> Out and About: Dwight Hahn - Express Employment Professionals
Out and About: Dwight Hahn - Express Employment Professionals
Dwight grew up in Manchester, CT. His family had owned a video game and pinball business for around seven years that helped pay for his college education. That line of work consisted of putting video arcades and pinball machines in schools like UCONN, and many bars around the state. He graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's degree in business administration, and got married. Dwight went directly into staffing, straight out of college as an executive recruiter for a couple of years. He left that job and went to work for Traveler's Insurance, where he was in an IT position for approximately ten years. Following that, he went to United Healthcare for another ten years. Then another ten years with Aetna. In total, he was in the insurance world of Hartford for thirty years. While at the end of his position with Aetna, Dwight began looking into other opportunities, and that is when a friend of his introduced him to the world of franchises. That friend, who he had connected with through the business-networking site of LinkedIn said, "You've got to check out this franchise industry. You know it's basically thousands of businesses that you can buy the business system and execute it the way they designed it." Dwight was invited to a franchise expo where there were about seven or eight franchises presenting their business plan. One of them was Express Employment Professionals. He loved the idea as it brought him back to his first position out of college as a recruiter. In Dwight's words, "It was sort of full circle. I had spent thirty years hiring people, using agencies for staffing. Now I was going to go on the other side of it and become a business to provide that to companies." Express Employment Professionals helps put people to work. They are a staff at full service staffing agency that finds people full-time employment. "Companies will have a need for something, an additional warehouse worker or a truck driver and they'll come to us. We'll prescreen the applicants; make sure they have the right kind of experience, clean driving record if it's a driving job. Process all of that new hiring paperwork so that the client doesn't have to deal with all of that." It's mostly blue-collar employment or industrial work. How he feels about Windsor itself? "I love it. It's the cutest town. It's the best-kept secret. I had never been to Windsor prior until opening this business in 2014. Literally. I just never had reason to be here for anything, and yet when I first started in the system that I bought, I literally had to go and knock on doors. It's not advertising. It's not word of mouth. It's physically like campaigning. I went through three pairs of shoes walking Windsor." He notes it's a crazy shaped town. Dwight is a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Although, Express is a fairly new venture in Windsor, Dwight likes to try and help out the town with funds for various projects. They have done a food drive for dogs, as well as doing a collection for Toys For Tots, and Food Share. Three words that describe Dwight: Entrepreneurial. Generous. Integrity. |
