Donnelly’s road to staffing success inspires a thought-provoking story steeped in unrestrained curiosity and visionary leadership—and what can happen when you’re not afraid to fail.
It’s been just over a year since Donnelly stepped into her high-profile role as CEO and president of Integrity Staffing Solutions, a top 200 company in terms of U.S. staffing revenue, according to recent data. But she began writing her staffing success story at Integrity more than 25 years ago. Like so many in the industry, she fell into the business by chance (or fate) and, in true storybook fashion, quickly fell in love with it.
But even more than the inspiring tale about her climb to the top spot are the takeaways she has lived along the way. Leadership lessons that only her story can tell—and only Donnelly can relate with her signature energy and enthusiasm.
“I never had my sights set on a CEO title,” she says. “Contribution is what matters to me. What can I contribute to the organization?”
It was that question that launched a successful career, and it was that question (on constant repeat) that kept Donnelly on an impressive trajectory. That mindset is takeaway No. 1: Focus first on your ability to make meaningful contributions. If you are in the right environment with solid leadership, then professional success is inevitable.
Donnelly found her inevitable path soon after she closed the book on pursuing a career as a coloratura soprano. “I was very good,” she says (with the perfect amount of humility) but not so good that she could see a highly successful opera career in her future, she adds. So Donnelly decided to pivot. But pivot to what?
While she figured it out, Donnelly took a job with a little startup that was selling books online. The fledgling firm had just opened its second U.S. warehouse in in Donnelly’s home state of Delaware. That little startup was Amazon.com.
“I worked at Amazon in a recruiting assistant role and fell in love with recruiting,” Donnelly says, and then enthusiastically adds: “Like, I really loved it. I loved talking to people and loved helping people get jobs. I remember thinking: This is the greatest thing ever.”
In that role, Donnelly worked closely with a local company providing temporary employees for Amazon—a staffing firm called Integrity Staffing Solutions founded by Todd Bavol and Sean Montgomery, who would soon become her career and leadership muses and mentors.
With a passion for recruiting propelling her forward, Donnelly continued working with Integrity to open additional Amazon facilities in Nevada and Kentucky. Next up was an opportunity in Seattle, WA, but working for extended periods in various states had helped her realize that the East Coast, close to family, was where she wanted to stay rooted.
She called Bavol and told him she was looking to come back home to Delaware: “Do you have any clients you might be able to place me with? And he said, ‘Wait, hold on, come work for me.’ And that was it. I packed.”
LEARNING YOUR WAY UP
By being a wide-eyed, constantly curious student of the staffing business, Donnelly steadily created a powerful advantage for herself. Amid working for Integrity as an on-site representative for clients—and supplementing that with continued recruiting work—Donnelly was always on the lookout for her next contribution.
“I really loved what I was doing,” Donnelly explains. “But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t have enough meat on it. So I would always ask: ‘Do you have anything you need me to work on?’ I would find additional things to keep me busy; problems I could help solve. That allowed me to grow within the organization.”
This mentality is takeaway No. 2: Be constantly curious, show initiative, and communicate your willingness to learn. With contributions to the company in mind, aim to improve everyone’s experience and you will inevitably grow.
Over the next 18 months with Integrity, Donnelly learned more than anyone expected and contributed even more. It was crystal clear that her upward trajectory, powered by her enthusiasm for the business, was capturing the attention of company leadership. She implemented everything from a newsletter for temporary employees to an automation process for payroll. There were never any “that’s not your job” reactions or “you’re not equipped to do that” roadblocks, Donnelly recalls, which also taught her early on about the kind of company culture that allows for unbridled growth and encourages innovation. Unbeknownst to her or perhaps even the company’s founders, she was already getting CEO training.
“When you can ask good questions of people and it gets them thinking in a way that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise think, or move them down a path that’s a little bit different than they’re use to, that can spark big ideas.”
Donnelly’s next move at Integrity came when Bavol (CEO at the time) and Montgomery (CFO at the time) called her in to help at the corporate office. She supported finance, payroll, and human resources—learning and contributing, learning and contributing, and that continued until Donnelly had worked in nearly every role at the company. But Donnelly notes: That can only happen within organizations where the culture is built on trust, and company leaders exude that culture.
