HR Companies & HR Consultants in Columbia, MO

Executive Advantage, LLC is a human resources consulting firm in Columbia, Missouri. Its core clients are small and mid-sized organizations that need dependable HR expertise but cannot justify a full-time specialist on payroll. Larger organizations also turn to the firm for focused projects, and HR managers and departments sometimes use it as an outside sounding board. The firm describes its method as practical: advice is shaped around the way a client's business actually operates.

Areas of Work

The firm supports clients across the full life of the employment relationship, from finding people to developing them and handling the occasional crisis. Its service lines include:

• Compensation: designing benefit packages, classifying jobs, scoring positions with point factor methods and running salary surveys
• Executive consulting: 360-degree feedback, setting and reaching goals, regular one-on-one meetings and planning for leadership succession
• Organizational management: business and strategic planning, plus a thorough HR review of existing practices
• People management: writing job descriptions, building performance evaluations and assessing how individuals prefer to work
• Policy work: handbooks, specific workplace rules and guidance on employment law
• Recruitment: posting openings, screening candidates, testing and verifying them, completing employment eligibility paperwork, conducting initial phone screens and welcoming new hires
• Training: courses in HR, leadership, management, employment law and preventing workplace harassment

Help With Difficult Situations

Employee problems are often the hardest part of running a business, and the firm addresses them directly. Typical issues include chronic absenteeism, turnover, bullying, low morale, harassment, workplace violence, disability-related questions, unemployment claims, terminations and alternative dispute resolution.

The firm urges owners to call quickly, since there is a window in which a small concern can still be handled before it grows beyond repair. Its published articles examine regulatory topics such as exempt and non-exempt classification, contractor misclassification, Department of Labor audits, EEOC concerns and religious accommodation requests.

It also promotes HR Pathways, a program aimed at owners worried about fines tied to HR regulations. People looking for work can ask about openings at client companies.

Leadership

Bob Scribner started the company in 1990, and it has marked more than three decades in business. It won a Small Business of the Year award from the local chamber of commerce in 1997. As senior HR consultant, Bob draws on a master's degree in public administration from the University of Missouri and a strong grounding in organizational behavior.

His earlier roles included Air Force captain, training director at USAA, HR manager at St. Joseph Hospital, state training coordinator for Missouri and staff director at the Missouri Public Service Commission. He is known for inventive answers to people and business challenges.

Doris Scribner serves as president. She is a Senior Professional in Human Resources certified through HRCI and also holds a SHRM certification. She has consulted and mentored with the firm for over thirteen years, concentrating on compliance and HR training, smoothing onboarding and facilitating groups. Before joining, she spent a decade doing administrative and community work with faith-based nonprofits in Russia, and she is fluent in Russian. She chaired the board of Voices, a Columbia women's networking group, in 2021-2022.

Prospective clients should note the firm's longevity, its blend of compliance expertise with performance and leadership development, and its conviction that many performance troubles stem from flawed systems rather than flawed people. It invites interested businesses to begin with an informal coffee meeting.

JobFinders Employment Services is a women-owned staffing and recruiting firm based in Missouri. It has worked with employers across the state for more than thirty years. Its main markets are Columbia, Jefferson City and Moberly, and it has an office in each city. It works with employers that need extra staff, whether for a short busy period or for a permanent position.

Staffing and Recruiting Options

Employers can choose from several kinds of hiring arrangements, so they can match each role to the right model. The firm's services include:

• Temporary and seasonal staffing for busy periods
• Temp-to-hire placements, so an employer can try out a worker before hiring them permanently
• Direct hire placement for permanent jobs
• Professional recruiting for skilled and specialized positions
• Short- and long-term contract assignments
• Managed services and on-site staffing programs for larger workforce needs

Industries Served

JobFinders names seven areas where its recruiters have the most experience: manufacturing, distribution and warehousing, business operations, engineering, call centers, medical and nursing, and administrative and clerical work. This means it can fill both industrial and production jobs and office, technical and healthcare roles.

How the Firm Works With Clients

JobFinders describes itself as a partner to employers rather than just a supplier of workers. It uses a three-step process. In the discovery step, recruiters learn about the employer's business, its open positions and its hiring challenges. They use this information to attract suitable candidates and to present the employer well to job seekers.

In the recruiting step, the team searches many sources and referral networks for candidates. It then screens them and gives the employer a short list in an easy-to-review format. In the placement step, the chosen candidate starts work. The firm also checks back with the employer afterward to make sure the hire is working out.

JobFinders also offers some HR support beyond finding candidates. It can help with training, drug screening, payroll and other HR tasks. This may appeal to smaller companies that do not have a full in-house HR team.

Background and Client Relationships

The firm has kept some clients for a long time. A director of HR operations at AAF Flanders says the company has used JobFinders for professional hiring since the 1990s and for general staffing since 2011. A human resources manager at Dura Automotive says JobFinders is the only temp agency they have used.

Dura Automotive has used the firm for direct hire placements since 1995 and for temporary staff since 2004. For buyers in central Missouri, JobFinders offers a choice of hiring arrangements, local offices and recruiting experience across several industries.

StaffedUp is a Columbia, Missouri, company that makes applicant tracking and hiring software. It is a software vendor, not a staffing agency or an HR consulting firm. Its customers are employers with high turnover who need to fill frontline jobs again and again.

The product began as a tool for the restaurant business, and restaurants and hospitality are still its main focus. Buyers who need help with ongoing recruiting can use it to post openings, screen applicants and bring new hires on board without having to hire an outside recruiter.

Background

The company says it was started by people who ran restaurants and who had dealt with constant staff churn themselves. A local newspaper profile names the co-founders as Billy Giordano and Jeremy Phillips, both from Missouri. Business listings give a founding year of 2015 and describe a small team based in Columbia.

StaffedUp says the platform cuts the time it takes to hire and brings in more applicants. One customer quote on its site comes from an operator with seven restaurants who uses the software at every location.

Products and features

The platform covers the whole hiring process. Employers write a job listing once and the system sends it to large job boards such as Indeed and Google Jobs. The software can also post openings to social networks automatically. Applicants answer screening questions, and filters that the employer sets remove people who don't meet the requirements.

A feature called SmartMatch uses AI to score applicants on their availability, their answers and an automated review, then puts the strongest matches first. The main tools are:

• Job posting to many job boards at once, plus social media posting
• Customizable applicant screening and SmartMatch scoring
• Automated hiring steps and interview scheduling
• Recorded one-way video interviews
• Paperless onboarding for new employees
• Invite-to-apply messages for well-matched job seekers
• Staff management that restarts recruiting when an employee leaves
• Integrations with other business software

Multi-location employers and industries

For businesses with more than one site, StaffedUp offers an enterprise version. It lets a company manage hiring centrally for anywhere from two locations to more than two thousand, with access levels set by role. Besides restaurants and hospitality, the company lists these industries: cannabis, education and child care, convenience stores and grocery, retail and customer service, fitness and beauty, health and wellness, construction, recreation and entertainment, and nonprofits.

How it works with clients

Employers can sign up and post a job themselves without signing a long-term contract, or they can book a guided demo first. StaffedUp also runs a monthly live training webinar on hiring, publishes case studies and a blog for employers, and offers a free AI job description writer.

Job seekers get free tools too, including job search with matching, an application tracker, interview booking, onboarding paperwork and an AI resume builder. Because both employers and applicants use the same platform, StaffedUp suits businesses that want a self-service hiring system more than ones looking for hands-on HR consulting.