Hoping for a Second Chance

Read Article in Northern Michigan Woman Magazine

I’m sure you’ve heard the statistics: one in four women and one in seven men will be the survivors of domestic violence. That means one in four moms, one in seven dads, one in four women business owners, one in seven men business owners, one in four of your women coworkers and one in seven of your men coworkers.

I am the one in those statistics.

My relationship started out very intense. He was doting and would shower me with gifts. He would surprise me wherever I was and I thought, “Oh man, this guy really loves me! He wants to be everywhere that I am.” 

I thought that that was a sign of his love when it was a sign of control. When you’re in love, those lines are very blurred. That’s how it starts. 

It inevitably trickled into a more controlling dynamic. I was no longer allowed to drive anywhere. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. I wasn’t allowed to work. It became verbal and physical abuse. It became financial and religious abuse.

Then, there were some explosions that were pretty hostile. I had to call the police a couple of times, each time not receiving the help or support I needed. I’m sure they see it all the time, so they think it’s just dramatized or exaggerated. 

I was isolated from my family. I felt like I had no one. My friends weren’t welcome, so they never came around. And then it started getting more physical and aggressive. I grabbed my hidden credit card and cell phone, googled domestic violence shelters in the area and I left. Luckily, my mom let me stay with her and the next day, I went to a domestic violence agency. 

They were amazing and welcomed me with open arms. They made sure that they advocated for my decisions, not necessarily decisions that they wanted to push on me. They also educated me on all of the different ways that I was being controlled and abused that I didn’t really see. 

The agency connected me with the financing and funding to get my own apartment for six months so that I could move out on my own, which I had to do secretly when he was at work. And so I did that, got an apartment and went back to college to pursue my master’s degree in counseling after having completed my bachelor’s degree in psychology. 

I had a professor in college who was an insurance agent at New York Life and needed a recruiter. I needed a job, so I took it and that is how I fell into recruiting. 

The role turned into a recruiting position where I spearheaded the program and called the shots on decision making with the many different avenues to attract talent. I really cut my teeth on recruiting hard-to-fill positions.

I was using my psychology degree every day interviewing people and helping them figure out what their next step was in their career and what they actually wanted out of life. I loved recruiting and decided to pursue it full-time.  

With a background in corporate, sales, and executive recruiting, I felt like I could do it better, that I could open a firm that actually advocated for its candidates and clients that we met everyday. 

I also had this idea of partnering with the non-profit domestic violence agency that changed my life several years prior, to create a mission-driven business that had a mission and drive for philanthropy, and Hire For Hope was born. 

The “hope” part of Hire For Hope is that we give 10 percent of our profit to non-profit organizations that support women who are experiencing domestic violence. My hope is that these contributions help women who are going through abusive relationships similar to what I went through, and ultimately get the second chance they deserve. 

That’s how I came up with the concept of Hire For Hope, and I went for it. I was a one-woman-show for about a year until I hired my first employee. Now we have several employees and the business is booming.

I’ve always been interested to get deeper than just the surface level as to what the motivating factors in life are for the people we work with. We spend so much time at work that it’s really important to realize and recognize your behavioral factors in the workplace and how those create motivating needs. By being aware of peoples’ behavioral drives, we can predict the needs that motivate them. For this reason, Hire For Hope opened the talent optimization consulting division. It ended up complementing our recruiting division very well. 

My goal is to continue growing the company, to continue helping to fund a non-profit organization that changed my life, to continue to find the best candidates for our clients and to help our clients maintain a highly-engaged workforce so they can focus on doing their important work in this world. I’ve grown my dream from a one-woman team to a team of ten, and am planning on another year of growth for Hire for Hope. I’m grateful for the opportunity to turn my life around, and hope that I can help other women in similar situations do the same.