“The reason I was able to do all of that, and do it successfully, and transition through the organization from recruiter to CEO was that I was given the grace to fail. Because I wasn’t always going to be able to solve it the first time or to fix it perfectly, but I was given the grace to fail fast, reflect, reiterate, and then do it again,” she explains. “Reflecting on those learnings, every time I got the opportunity to fail, really helped me grow not only as an individual contributor to the organization, but as a leader. It also taught me how to give everyone else the grace they needed to try and fail.”
Herein lies takeaway No. 3: Especially as a leader, create and invest in a company culture where employees receive the grace to fail and try again. This supports innovation, productivity, and morale.
So what’s an example of said failure? Can you fail, say, on fill rate?
Upon receiving the question, Donnelly’s piercing blue eyes open wide, and then she instantly begins to laugh.
“Oh no! Fill rate is never a failure. Fill rate is never even an option,” she says between guffaws. “You can never fail on fill rate…I mean, have you met our industry?”
Instead, Donnelly thinks back to a significant but pretty straightforward accounting error regarding vendor management system fees. Come to find out that it was a steady mistake that had taken place over nearly 18 months, she explains, to add up to “this big nugget of $750,000.”
“And in that moment, I thought: ‘I’m done. This is it. This is the end of Jamie Donnelly at Integrity Staffing.’” Fast forward to a deeper analysis with Montgomery, the CFO, and the error evolved into new and improved guardrails and procedures for the company. It wasn’t money lost or wasted; it was simply a documentation error that had to be corrected and then prevented from happening again.
But in true Donnelly fashion, the learning didn’t stop there. “When I expanded my thinking and said, ‘OK, I can fix this one problem so we don’t ever do this again.’ But how do I apply this to what we’re doing across all of our resources to see if perhaps we’ve got some similar risk happening? When I could think bigger picture–not just myopically on this one instance—that’s when my learning really happened. And I got the grace to fix the mistake and implement the controls so that kind of mistake wouldn’t happen again in the future.”
Lessons throughout her progression at Integrity shaped Donnelly as a professional and also helped shaped her team, she notes. Because she was able to show them the same grace she had learned from and extend those same opportunities to troubleshoot mistakes and improve. “It really sets the tone where people aren’t afraid to go do and go try…That grace of failing and learning is where the magic happens. It really is where the magic happens. If you never fail, what are you learning?”
Sounds like someone with an authentic leader’s edge.
GETTING CLARITY, TAKING ACTION
Learning all aspects of the business kept Donnelly driven, interested, and always asking questions. In fact, of all the skills she learned, she may very well value that last one most.
“I became a virtuoso at asking good questions. When you can ask good questions of people and it gets them thinking in a way that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise think, or move them down a path that’s a little bit different than they’re used to, that can spark big ideas,” explains Donnelly. “That is your job as a leader! It’s not my job to know all the answers. It’s my job to create a space where other people can go find the answers and find the solutions.”
That’s just one of the leadership lessons that drives Donnelly day in and day out. Another one at the top of the list is even more direct, more real, and equally impactful.
“Over the years, especially as I took on leadership roles, I learned that I had to shorten the time between clarity and action. That is my absolute north star as the CEO, shortening that time between when either I or my team has the clarity on what needs to happen and actually making it happen.
“Sometimes you’ll have a vision, and then you’ll put it through 17 committees and you’ll run through all the iterations and ideas. ‘What could go wrong? What could go right? What could we do better? How do we save money?’
“It’s not my job to know all the answers. It’s my job to create a space where other people can go find the answers and find the solutions.”
“Just go. Try something. Take some small steps of action to get to that point of clarity, that end result, that outcome that you’re looking for—that is what drives an organization forward faster than everybody else. If you can move on those signals of clarity quickly, then you will grow your company and your team performers exponentially faster than everybody else will.”
