"Be the best version of yourself- Stop comparing yourself to others and focus on your life, relationships, and career"
Kelli Christina Tweet
As a woman in today’s world, Kelli Christina attributes her success to her hard work, education and determination. With 20 years of specialized medical recruiting experience and 10 years in business management, she is currently the CEO, owner, and director of recruiting for KD-Staffing. Ms. Christina created KD-Staffing on the idea that “recruiting is an art.” She has perfected her skills in this “art” through a number of managerial and leadership positions since the start of her career; she became a restaurant manager and a boss at nineteen years old.
Before she started a career in recruiting, Ms. Christina obtained a bachelor’s degree in business, hotel and restaurant management from the University of North Texas. With 30 years of career experience, her advice to younger generations of women entering the workforce is to remember the importance of education. She also advises them to be strong-willed and never give up.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Kelli Christina: KD-Staffing was founded in 2007 for permanent medical professionals, and we are a contingency staffing firm. We tend to stay specialized and focused on permanent staffing for our hospitals and medical practices. We staff all nursing departments, nursing managers, directors, mid-levels, and/or “hard to fill” positions.
KD-Staffing was founded in 2007 in medical staffing with idea that “Recruitment Is an Art;” And finding the right job opportunities for the right person is essential in today’s market. Nothing Is more fulfilling than becoming part of a team with similar interests, and an organization that values its employees.
KD-Staffing is a contingency healthcare recruitment firm that focuses on permanent medical staffing. Every healthcare organization deserves the best when it comes to staffing. Medical professionals are the engine that keeps the facility going. Our Team Members are experts when it comes to placing medical professionals into progressive programs within their specialties and passions.
This is a highly recommended permanent medical staffing company with a Healthcare Leadership award 2019. Our medical professionals are seeking new jobs nationwide. If you are a healthcare or hospital organization seeking full-time and permanent staffing for all departments in nursing, we would love to hear from you. We offer fair and affordable rates to our clients.
Getting the right permanent staff to run an organization can sometimes be challenging. There is a need to hire people who are enthusiastic about their work, and at the same time very professional, exceptional, and fit the job description. Some hospitals or healthcare organizations may not be able to manage the rigorous hiring processes. KD-Staffing knows exactly the kind of staff a hospital organization needs to ensure everything works smoothly.
As the CEO of KD-Staffing, my career background includes 22 years in recruitment and the medical industry, and ten years prior in restaurant management. My corporate background in recruitment included running the travel divisions prior to opening KD-Staffing in 2007.
In 2018, I opened a second company called “KDC-Making a Difference, LLC” which is current day books and public speaking. I am a proud international best-selling author of my second book “Riding the Executive Roller Coaster-Medical Staffing cases.”
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Kelli Christina: For over a decade, the medical industry has often categorized me as a “medical lobbyist” and leader in the industry. I have worked part-time with government affairs and issues including advocating more fair laws and fighting corruption, obeying laws and bad business practices. I am happy and proud to release some of my government work to the public in “Riding the Executive Roller Coaster-Medical Staffing Cases.”
The internationally best-selling book received 4 Trifecta awards in four countries including an international impact book award through ABC-15. The book has been labeled a crime drama, memoir, notebook, and real-life story with fictional characters.
It is always an honor to release a best-selling book based on your own life story and my personal legal team was forced to defend issues in this country. My second book was written as an inspirational testimonial book. For a period of two years, I was begged and begged about selling original copies of a 225-page litigation book delivered to the White House in early 2018.
Channel 11 news Texas followed me for around three years on this story. I cannot sell the original copies. “Riding the Executive Roller Coaster-Medical Staffing Cases” tells the story. It is a book about lawsuits, court cases, broken laws, including multiple attorneys, courthouses, the Texas Attorney General, Washington DC, FBI, and government officials. It is also a life story and pieces of my life story from 2010 to 2018 and my industry. Why regulate the staffing industry with more fair laws? Read the book. Its fictional characters are based on real court records, public records, and office drama that goes down badly.
