First Staffing Group’s Juliana Bojorquez on How Preparation Powers Expansion

Juliana Bojorquez, CEO, transformed from a receptionist in a staffing agency to building First Staffing Group into a thriving enterprise, with five locations serving Southern California and Texas in just five years. In this episode of Humans of Staffing, she reveals how reaching a career ceiling at previous employers sparked her entrepreneurial journey, the specific methodologies behind her rigorous client qualification process, and how maintaining financial reserves helped her company navigate the volatile 2020-2024 business climate when many competitors struggled with cash flow. 

With 15 years of industry experience before launching her own agency during the pandemic, Juliana walks Sammy and TJ through her unique approach to leadership where she remains available to her team 24/7, the importance of professional presentation in an increasingly casual industry, and how her comprehensive pre-sales process includes researching X-mod ratings to eliminate high-risk prospects before making initial contact. She also shares insights on current immigration policy impacts on the labor market, particularly in agriculture where some clients have reduced operations from seven days to four due to workforce shortages.

Topics Discussed:

• The challenges of maintaining staffing agency growth through rigorous client pre-qualification rather than pursuing any available opportunity, and a methodology of canvassing areas, running X-mod reports through workers' comp, and researching prospects before initial contact to eliminate high-risk accounts.
• The evolution of pricing strategies in the staffing industry as unsustainable markup compression threatens stability, and the need for industry-wide standardization based on workers' comp codes while refusing to work with clients seeking only the lowest possible rates.
• How strategic financial reserves function as both safety net and growth engine for staffing agencies via implementing cash policies that enable self-funding payroll when credit limits are reached.
• The competitive advantage of maintaining professional standards in an increasingly casual industry, including creating immediate credibility through consistent branded attire at every client interaction, establishing clear business boundaries that lead to higher-quality relationships.
• Navigating the operational impacts of immigration policy shifts across the staffing supply chain, such as produce suppliers reducing from seven-day to four-day operations due to upstream agricultural labor shortages affecting downstream logistics clients.
• The implementation of targeted sales team structures where high-performing branch managers share sales responsibilities rather than dedicated representatives, allowing maintenance of growth through relationship-based selling even during economic volatility.
• Using data-driven candidate sourcing strategies to overcome technology limitations, including critical inefficiencies in current platforms that lack proper qualification capabilities and waste hundreds in ad spend on fundamentally mismatched candidates for specialized roles.