Founding Elysian

My name is Jessica Ozrek, and I founded Elysian Staffing in 2014 after working for 3 staffing agencies. Now, my hope is to share my experiences, resources and thoughts from the creative industry through this blog, and tell you a little about Elysian.

Through my experiences in multiple staffing agencies, I noticed just how different creative recruitment is from other types of recruitments. With the level of collaboration often required in the creative industry, culture fit and personal style are as important as the skills and unique experience that each person brings to the table. No matter the company, creative teams deserve talent that fits the culture, and talent deserves a team they feel at home with.

With these more abstract, non-tangible factors in mind, I began to understand how important it is to take the time to connect with each person and handle them with care in order to build and maintain true relationships. It is crucial to be able to look at positions as parts of a whole team, and someone who is a potential candidate as a whole person. So I decided the best thing to do in order to, as I like to say, make creative staffing about being creative, was to start my own agency that was not numbers driven, but rather driven by the challenge of matching the right people to the right places for them. That’s why all of us at Elysian take the time to understand what each company needs from the person they seek for a creative role, and to understand what each job seeker is looking for.

We have one true goal in mind when it comes to our approach to staffing--give everyone the same high level of attention and respect, and find people careers and companies they will thrive in. Our matchmaking skills are unparalleled in the creative placements field because of this holistic attitude. Our promise is that we won’t send our clients hundreds of resumes that don’t make sense with your culture and company, and we won’t send talent to companies that aren’t right for them. We believe in fulfilling specific roles, and helping people find positions they are truly passionate about. Though we are a business, we make customer service our top priority and recognize that providing a positive experience goes a long way.

About our team:

Founder and President Jessica Ozrek has been recruiting for creative and marketing since 2004. Her focus is largely on New York City and staffing agencies in advertising, branding, design, digital marketing, as well as, entertainment, fashion, retail, financial, real estate, law, media, CPG and architectural companies.

Hilary Andreini, Recruiting Manager, has 20 years of HR and recruiting experience for advertising agencies. She joined Elysian Staffing in September of 2014 and has helped to grow our client base significantly by truly caring about placing high level creative professionals in the right roles for them.

Jorge Batista, Recruiter, has more than 20 years of experience in advertising project management for digital and print. He joined Elysian in March of 2017 and is excited to use his personal understanding of digital media and the creative landscape to match people with roles and companies that fit their skill sets and passions.

We hope that the new Elysian blog will be a place that those in the creative industry can come to for resources and peace of mind. We would love to hear from talent currently seeking jobs--tell us what advice you have for fellow members of the creative industry, what you’d like advice on, information about trends you see, and other stories you might want our perspective on. On the opposite end, if you’re part of a company in the creative field and have advice or perspectives for job-seekers that you’d like to share with Elysian, we would be more than happy to collaborate.

We look forward to working with you and hopefully inspiring you along the way!