Kim Smitz

Kim Smitz believes in setting up temp workers for long-term success. This led her to form high-volume staffing specialist KNA Solutions in 2017. The next year it had $48 million in revenue.

The company has hired more than 4,000 workers for the Tesla Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada, and another 3,000 people for Tesla’s 98 locations in the US and Canada, which include retail stores, delivery centers and service centers. The company is also building out a high-volume hiring software platform.

For Smitz, it is about empowering the temporary worker. For example, she found they often worked temporary jobs because they couldn’t get past interviews to be directly hired. To help them, KNA pays for a professional career coach to provide interview skills training.

“Whether they are getting converted by our client or not, we’re putting them in the market with skills they didn’t have before,” Smitz says.

Smitz, now based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, started in recruiting at a law firm. Eventually, she joined Beeline at its MSP while the company was still part of The Adecco Group. From there, she moved to Amazon.com, where she ultimately managed its staffing providers — and noticed that while many firms said they did high-volume staffing, none specialized in it. That led her to Chewy, which hired Smitz to organize its high-volume hiring program. She founded KNA after Chewy was acquired by PetSmart.