Donnelly recognizes and can identify the points in her progressive career with Integrity when her roles became less tactical and more strategic—when it became less about putting out fires and more about leading the company into the future. So several years before moving into the CEO role, she began working with an executive coach.
“He said, ‘Jaime, you’re amazing at being a firefighter, but do you want to keep that all to yourself? Or do you want to develop a team of firefighters and problem solvers?’”
That conversation created a flash of inspiration for Donnelly and sparked perhaps the greatest boost in her career trajectory, which introduces takeaway No. 4: Be a leader worth following by empowering others to solve problems and succeed. Enable them by asking the right questions to get the problems solved.
When she started making that shift in her leadership approach, Donnelly explains, enabling her team to solve problems and “make the magic happen,” that’s when she could clearly see how Bavol had empowered and developed her for bigger roles during her progression at Integrity.
“Over the years, especially as I took on leadership roles, I learned that I had to shorten the time between clarity and action. That is my absolute north star as the CEO, shortening that time between when either I or my team has the clarity on what needs to happen and actually making it happen.”
BEFRIENDING THE BOT
If leaders can count on anything being consistent, it is inevitable and steady change—especially when it comes to technology. But rather than adopting a wait-and-see approach as artificial intelligence began elbowing its way into daily operations (and in keeping with a “try something” mentality and company culture), Integrity began leveraging ConverzAI’s Voice AI platform more than three years ago. The company also collaborated closely with ConverzAI to help develop one of the industry’s first Bullhorn integrations for the platform, positioning Integrity among the first staffing firms to adopt and scale AI-powered recruiting technology.
Donnelly says it was important to get ahead of concerns about job security among recruiters—for example, when Integrity implemented ConverzAI’s AI recruiter, branded as Recruiter Jamie. The company developed an engagement plan aimed at how employees use and interact with the bot. But would temporary workers and job seekers be willing to interact with the technology? Some on the team opined yes; others weren’t so sure. So what did they do?
They acted, tried, learned, iterated, and adapted.“Boy, what a difference it made to our organization,” Donnelly says. “The first thing we were able to do was eliminate our overseas teams of screeners. Those jobs just went away, right away.” But there were also lessons learned, particularly as they monitored how internal employees were using the technology.
“After about 90 days, we realized that our recruiters still weren’t using the tool to its fullest potential,” she explains. “This is where the failure happens, right? And remember, failure is OK. We knew the potential of the product and we were not getting the full potential. But why? How can we do this better?”
After having various individual conversations, Integrity leaders concluded that they could have done more to prepare frontline recruiters with what’s-in-it-for-me information. Recruiters needed more details, real-world scenarios with tangible results—such as how many prescreens they could potentially forgo, and how that would add up to hours in a day, and then what could happen next.
Instead of plowing through 75 prescreening interviews for several hours in a week, for example, the AI tool can conduct, document, and feed the information into the company’s applicant tracking system in a day. Meanwhile, that recruiter has the time to work a local job fair or plan in-person check-ins with clients and candidates.
“Looking back on it, how did we miss the what’s in it for them? But we did,” Donnelly says. “So we had to pivot, reiterate, and retrain. And that retraining didn’t happen on mass Zoom calls. It happened one-on-one with branches and individual recruiters.”
Rolling out Recruiter Jaime wasn’t perfect, but the company acted and, after making adjustments, it realized efficiencies that couldn’t have come at a better time given the economy’s effect on the staffing business of late. Those efficiencies have allowed Integrity associates to increase the personal interactions they have with clients and talent—ironically, thanks to a bot. This drives home takeaway No. 5: Be proactive but smart with AI and other tech implementations. Those efficiencies will reap the reward of time for valuable business relationships, a differentiator like no other.
“The entire industry is facing margin pressure,” Donnelly says. “You can sell on value. You can sell on service. It is only going to get you so far. You have to be efficient as well—and AI will do that busy work that keeps us efficient and allows our teams to focus on the engagement that builds the relationships—because we are still in a relationship-driven industry, right? Those relationships matter. That’s what makes your clients stick with you. Your candidates stay with you. Your associates stay with you, because you can spend more time getting to know them and caring about making them successful instead of just a fill-and-bill position.
