Littleton, CO — December 29, 2000 — What’s your definition of the perfect job? The New Year is a good time for resolving to improve your work life. It may even be a necessity now with the slowing high tech economy.

For one person, the perfect job may mean more prestige; for another it means good pay and time off with the kids. Or perhaps it means security in place of plummeting stock options. Staffing experts Maureen Clarry and Kelly Gilmore, founders of the Littleton, Colorado-based CONNECT: The Knowledge Network offer these five tips to help you find what you are looking for in 2001.

1. Control Yourself: Realize you can’t control things like your company’s stock price or bad management. You can control your attitudes, your skills and your response to events. Spend your energy on bettering yourself instead of finger pointing and complaining.
2. Hold On to Your Goals: You are part of many systems: your work system, your family system, your community system. Those systems have goals for you. For instance, your spouse may want you to earn more or your company may want to move you into management. Don’t wait for a mid-life crisis to discover your personal goals are different than the goals your systems have set for you. Consider what you want and establish goals that will make you happy.
3. Let Go: Hold on to your vision, but be flexible in your plans to reach your goals. Don’t worry if things don’t go as expected, because they probably won’t. Let go of ideas that don’t work so you can develop “Plan B”. Ask any happy, successful person ­ it probably took “Plan B” and maybe “Plan C” to get where they were going.
4. Speak Up: You can’t change things out of your control but you can influence them. The influence you have depends on your skills in conflict management, networking, sales, collaboration and communication. Get more from your work life by strengthening these skills.
5. Be Quiet: You have all this information in your head about what you want, what you’re good at, how to behave and skills you want to develop. But that overworked logical part of your brain can’t do it all. Did you ever have the experience of trying to figure something out, but the more you thought about it, the more elusive the answer became? Finally, at 3 a.m. you woke up and said “that’s it!” Call it time out, meditation, contemplation or doing nothing, but be quiet as you plan your career for 2001. Because that’s when it will all come together and you’ll be able to say: “That’s it!”

Maureen Clarry and Kelly Gilmore founded CONNECT: The Knowledge Network in 1993. Both married with children, they had to “let go” and develop “Plan B” upon unexpectedly finding they were both pregnant in their firm’s early days. Calling it the “Get rich slow” plan they coordinated time off and established on-site daycare.

By Angela R. Garber, Working Woman Magazine
November 2000

With a strong desire to control their own destinies, Maureen Clarry and Kelly Gilmore decided to branch out on their own and start a business. What they didn’t realize was just how in control they would have to be.

Ten months after opening Connect: The Knowledge Network, a Colorado-based information technology staffing company, in 1992, both women discovered they were pregnant. For many, the news would have signified a derailment of the self-employment plans, but not for these two. “We like to think of it as the part of the business plan that wasn’t planned,” says Clarry.

Instead of giving up, Clarry and Gilmore went on to create a successful, family-friendly business with 17 employees, a pool of 3,000 independent consultants, and $7 million in revenues.

Before starting Connect, both Clarry and Gilmore had worked together at General Electric, Clarry as a consulting services manager and Gilmore in sales and marketing. They brought with them experience and credibility, and a long list of contacts. Rather than being subjected to stereotyping, first as pregnant women and then as working moms, they garnered a lot of support.

Gilmore finds achieving “balance,” and empowering employees to do the same, a challenge. “Balance is really more of an hourly thing than anything else,” she says. “One hour the kids’ soccer game is more important than the phone call that needs to be returned, but the next hour a high-priority proposal may take precedence over the soccer game. As much as you try to create balance on a lifetime level, it really comes down to a daily and hourly challenge.”

“When we started in 1992, we were in the spare bedroom at Kelly’s house,” Clarry explains, “But when she had the baby, that became the baby’s room, and we moved into my basement.” It was at that time that Connect hired its first employee, a nanny.

“She would stay upstairs with my 3-year-old and the two babies,” says Clarry, noting that she and Gilmore had baby boys just two weeks apart. “That lasted about a year before it started feeling like Grand Central Station at my house, and we knew we had to look for a new space.”

