HR Companies & HR Consultants in Cookeville, TN

Headquartered in Cookeville, Tennessee, DP Personnel Services has provided labor to businesses throughout the Highlands and Upper Cumberland area since its incorporation in 1999. Ownership and management remain in local hands. Organizations turn to the agency when they need assistance with recruiting, payroll processing and other workforce matters but prefer not to maintain a sizable internal human resources staff. Its customer base includes both small companies and manufacturing operations, and it also serves area residents who are searching for employment.

Staffing and HR Services

At its core, the firm connects screened applicants with employers that have positions to fill, and it offers a variety of arrangements for doing so.

A company might need help for a limited period, want to evaluate someone on the job before extending a permanent position, require contract workers on a continuing basis, or simply want a recruiter to locate a permanent hire.

For individuals it places, DP serves as the legal employer, taking responsibility for workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, federal tax deductions and the accompanying payroll filings. Businesses can also arrange a consultation with the agency's team to determine which forms of HR assistance suit them best.

• Short-term assignments and trial-to-permanent placements
• Contract workforce solutions
• Permanent placement recruiting
• Payroll processing and tax deductions
• Workers' compensation and unemployment insurance for assigned staff
• Applicant vetting, including background reviews and drug screening
• Human resources advisory services

Screening Process

Before any applicant is introduced to a client, the agency runs a multi-stage evaluation. The company states that this involves multiple interviews, testing of job-related abilities, verification of references and history, and drug screening. Standards are tailored to the particular needs of each customer, which means employers are presented with people who fit the qualifications they specified.

Assigned workers can enroll in an entry-level health plan designed to satisfy the minimum requirements of the Affordable Care Act, and they may also be connected with an insurance agent who can assist with marketplace coverage.

Industries Served

The agency has concentrated most heavily on manufacturing and quality support, with automotive factories representing a particularly important segment. Beyond that, it has supplied personnel for warehouse operations, food service, construction, electrical support, quality control and clerical work. By its own count, DP has completed in excess of 5,000 placements and generated more than twenty million dollars in cumulative sales. The company adds that certain contract workers have remained with one customer for considerably longer than ten years.

Leadership and Team

Frank Harrell established the business and continues to own it and act as its president. Earlier in his career he directed the basketball program at Tennessee Tech, and today he holds the position of associate athletics director there. His other ventures include real estate development, residential construction, restaurants and a company that performs quality inspections.

Day-to-day operations are overseen by office manager Katrina "Kay" Cockrill, who previously worked for a decade supervising quality in the automotive industry, where she also sat on a safety committee. She came to DP in 2005 as assistant manager and was promoted to manager in 2012.

Meshel Williams, who has served as recruiter since 2015, earned a degree in business management and has experience across retail, clerical and manufacturing environments. Cathie Johnson, the firm's secretary, spent many years leading teams in direct sales.

Prospective clients may find DP Personnel appealing because of its hometown ownership and its decades of presence in the Cookeville area. The agency attributes its competitive rates to modest operating expenses and its approach to workers' compensation, which it believes can lower labor costs for smaller businesses. Every customer receives a staffing plan designed around its needs, and the firm places strong emphasis on maintaining personal connections with the people it employs and the companies it serves.

Manpower Cookeville is the local branch of Manpower, a staffing and workforce solutions brand within the ManpowerGroup family, which also includes Experis and Talent Solutions. The Cookeville office serves employers in the Upper Cumberland region that need workers on short notice or for the long term. It also helps local job seekers find seasonal, temporary and permanent roles.

Manpower has worked in employment for more than seven decades, and the brand says it works with a large number of small and mid-sized organizations every year, along with bigger enterprises.

Staffing Models for Employers

Manpower offers several ways to engage talent, so a business can match the arrangement to its demand. Its main staffing options are:

• Project staffing for both short and extended initiatives that need skilled people for a set period
• Flexible staffing to scale headcount up or down as workloads change
• Onsite management, where a dedicated Manpower team recruits, develops and oversees a client's contingent workforce at the client's location
• Direct hire for employers who want permanent employees, drawing on the firm's community network of candidates
• Manufacturing workforce programs designed around a plant's specific labor needs

Specialized Practices

On top of general staffing, Manpower runs three specialty practices. Manpower Engineering finds engineering talent for sectors as varied as retail and healthcare. Manpower Finance uses dedicated search consultants to recruit accounting and finance professionals in volume. Manpower Skilled Technical focuses on the technicians who run, monitor and maintain automated equipment in modern manufacturing. The brand says its recruiters know the skill requirements of each sector, and it serves more than ten industries, including transportation, logistics, engineering and financial services.

