We are pleased and excited to announce that Vicki Hubiak President of HR Solutions has been selected as the second CCO “OUTSTANDING COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD” winner For 2016. Vicki is extremely well thought of in our community and she gives a great deal of her time and financial resources to help those in need.

It was 1994, and Vicki Hubiak faced a career crisis. For 15 years she had been climbing the ladder at Peabody Energy, all the way to employee relations manager of the Midwest Division, before the age of 40. In 1990, however, Congress had passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act to significantly reduce acid rain within five years. By 1994, the amendment had taken its toll on the coal industry, and Hubiak was spending much of her time handing out pink slips to employees. The work became, in her words, “overwhelming” and “depressing.”

Hubiak resigned from the only employer she had known since attending the University of Evansville, set up a desktop computer in the walk-out basement of her Henderson, Kentucky, home, and went to work as a human resources consultant and certified resume writer. Despite her departure, Hubiak was respected so much by her former bosses that she signed Peabody as one of her first clients.

Twenty-one years later, the woman who took a leap of faith in becoming an entrepreneur has turned a business in her basement into a $10 million company. She is president and owner of HR Solutions, Inc. in Evansville, which serves businesses and individuals with five core services: staffing, executive recruiting, outplacement, executive coaching, and training. Hubiak and her staff of 15, including her son, Nicholas, recently purchased and moved into the former Umbach & Associates building on Saint Joseph Avenue near the intersection of the Lloyd Expressway after outgrowing their longtime location across the street. The new building is named the HR Solutions Business Complex with 18,000 sq. ft. and is also an income property for her business.

“I never thought it would be to the level it is today,” Hubiak says with a shake of her head and a smile. “One thing I learned early on is that when you go above and beyond, and exceed expectations, you connect with people. I love working with our team. We’re ever-changing and growing and learning every day.”

HR Solutions has many clients providing temporary, temp-to-hire, and contract employees ranging in numbers of one to more than 170. More than 100 of these positions are at $18 an hour or more. It’s the job of HR Solutions to advertise for these positions, then review applicants to find the best qualified candidates. Detailed testing sessions, reference checking, background checks, and in-depth interviews by Hubiak’s staff whittle down the list, and clients interview the finalists. Many of their candidates tell them they have never been through such an in-depth hiring process and that the process has a lifelong benefit to them, while providing HR Solutions clients with a highly pre-qualified talent pool and excellent job skills match.

“All of our clients feel we are an integral part of their business,” says Hubiak, about the relationships she and her team have built with their clients. “High-quality staffing and recruiting is what we do for all clients. Whether they need one employee or 100, our process of pre-qualification is the same. What we do works, because we are able to give our clients the cream of the crop of candidates. Most of our employees reach the point of being fully trained and are ready to become an employee of the client. By this time, the company can see that the employee is performing at a high level, is a good cultural fit and that they have a good, solid work ethic. They’re high quality.”

There are many clients that Hubiak has worked with since the day she started her company in the basement of her home. Hubiak has instilled in her staff a strong desire and commitment to building relationships with clients. These clients range from large manufacturing companies to small family-owned businesses, and include industries such as healthcare, engineering, pharmaceutical, energy, and finance. This spring, Hubiak is heading the search for a new CEO for a major healthcare provider. Clients like this and others have turned Hubiak’s home business into a multi-million dollar operation, but individual successes please her the most.

“I just hope we continue to make a difference with people,” Hubiak says about her company’s future. “We’ve helped people who simply don’t understand why they cannot get a job. By listening, and coaching them, giving feedback, and helping them improve their computer skills, we can guide them. We fully prepare people for an interview, not only to speak about their skills and experience, but by making sure they understand the expectations and the culture of the company where they’re interviewing.”

As a businesswoman, she is recognized in the community as a driving force for giving back both through her service on nonprofit boards and committees, and monetarily. Over the years, Hubiak and many others on her staff have put in time and resources to help local nonprofits, notably the Women’s Fund of Evansville, SCORE, YWCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, United Caring Shelters, Aurora, Girl Scouts, Ronald McDonald House, Evansville Rescue Mission, American Red Cross, and Tri-State Food Bank.

Hubiak is especially proud that her company is able to serve as an H-1B sponsor for Tianlin Xu, a Purdue University graduate from China whom HR Solutions recently placed in a chemistry lab analyst position at a local manufacturing company. Hubiak and staff members BethAnn Langlois and Amanda Smith are working with an attorney through the American Staffing Association to assure that Xu can stay in the U.S. through what is called H-1B status, which allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign citizens in specialty occupations for three to six years.

“Tianlin sent BethAnn a big bouquet of flowers; she was so happy,” Hubiak says of Xu. “This employee has made a big commitment through her education and training, and I’m so glad we were able to do this. This process can be complicated and companies will sometimes shy away from the financial burden and the legal process. This was a milestone for us in being able to sponsor her. Our company grows from meeting people, and learning, and listening, and helping others. We exceed expectations and give back. I believe in that. I have a passion for that.”