What advice do you wish you received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Kelli Christina: In the matter of staffing, we are in the business of taking care of people and setting them up for success. Our first quarter at KD-Staffing will be focused on planning our business and working relationships; Business relationships are imperative for building sales and success. Whether we are overseeing our clients and their priories and/or needs or managing our employees in the interviewing and onboarding process, then both sides involve business relationships.
I built and designed a training program for a recruitment staff called “Recruitment Is an Art.” It is built upon my own insight, sales success, and knowledge of training professionals with phone jobs. Sales awards include effective calls and managing your desks successfully. A most challenging question for recruiters and sales professionals:
How do you manage your calls to be highly productive with fewer calls? You can crank calls all day and every day but are they strategic calls and can you keep people engaged with your calls? KD-Staffing will focus on more dedicated training in the upcoming year. Success starts with effective training for your team.
The last couple of years has been most challenging in areas of staffing. Stronger leaders are geared towards forward-thinking, effective planning, and changing strategies with modern times and the latest trends. “Out of the box thinking” and new plans build longer-term businesses that can withstand years and decades. Never be afraid to make effective changes and fix problems with the times.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Kelli Christina: KD-Staffing changed into a “work from home” staffing company in 2016 and we were able to adjust with the current trends in earlier stages. Staffing storages nationwide are a problem for many companies; my own team is more minimized current day.
Newer technologies include the ability to outsource more work through outside companies and outsource employees. The modern-day internet offers outside resources to get the “job done” while sometimes changing up plans. Smart planners will investigate and educate themselves on the newer trend outsource companies that generate sales and business.
As a CEO of a staffing company, I often stop to research all new organizations, job boards, lead generations, affiliations, and effective ways to reach out to people with changing times and techniques. Go “above and beyond,” change with the times, and keep going one day or week at a time and never give up.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Kelli Christina: I am an author for two books current day. My books often represent politics, making a difference and my part time government work for over a decade in this country. I have been labeled a mysterious female often and a female leader that often works in private with government officials with a common goal in mind: Positive change and the betterment for our future.
My first book is about government, and it is a blogging project that I worked on part-time in 2015 and 2016. If you ever want to know what topics I have represented in this country with government officials since 2013? The topics are in the book. “Togetherness: People’s Ideas for the Common People.” This book could be called a campaign book, but it has a unique beauty. I took two years to interview other people on future ideas and areas of improvement needed in this country. Some of these ideas have already been used in this country to make a difference. Other ideas would require that I win a future election.
My second book “Riding the Executive Roller Coaster-Medical Staffing Cases” is an international best-selling book. This book has had many names: novel, memoir, crime drama, soap opera, inspirational testimonial- ABC 15 gave this book another International Impact award 2021.
Thank you for the formal book review from BookTrib 2021. “Riding the Executive Roller Coaster: Medical Staffing Cases” Encompasses Every High and Low of Professional Growth by Jim Alkon| July 28th, 2021|Nonfiction, Nonfiction – Featured It was the middle of the night. She was homeless at the time. She was at a Greyhound station in Kansas City, had no ticket for her next trip, and was thrown out of the warm terminal and into a January blizzard. Below-zero temperatures.
No hat, gloves, or scarf. It was the low point in Katheryn’s up and down journey from professional success to survival to putting her life back together, detailed meticulously in Kelli Christina’s “novel,” Riding the Executive Roller Coaster: Medical Staffing Cases. The word “novel” is in quotes because the book traces the exploits of a fictional character, Katheryn. But this book is the story of the author in every detail — her ambitions, her victories, challenges, defeats, and determination to make a difference.
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF CAREER GROWTH The work is not so much about the medical staffing cases noted in the book’s subtitle as it is a memoir of the long and difficult road traveled by Christina. She is a bubbly, charismatic professional with medical recruiting and business management experience and a dream to start her own medical recruiting staffing company.