“Our team has figured out how to utilize technology and AI responsibly and deliver for clients and talent—but in a human way. In that human way we still treat people with the dignity and respect that we always have as an organization. We still treat people with integrity. We’re named Integrity for a reason.”
3 QUESTIONS WITH JAIME DONNELLY
The CEO and president of Integrity Staffing Solutions brings a genuine, energizing vibe to any conversation about the staffing business. When Donnelly says she loves the industry, her words communicate a passion for problem-solving and improving the lives of the company’s temporary and contract employees. Here are three questions that delve into how Donnelly successfully blends leadership goals, family focus, and personal growth.
As a leader, how do you get from envisioning a successful company culture to empowering team members to live that culture?
“A leader sets the mission, vision, and values of the organization, but those must be in everything that everyone does within the organization. You have to empower everyone at every level to be able to achieve that vision and live those values. That’s what we’ve done.”
Donnelly offers examples of uniquely human responses to real situations Integrity team members have encountered, such as a temporary worker sleeping in his car near the assigned work site.
“Time out. This associate should not be sleeping in their car. Let’s get them into temporary housing and let’s help them find a more permanent solution. Integrity of course funds that. Maybe it’s providing a security deposit and paying the first month’s rent. There isn’t formal training on this. It happens because it’s so deeply embedded within our organization. Staff are empowered to do great things like this. They’re empowered to help individuals and advocate for our associates. It’s not just words up on a wall in the office.”
Your passion for the staffing business is unmistakable when you talk about Integrity and your team. Outside of your professional life, what do you enjoy doing?
“My daughters all are in college nearby. Two are graduating this spring and one graduates next spring. All of the free time I can spend with them before they really start adulting is what I am truly enjoying right now. I love spending weekends with them. They are close enough that I can say, ‘Let’s go get brunch. Let’s go shopping. Let’s go bird-watching!’”
Donnelly relates that one of her daughters recently has been “obsessed with hawks” and, through her, has also leaned into the bird-watching enthusiasm. “She wanted binoculars for Christmas and became a bird watcher,” she says, “which has made me into a bird watcher.” Donnelly admits, however, that she isn’t just watching the birds anymore. Her home, which is just on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware state line, is a bit off the beaten path—so nature abounds. “I’m pretty intent on making sure my birds are fed,” Donnelly says. “I do live a bit out in the country, which is nice, so I enjoy the nature around me a lot.”
Your staffing success story at Integrity is certainly unique. How do you hope your peers will remember this ‘Jaime Donnelly era’?
“I don’t want people to remember Integrity for me. I want them to remember Integrity for what we’ve accomplished together, regardless of my role at the time. I want people to recall our high-performing team, a team that is not afraid to do big, bold things.
For example, the Integrity team has figured out how to utilize technology and AI responsibly and deliver results for our clients—in a human way, while still treating people with the dignity and respect we always have as an organization. Ultimately, I want to leave the business stronger than when it was placed in my hands to steward to the next leader. I want it to be stronger and more resilient.
I want it to be more human, and I know that sounds odd in the time of AI, but it is an incredible opportunity. We’re in this amazing time where we get to use AI to do all of the busy work, so that we can do the important human work—and build relationships. That’s what I want us to do in the ‘Jaime Donnelly era.’”
“I have three cheerleaders all the time,” says Jaime Donnelly about her three daughters, ages 23, 21, and 21 (twins), and their lifelong support for her career with Integrity Staffing Solutions. “I was on a call one day—an interview call that I was taking at home—and I must have been downplaying something I did. Next thing I know, my daughter texts me from the kitchen: ‘Stop diminishing your accomplishments, Mom.’” Donnelly glows with a sense of pride and understanding as she tells the story. “Yes. They’re just great cheerleaders. I love it.”
Marlene L. Hendrickson is senior director, content strategy and communications for ASA. Send feedback on this article or make recommendations for future Leader’s Edge interviews by emailing s******@americanstaffing.net. Engage with ASA on social media—go to americanstaffing.net/social.