How the Firm Works With Clients

Manpower says it gets to know each worker's preferences and performance so it can match candidates on fit, not just on resume keywords. It builds workforce strategies for each client and measures results so it can keep improving its approach. Employers can submit staffing requests through online forms, and the company says a local representative typically replies within a day. The firm describes its approach as pairing HR technology with personal attention from its talent agents and recruiters.

Worker Development and Retention

A key part of Manpower's offer to employers is its investment in the people it places. Its MyPath program gives associates skills assessments, education options and full tuition coverage to help them grow in their careers. Active associates can also take online courses, e-learning and personalized career coaching.

Other initiatives include a Mature Worker Program, an Academy of Advanced Manufacturing and programs that build skills among underserved populations. Candidates can manage assignments and applications through the My Manpower mobile app.

For HR buyers comparing providers, the Cookeville branch combines local recruiting with the resources of a global workforce company, and its training programs are meant to improve worker readiness and retention.

NEXT HR Consulting and Mediation, LLC is a Cookeville, Tennessee firm that combines human resources consulting with mediation. It works with employers across Tennessee and also takes on clients outside the state. Its aim is to help organizations run their day-to-day operations more smoothly, lift productivity and strengthen how engaged their people are. Alongside its work for organizations, the firm also mediates civil disputes, so individuals as well as businesses can use its services.

Who it serves

The firm is set up for two kinds of employer. The first is a company that already has an internal HR team and wants outside help for extra capacity or specialist skills. The second is a business with no full-time HR staff that needs an experienced HR professional it can call on when issues come up.

For both groups, NEXT HR offers training and ongoing support. It also takes on one-off special projects for clients that need focused help without adding headcount.

Services offered

The firm lists a wide range of HR services, covering compliance, people development and operations:

• Team building: workshops and coaching based on Myers-Briggs (MBTI) instruments, led by a certified MBTI practitioner
• Compliance: training on anti-harassment, respectful workplace conduct, OSHA topics and equal employment opportunity, plus HR audits
• Leadership development: coaching and training programs for managers and leaders
• Conflict resolution: employee and labor relations matters, plus labor negotiations, mediation by a Tennessee mediator and workplace investigations
• Organizational culture: managing change and raising employee engagement
• Process improvement: Lean and Six Sigma methods to streamline workflows, backed by data analytics
• 360-degree feedback: running multi-rater feedback and recommending next steps
• Talent acquisition: recruiting support, such as standing in for employers when recruiting on college campuses
• Health and safety: support with workers' compensation claims and meeting safety rules

How it works with clients

NEXT HR tailors each engagement to the client instead of selling fixed packages. Every training program, culture project or compliance review is designed around the client's situation and tied to its strategic goals.

Clients can use the firm the way they would use an on-call HR advisor, bringing it in for specific needs such as a workplace investigation, a leadership program or a hiring push. Standard business hours are weekdays during the Central time workday, and meetings outside those hours can be arranged by appointment.

What sets it apart

For buyers comparing HR consultants, the firm's main difference is that it offers HR advisory work and formal dispute resolution under one roof. Having a Tennessee mediator, labor negotiation experience and workplace investigation services in the same practice can help employers dealing with employee disputes or labor relations issues.

Its MBTI certification and Lean/Six Sigma process work also mean it can cover team dynamics and operational efficiency, not just policy and compliance. This makes it a fit for employers in Tennessee and elsewhere that want one outside partner for a wide range of HR needs.

Operating a branch in Cookeville, Tennessee, Qualified Staffing is a recruiting and employment agency that serves two groups: businesses seeking hourly or salaried personnel, and individuals searching for work. Launched in 1988, the organization runs its corporate operations out of Flint, Michigan.

Its footprint has since expanded to over 40 locations spread across Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and other states. Within Tennessee, job seekers and businesses can find it in both Cookeville and Chattanooga. By the company's own count, more than 300,000 individuals have landed jobs through the agency since its founding.

Hiring Solutions for Businesses

Companies have a range of engagement options, spanning everything from brief, stopgap assistance to a full handoff of the hiring function. The core offerings are:

• Temporary placements that fill gaps created by employee leave, peak demand periods or limited-duration assignments
• Temp-to-hire arrangements that let a business evaluate someone's on-the-job performance before extending a permanent offer
• Direct placement, in which the agency locates and vets applicants, bills only after a successful hire and backs each placement with a replacement guarantee
• Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) for organizations preferring that an external partner manage their entire recruiting operation
• On-site vendor management, which stations a coordinator at the client's facility to oversee worker requests, payroll, training and disciplinary matters for sizable temporary crews
• Payroll services, under which the agency serves as employer of record and takes responsibility for paychecks, tax deductions, unemployment and workers' compensation insurance

Industries and Positions

The agency concentrates its efforts on factory and warehouse work, office support, school staffing, and white-collar and leadership hiring. For production and distribution clients, it supplies assemblers, CNC and machine operators, welders, material handlers, order pickers and warehouse personnel. In office settings, it places front-desk receptionists, executive and legal assistants, customer service and call center representatives, and collections specialists.