The book, says the author, “covers the trials and tribulations of professional offices at their highest and lowest moments. The consequences of handling business and professional issues in the wrong manner or even illegally can escalate and destroy many lives along the way.” But to get there is to understand the author’s personal story.
Katheryn did start her own recruitment company, but shortly thereafter a recession hit, leading her to join forces with another existing recruitment organization. She experienced sales success, but her time there was clouded by office politics and trying to play the caring employee to so many needy staff members. In fact, one of the managers took her in as her “best friend” and used Katheryn to help advance her social life and find her dates.
Eventually, an affair between that office manager and a short-term staff member blew up the office, making it more of an ugly soap opera than a respectable business. Katheryn blew the whistle on the matter, and as a result, was forced to quit. Lawsuits ensued and her hefty commission check was withheld.
THE STRUGGLES THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS Katheryn had to struggle for years. Her experience in restaurant management gained her some employment, but this proud woman hit the depths of despair and scrambled at times for a roof over her head or a means of transportation.
Eventually, she committed to a greater goal — exposing fraud and corruption in recruiting practices in the medical and healthcare fields, sending letters to thousands of hospitals, and traveling to Washington, D.C., to make her case to top government officials. Follow this incredible roller coaster journey of a woman who never gave up and against all odds was able to reconstruct her life. Buy this book!
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Kelli Christina: 2020,2021 and 2022 have been challenging and questionable years for everyone involved. I have temperature checked a lot of people. Circumstances and daily routines changed drastically with statistically overwhelming business challenges. People’s emotions and stress levels are riding high. Lots of unpredictable and unfortunate events. Personally, I was able to remain more positive and calmer through these years because my life story was worse 10 years ago. What does not kill you in life will always make you bigger, better, and stronger after you pull out of disaster.
I have taken these years to look around and think about all the smaller things in life that we often take for granted. I personally focus on gratitude to help maintain a positive lifestyle. What is gratitude anyways? It is shifting into daily focus on all the things that we can be happy about even if it requires a list. Does that mean that there are no life problems, or do you ignore problems? Absolutely not. We are forced to work on problems in life, but your entire day and routine cannot be focused on all the negatives that come along with problems.
Besides God, Church, and Faith my entire life? I joined a life program 17 years ago complete with a life coach. What am I doing in a life program? Learning day by day, week by week, and year by year “how to be a better person.” Does it work? YES. Does it mean life becomes perfect? NO. You are given the basic skills to manage life’s problems with better choices and longer-term relationships.
I have spent a lot of time the last couple of years coaching people on the “do what it takes” philosophy during a monetary crisis because the economy is tough out there. I have coached a lot of people into taking part-time jobs to ride through inflation, economy, and now recession days.
Is it easy sometimes to accept part-time jobs, accept jobs in which you are overqualified, or take jobs through budgetary crisis to help? Or is easier to sit around and worry about an empty bank account and losing everything? “Doing what it takes” sometimes requires that you lose humility, pride, and move forward with extra jobs until the golden paycheck or better times come back. It can be a highly effective mindset through challenging times and “doing what it takes” is not always labeled an easy path. But is it effective and YES.
What does “success” in the year to come mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Kelli Christina: When I can lead a team and we can all win together then I am the happiest. For me personally then the world is not just about me personally but the people and team that surround me. When we win our sales awards, beat the competition, and celebrate success after we achieved results? Those are my happiest moments. I love to celebrate success but after we achieve results.
People are my primary motivator. God, faith, love, support, health, relationships, friends, family, business connections and fun moments are all the things in life that money cannot buy. Success, money, awards are wonderful and secondary for happiness. Defining true success means you can have both sides in life.
Be the best version of yourself- Stop comparing yourself to others and focus on your life, relationships, and career. Learn how to set a good example in life. As a spiritual life progresses, then you lose the spirit of materialism, and you learn to be grateful for “what you have” in this world.
Win your success “doing the right things” in business while practicing honesty, integrity, transparency and having fun with your career and life. Life is too short not to enjoy.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Kelli Christina for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Kelli Christina or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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