A serial-entrepreneur (from BBQ tours to wedding planning), minister (who wrote his thesis on the theology of work) and nonprofit development professional, Chris Chancey collected a lifetime of valuable experience before taking the audacious step of starting Amplio Recruiting, a staffing agency dedicated to placing refugees in jobs.
David Hessekiel: Please tell me a bit about your background and the personal and professional influences that led you to create Amplio Recruiting.
Chris Chancey: My wife and I moved into Clarkston, Georgia completely ignorant of its reputation as the most diverse square mile in the US. We were simply trying to find a house we could afford. That was 2013, the refugee crisis in Syria was intensifying but I could not have defined a refugee at the time, the plight of refugees around the globe much less their wellbeing in the US was not on my radar at all. Then we move into this community and everything changed.
Every trip out of the house to the grocery store or the post office or the library or the park had us coming in direct contact with refugees resettled in our neighborhood from all over the globe. Conversations were awkward at first but eventually we became accustomed to interacting in broken English and hand motions. We began to notice that every conversation ended the same, Mohammad from Iraq, Werga from Sudan, Tesfaye from Eritrea, Abdul from Burma and Khadija from Congo were all asking us to help them find a job. We ended up deciding to launch a for-profit staffing agency to focus entirely on placing refugees into jobs. We had no background in staffing but thought we could figure it out along the way! 8 years later, we've placed over 10K refugees into jobs in cities across the US and we're still trying to figure it out!!
Chris Chancey, CEO and founder of Amplio Recruiting
David Hessekiel: What is the Amplio Recruiting business model?
Chris Chancey: The majority of our clients need entry-level, blue collar talent to fill open jobs where English fluency is not a required necessity. In this case, the employees are on our payroll for 3-6 months and then will go permanent with the company they are working for. We pay them every week and manage the workers comp insurance. Our retention is close to 80% in this model because the refugee workforce is such a motivated and dependable community. Sysco, Albertsons, Hyatt and Advanced Auto Parts are all examples of companies we currently serve. For more professional roles such as admin, finance, project management and software development, we place our candidates directly with companies like Accenture and Delta for a flat fee up front. Refugees with university degrees and English fluency have strong professional experience to offer US companies.
Amplio Recruiting
David Hessekiel: How do you define someone as a refugee and therefore a candidate for working with your company?
Chris Chancey: Anyone who walks into one of our offices around the country looking for a job is a candidate we want to serve. Since our offices are all located within refugee communities around the US, most of the people coming to us fit within the UNHCR definition of a refugee and are authorized to work. We validate their documentation to confirm their status and take time to listen to their story of where they have come from and where they are going. It's a high-touch, deeply relational process no other staffing company is willing to engage in, but it's highly rewarding for our team, our clients and the employees we get to serve.
David Hessekiel: How many people have you placed and what kind of jobs dominate the placements that you make? Any change in that over the years?
Chris Chancey: We've placed over 10K refugees into full-time employment since we launched in 2018. The only way that happens is with an incredible team and thousands of highly motivated and dependable refugees working jobs most of us are unwilling to take and would not last very long in if we did! We're really proud of how we've been able to serve the Afghan refugee community who came to the US on military aircraft last Fall. We've placed over 600 Afghans into blue collar roles and another 25 into professional roles. Many of these men and women served alongside American troops and we're so grateful to be able to help them. However, there are many more thousands of Afghans looking for work, many with professional experience, searching for the right opportunity.
David Hessekiel: There is a great deal of division in this country about refugees. How do you deal with that? Do you find that it is the appeal of your social impact model that generates the most placements or the strength of your business offering?
Chris Chancey: We focus on the economic argument. No one can deny it. For our national economy to continue to move forward, we must make a dent in filling the millions of job openings currently in the market. Refugees are the best kept secret for the US economy as a workforce of highly dependable and motivated individuals with work authorization ready to add value to the local economy. We lead with this argument and then discuss the social impact as the partnership grows.