But not just any space would do. The two were determined to hold on to the control they had built over the past two years and to keep their children close to them. “We didn’t even look at typical downtown high-rises,” Clarry states. Instead, they purchased a rundown Victorian home in a redevelopment section of Littleton, Colo. The building had been a private residence, a boarding house, and even a convent in its past lives.

“The thing that attracted us to the 115-year-old house was a detached building in the back that, in the ’50s, the nuns had built and used as a kindergarten,” Clarry says. “When we remodeled, it became on-site day care and the big house was our office space. We felt like we had the best of both worlds.”

They brought their computers, their files, the nanny, and the children, and opened up shop.

By Laurie DiBattista, Staff Writer
September 2000

From the Publisher Denver Business Journal

Though her business headquarters are in a restored Victorian convent in Littleton, Kelly Gilmore doesn’t have to pray for success. She has what high-tech companies in the Denver area sorely needed ­ a network of more than 3,000 information-technology job candidates and self-employed consultants.

The firm she co-founded with Maureen Clarry in 1992, CONNECT: The Knowledge Network, was started on a shoestring. The women pooled their savings and used one laptop computer, two phone lines and a spare bedroom office. They had no clients or consultants at the time.

Since startup, the company has enjoyed an average yearly revenue growth of 32 percent. As it turned out, the women’s vision and timing had been impeccable.

Their IT placement service was ready when the demand for IT professionals soared and more wanted to step out on their own. Gilmore’s advice to CONNECT’s consultants has been to “work for yourself, not by yourself.” She said, “My goal is to help them understand what job and career is right for them.”

Gilmore, 36, also gives pro bono presentations for the local and national business communities about topics such as organizing, hiring and retaining high-tech teams.

She is an instructor for The Data Warehousing Institute, and CONNECT has been recognized as the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year.

By Mary Ann Lemon, Citrus Communications

Littleton, CO (July 2000) ­ CONNECT: The Knowledge Network, an information technology staffing firm, announced today the promotion of Laura Shields to account executive and five new staff members, as follows:

PROMOTION:

Laura Shields, account executive

Shields was recently promoted to account executive from recruiter, and is now responsible for placing IT personnel with client companies and developing new business. She has been in the recruiting field for seven years, previously working as a senior technical recruiter for Convergent Communications and an executive recruiter with Jackson Group International.

NEW STAFF MEMBERS:

Jeanne Lomba, customer service manager

Lomba has been hired as customer services manager, responsible for career development and relations with CONNECT’s consultants, candidates and permanently placed professionals. With 13 years experience in the field, Lomba was formerly director of human resources for JCIT and director of recruiting and career development for Raymond James Consulting. She also served 10 years with Interactive Software Systems as manager of the technical training and consulting department. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences Education.

Michelle Rocke, recruiter

Rocke joins CONNECT as a recruiter, responsible for finding and screening job candidates. She has held responsible positions in Denver’s recruiting industry for seven years, most recently as senior technology recruiter with Convergent Communications. Earlier she was a division director at Robert Half and prior to that she was branch manager of the downtown Manpower office, where she worked for five years.

Donna Ferguson, associate recruiter

Ferguson has joined CONNECT as an associate recruiter, responsible for contacting and interviewing job candidates. She joined CONNECT from Colorado University at Denver, where she was employer relations coordinator responsible for on-campus recruiting and job fairs. Prior to that she was in recruiting with LUCENT Technologies.

Patty Rosted, accountant

Rostad has joined CONNECT to handle accounting and contract administration. She moved from the Denver offices of Metrum-Datatape, where she was an accountant for four years. She has 25 years experience in the industry and holds a B.A. in Accounting.

Laszlo Dekay, Computer and Network Production Support

Dekay is responsible for computer system and network operation. He joins CONNECT from XPEDX’s regional headquarters in Denver, where he served as Microcomputer specialist and Lotus Notes administrator. He is undergoing certification in Lotus Notes Administration.

CONNECT: The Knowledge Network matches information technology professionals with IT companies for consulting positions and permanent employment. Founded in 1992, CONNECT has provided recruiting services for large and small companies, including Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Polaroid, Exxon, and Level 3. CONNECT is the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business of the Year 2000 and is one of Colorado’s top 100 women-owned businesses, according to Colorado BIZ Magazine.