Louis Song

When hiring in San Diego began grinding to a halt in 2008, staffing firm Proven Inc. was just wrapping up its first year in business.

“I mark 2008 as the start of the downturn, and then ’09, really for us that summer was the bottom. There was absolutely nothing going on,” says Louis Song, Proven Inc.’s managing partner and CEO. “I’d call Realtors and other people in different industries to get a read on their perspective, and the best quote I heard was, ‘It’s crickets over here. All I hear is crickets.’ We were concerned that it would last awhile, but temp hiring started back up in September of ‘09, and we saw direct hire staffing pick up in March of this year. And actually, we’ve just had consecutively our best three months in a row since the inception of the company. So we think good things are happening.”