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Vicki L. Hubiak, CMF HR Solutions, Inc., an OI Gobal Partner

EDUCATION/CERTIFICATIONS

B.S. – Business Administration/Marketing

UNIVERSITY OF EVANSVILLE

Certified Management Fellow

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CAREER CERTIFICATION

Certified Compensation Professional

AMERICAN COMPENSATION ASSOCIATION

Certified Professional Resume Writer

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RESUME WRITERS

Women-owned Business Enterprise (WBE)

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

Member, Board of Advisors, The Women’s Fund

Member, Board of Advisors, USI

Member, Board of Directors, SCORE; Past Assistant Vice Chair

Past Member, Board of Directors, Community Marriage Builders

Past Member, Board of Directors, WorkOne

Past Member, Raising Incomes Committee

Past Board of Directors, Junior Achievement

Past Board of Directors, Evansville Association for the Blind

Past Board of Directors, YWCA

Past Board of Directors, Ronald McDonald House

Member, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

Member, Evansville-Area Human Resource Association, Inc. (EHRA)

Member, Professional Association of Resume Writers

Member, Metropolitan Evansville Chamber of Commerce

Past Member, Henderson-Henderson County Chamber of Commerce

Past Member, ANEW – A Network of Women

This years awards luncheon will be held at Tropicana-Evansville Walnut rooms A and B. The registration begin at 11:30 am, the event officially starts at 12 noon on October 26, 2015. Last years event was a sellout.

Last years winners of the “Outstanding Community Services Awards” were: Vanderburgh County Commissioner Joe Kifer, well respected local attorney Joe Harrison, Jr, Indiana State Auditor Suzanne Crouch and former Vanderburgh County Sheriff and 8th District Congressmen Brad Ellsworth, Dr. Dan Adams, Dr Steven Becker MD, Tracy Zeller-President of Tracy Zeller Jewelry Holly Dunn-National Movation Speaker on Domestic Violence, Cheryl Musgrave who sits on the Vanderburgh County Board of Zoning Appeals and retired political icon Betty Hermann.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Donald Trump didn’t listen.

Last week I said the only thing that could save his campaign was for him to literally shut up for at least a month.

My modest proposal was for his campaign people to lock him in a soundproof booth until November 9th.

But forget that. I’ve got a better idea to put the Trump circus train on the right track.

Trump’s support in the polls is stuck at about 42 percent.

To win, we know he has to get the votes of disaffected Republicans, terrified independents and people who don’t already believe Obama was born in a grass hut in Kenya.

But to get their support by Election Day he has to do two things.

He has to stop saying stupid things in public and he has to give a hundred more speeches like the great one he delivered in Detroit on Monday.

Unfortunately, there’s just one way to prevent Trump from saying stupid things and it’s probably against federal election laws.

His campaign people need to make him wear a shock collar —- just like the ones you put on your family dog for those invisible backyard fences.

That way, every time Donald strays from the teleprompter, Paul Manafort can just hit the button and give him a big jolt upside the neck.

“Although the Second Amendment people, maybe ….” —- ZAAAPPPPP.

This week was a total disaster, but it began with a really good speech in Detroit. Of course someone else wrote it. Of course Trump read it.

But with a few exceptions his conservative economic ideas sounded like they came from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Trump said he’d cut income tax rates, increase individual exemptions, reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three and slash the corporate tax rate to 15 percent.

He’d also end the death tax and the alternative minimum tax.

What Trump said in Detroit —- especially the part about how the city has been wrecked by half a century of local Democratic rule and liberal federal social policies —- should become his standard stump speech.

He could read it almost word for word in city after city. All he’d have to do is change Detroit to Chicago, Toledo, St. Louis, etc.

A speech like that is what it takes to win a general election, not another speech calling Hillary a liar or charging the Clinton family with pioneering the globalization of graft.

Trump got great media coverage for his Detroit speech but it didn’t even last a day.

On Tuesday every liberal in the media was parsing his comments about “Second Amendment people” to prove he was encouraging the assassination of Hillary or joking about it.

I’m surprised no one on CNN’s panel of liberals went to a blackboard and started to diagram Trump’s sentences.

But the media don’t really care what he actually says or meant to say. They’ll spin it whichever way they can so that Trump appears to be in favor of killing babies.

Trump blew himself up again, thanks to his own stupidity and lack of self-control.

Instead of getting a week of praise for a hard-hitting economic speech, he spent four days watching the print and electronic media gang up on him like he was America’s Vladimir Putin.

Instead of enjoying Hillary Clinton stumbling over answers to questions about her emails, or explaining why the Taliban-loving father of the Orlando mass murderer was her biggest supporter, Trump hogged the airtime.

He proved my point last week —- just shut up, Donald.

It’s a shame. If any of the other 16 candidates had won the Republican primary this election would be over.

All Trump and his daily fumbles are doing now is opening the door wider and wider for the libertarian twins, ex-Republican governors Gary Johnson and Bill Weld.

At the end of the day, they may be the only adults in the room.