School districts turn to it for teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, cafeteria and nutrition employees, and maintenance workers. Its higher-level searches span accounting, finance, HR, sales, law and executive leadership. Most of the client endorsements featured online come from manufacturers, including producers of carpet, furniture and motor vehicles, as well as from logistics firms and building-materials suppliers.

Affiliated Businesses

Qualified Staffing operates within a larger family of firms. Qualified Professional & Technical sources engineers, skilled tradespeople and other scarce technical talent for contract or permanent roles. STSI furnishes engineering personnel nationwide to the energy, utility, life sciences and food manufacturing sectors. Myticas Consulting finds IT, telecommunications and ERP professionals throughout North America.

Experience and Distinguishing Features

According to the company, its management team averages upward of 12 years of staffing experience. Leaders have earned credentials from the American Staffing Association, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Society for Human Resource Management. Workplace safety receives particular emphasis, with training programs designed to cut down on on-the-job injuries and missed workdays.

Through an initiative called Q-Connect, the agency maintains ongoing communication with the people it places, aiming to keep them content in their roles and lower attrition. Temporary employees are also eligible for benefits. The company reports that a typical client relationship lasts a decade or longer.

Consideration, honesty, excellence, a focus on solutions and teamwork make up its published core values, and it notes that local branch employees reside in the same communities where they work.

Wise Staffing Group is a workforce solutions firm that connects employers with both hourly laborers and candidates seeking long-term careers. The organization is headquartered in Mississippi and operates a regional branch network throughout the Southeast, one location of which serves Cookeville, Tennessee.

Although the firm presents itself as a comprehensive human resources partner, its core business is placing people in jobs. It handles temporary assignments as well as direct-hire placements.

As a result, it suits businesses that must add personnel on short notice, that need support ramping up for peak periods, or that want to fill permanent openings without managing the entire recruiting process internally.

History and size

The company opened its doors in 1987 and has now been in business for well over thirty years. During that span it has expanded to roughly 60 locations that operate under four distinct banners: a general staffing brand, an industrial labor brand, a professional recruiting and management brand, and a separately incorporated healthcare staffing company.

According to the firm, all locations adhere to a uniform set of operating practices. In practical terms, a client served by one neighborhood office can expect the same quality expectations applied elsewhere in the network. Service to clients is a central theme for the organization, which focuses on keeping customers stocked with dependable, vetted personnel.

Sectors covered

Wise Staffing Group sources talent for a variety of fields, concentrating largely on physical, high-volume work environments. Its primary areas of focus are:

• Industrial and production work, such as assembly lines and distribution centers
• Hotels, restaurants and other hospitality operations
• Contact centers and administrative support
• Building and construction trades
• Healthcare and clinical settings, served by the group's dedicated medical staffing arm

Approach with client businesses

Companies may engage the firm to cover a vacancy lasting only a few days or to grow a sizable team gradually. Testimonials published by the company illustrate this range. Certain businesses turned to Wise when an unexpected staffing shortfall arose, while others relied on it to bulk up headcount ahead of a peak period.

A manufacturing client credited the firm with filling first-shift and overnight positions during a period of expanding output. A different customer reported that Wise sourced upward of 50 suitable applicants for a single initiative.

Customers further note that the firm's representatives stay in frequent touch with facility supervisors, react promptly to requests, and pass along regional workforce insights, including prevailing wage levels and hiring patterns. Guidance of this sort can help a business offer pay that attracts applicants.

Resources for candidates and placed employees

Applicants can browse openings and submit applications through the company's web-based job listings. Those already on assignment have access to a dedicated portal for updating their personal records. The firm also advertises health and wellness benefit options available to both client companies and applicants. Wise reports that the majority of its openings are full-time, a point of interest for employers hoping to reduce turnover and retain staff over the long run.

Distinguishing factors

Organizations in the Upper Cumberland region weighing staffing and HR vendors may value the combination of a nearby office backed by a multistate network. The firm brings decades of experience and covers industrial labor, clerical support and healthcare placement within a single organization.

Businesses named among its customers include Mayfield Consumer Products, Pilgrim's Pride, MTD Products, FXI, Dippin' Dots and Hoosier Wheel. The company's emphasis is on filling positions rather than on HR advisory work, payroll administration or regulatory guidance. Employers seeking handbook development, HR assessments or workforce training will likely need to engage an additional consultant alongside Wise.