ENID – When Darren Janes was a teenager, his mother put him to work.
In 1989, Kathy Janes was operating a temporary staffing business out of their home to supplement the family’s income.
“When she got busy in the summer she would have me answer the phone for her,” Darren Janes said. “I might have wanted to go out and play with my friends, but more than anything I wanted to help my mom out.”
Two years after she started the staffing company, the business expanded from the home office into a retail shop.
“When she opened the first location she would hire grandma and me to answer the phone when she went out,” he said.
TPI Staffing Services Inc. now offers permanent and temporary staffing services from its main office at 320 W. Maple in Enid and a second office in Ponca City.
There are seven employees in the Enid office and four employees in the Ponca City office.
“The majority of our business comes from the Enid and Ponca City area, but we have clients all over the state,” Darren Janes said. “We have even provided staffing services in Texas, Missouri and Arkansas.”
Darren took on an expanded role a little more than a year ago. He has lived in Enid all his life except for four years when he was a student at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.
“I came back to the business in 2006,” he said.
When his mother decided to retire, he became president of TPI Staffing Services. Before that he was general manager.
After Darren returned to TPI Staffing, the company added professional staffing services, which required recruiting people from other parts of the country to move to Enid.
“Sometimes it is difficult to recruit people to Enid,” he said. But once people come to northwest Oklahoma and learn about the Enid area, they are often impressed with the cost of living, quality of life and the schools, he said.
“I recruited a woman from New York and she moved here and said ‘I feel safe here,’” he said. “She said she did not know anyone on her hall in New York except the people across from her, but here she knows everyone on her block. It tells you a lot about the people here.”
TPI Staffing has been growing while staffing companies in other parts of the country have suffered along with the economy.
“Being in Oklahoma, we are set pretty well because we are based on the oil and grain business here,” he said. “We might see some highs and lows, but we are pretty steady compared with the East and West coasts.”