Marilou Myrick has seen the business world from the vantage point of employee, business executive and, most recently, as owner of ProResource Inc., an executive staffing firm headquartered in Cleveland.
She talks openly about her experience as a woman in business and her perceptions on how things have change for women in the business world. Although she doesn’t want to stereotype, Myrick believes that women’s presence in the workplace has forced employers to become more flexible. Women’s childcare responsibilities, as well as the death of the tradition of staying with the same company for an entire career, has resulted in both genders expecting more work flexibility.
Myrick admits, “There is certainly a little more stability to a traditional job,” but for those with depth of expertise, maturity and an ability to handle problematic situations, temporary project work can be the answer.
A lack of job security often hits women hardest.
“It’s very difficult to work today’s multiple-hour, constant-stress, high-pressure deadline kind of job and be the person who has 90 plus percent, or in some cases 100 percent, of the child care, the home maintenance,” Myrick says.
But this doesn’t just apply to women any more.
“More and more people are looking at life value issues, like traveling five days a week. More people are learning that in sacrificing too much, they risk other, very important aspects of their life,” says Myrick.
Myrick saw employer flexibility coming years ago. As one of the first talent acquisition firms in the country focusing on the futuristic idea of renting highly specialized upper management executives, her company met with skepticism. Not until the last few years have organizations recognized the need for more elasticity and come to value their human capital as a means to change direction and stay competitive.
Myrick has developed the art of understanding behavior and culture and of matching personality with skills to meet her customers’ immediate expectations. Understanding that it is people who respond to change and people who plan and build, she has made a business of understanding people, thousands of them.
Myrick has grown her staff to 25 resource professionals who provide contract management and professional staffing nationwide. In 1996, the National Association of Women Business Owners recognized her as one of the Top 20 Women Business Owners in Northeast Ohio. ProResource was also an Ernst and Young regional finalist for the Entrepreneur Of The Year Award and was twice honored as a Weatherhead 100 company.
Myrick’s company can place a middle manager into a firm in five to seven days and an executive in two to four weeks, depending on the obscurity of the skill set required. Even with a strong economy and record low unemployment, she is able to find experienced business professionals who want more options.
Women who want flexibility have the skills to fit many of her clients’ needs. As Myrick explains, “Success at an executive level is 90 percent behavioral.”
There are just as many styles as there are approaches to problem solving, and although she’s hesitant to make broad, gender-related statements, Myrick says women are naturally good listeners, something that comes less from genetic programming than from cultural conditioning.
“What that means in a business situation, I think, is that we are probably a little less likely to come into a situation with a preconceived notion about what the ideal solution is… before we’ve listened … I think we tend to be more collaborative in coming up with solutions,” says Myrick.
So she reaches out to the “fixers,” the traditional risk-takers driven by outcome, and offers them challenges. But she acknowledges that things have changed for women in the business world.
“Within the early days of my career, I believed that I needed to act like a man in order to be successful. And in the big business environment I was in at that time, that was probably pretty close to the truth,” she says.
The stereotype of women only wearing dark suits and ties, walking tough and using swear words was more or less true.
“We tried to act like the guys, and most of us learned that it was not only not doable, but very unsatisfying,” Myrick says.
A lot has changed, and she chalks it up to maturity.
“Maturity comes through a series of experiences, and we all have had our rough edges knocked off through experience one way or another,” says Myrick.
With those experiences comes a clarification process that Myrick says has many women asking themselves, “What is integrity for me … and what am I not willing to do anymore?”
Instead of women conforming to the business world, the business world seems to be learning to work with the needs of women. For Myrick, that is good for business. She predicts that in 10 years, short-term staffing will be more widely accepted, in part because men and women are no longer willing to sacrifice everything for their jobs.
Instead, their new attitude is, “My loyalty should be to my portfolio,” she says. How to reach: ProResource Inc., (216) 579-1515 or www.proresource.com
Deborah Garofalo ([email protected]) is associate editor of SBN Magazine
