. We want our clients to be our clients for 10 years, not for 10 days.”

Both partners attribute their success and the unique corporate ethos they’ve created to their education in and out of the classroom at JMU. For Barletta, it was being on a team and building a business plan in CoB 300, and then meeting visiting entrepreneurs in the New Venture Creation class. As for Blackburn, he said, “One of my favorite analogies is holding the door open at JMU. In a very real way, we do that at Procession. From when I arrived at JMU for Orientation until I graduated, it was always about putting people first and looking out for one another, holding the door open.”

Joe Barletta (‘19) and Kyle Blackburn (‘15) each gave five-figure gifts to JMU in September. “There are so many really successful people of our generation who had great experiences at JMU but don’t know that their contributions are needed,” Barletta said. “Kyle and I wanted to create a call to action to our generation. Hopefully this is a great opportunity to be the catalyst.” Blackburn added, “I want to be an example by paying it forward, and I want people to follow what we’re doing.”