Meet Melissa "Missy" Clark
Our founder and president, Melissa “Missy” Clark, worked in the manufacturing industry in the mid 90s for a privately held company in Chicago offering direct placement services in this specialized industry. She was the only woman working in the “Bull Pen” of the engineering/manufacturing division – placing mid to upper-level managers in blue chip companies nationwide. She learned the art of right interviewing and the purpose of right placement early on in her human resource career as most of the talent she worked with was NOT local and were moving their families across the country for a new job. It wasn’t just the “fill” for her - it was the fit: a responsibility that she took seriously with every candidate.
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About
After graduation from DePaul University in 1999, Missy moved home to Muskegon to be closer to her family. She began working for Alcoa Automotive in Fruitport, Michigan as a quality temp, working nights at the Hearthstone Restaurant*. Shortly after starting at Alcoa, she was introduced to the business unit VP of HR who had unexpectedly come in on a site visit from Pittsburgh. The HRVP created a job for Missy on the spot – direct hiring her in to coordinate the plant’s $250K MEDC training & development grant set to expire in six months. They invested in her training and, using lean principles she had learned in the mid 90s and Alcoa’s ABS/TPS model, she coordinated the training of the entire facility without incurring overtime – utilizing the grant almost to the penny before its expiration. Very successful, Missy’s facility became the Model Plant/Training Center for the entire Alcoa Automotive Business Unit.
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Right talent. Right placement. Right here.
Missy was promoted at the end of this assignment and her next project was recruiting, hiring and onboarding over 400 employees in one summer. Alcoa at the time was high volume production and well learned in the lean principles of ABS. She led interview teams who collectively onboarded 30 team members each week! Here, the talent had to be right, the fit had to be right, the training capacity had to be right or the talent would not stay. It was the perfect match to her skillset and talents. Then 9/11 happened and the bottom dropped from the automotive industry.
A Passion for Community Connection
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Missy went on to work in executive and human resource leadership roles for a handful of West Michigan companies – always utilizing her ability to connect businesses with the people who can build them. When the opportunity to start her own search and consulting firm became more than a dream, she launched MANUFACTURING RECRUITERS, INC. She carries this passion for right talent and right placements with each assignment and is committed to Help Muskegon Grow by using her talents serving her community through connections.
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*Fun fact: you may have seen and/or been served by Missy as she also worked at the Bruelbeck-Lister Family of Companies: most notably, The Hearthstone Bistro where she worked from the age of 13-20 and then from 2000 on and off until the business was sold in 2019.
