Following the birth of her son 11 years ago, Amanda Jonidis knew that she wanted to make a career shift.
“I had nothing going on,” Amanda said. “I was working in a call center and had decided to quit my job to be with my son. I quickly decided that I hated being a stay-at-home mom, but I didn’t have a vision of what I wanted to do. So, I went to a temp agency. They put me in touch with a job at Coca-Cola where an HR records management person was needed. I instantly loved it.”
That love for human resources continued to grow as she learned about everything that is required in the department.
“After seven years with a large corporation I wanted something new,” Amanda said. “I didn’t have a lot of skills, but I put my resume out there. A recruiter called me from a construction company looking to build someone from the ground up. It was there that I absolutely just fell in love with construction.”
Amanda loved her position, but the company went in a direction that didn’t meet the needs of her family. So, she went into a different industry, never really feeling like she had a place. That is when she first heard of Blount.
“I had just purchased my home, and it was a little bit out in the middle of nowhere,” Amanda said. “I thought I was going to have to find a job with a long commute, but I am a firm believer in God’s plan.
“A Facebook ad was advertising for my current position. It was like love at first sight, and the office was just down the street from my newly purchased home. The whole hiring process was a real quick turnaround. I bonded pretty easily with everyone in a panel interview. There was a quick connection, and things got rolling from there.”
Blount had recently been acquired from WW Clyde, and the individual who had been working in human resources at the time was in the process of retiring. It was becoming increasingly difficult for WW Clyde to manage all of its employees in Utah as well as its new employees in Arizona, and the hiring of Amanda solved many of those problems.
“As the HR generalist, I do everything related to human resources from onboarding to recruiting,” Amanda said. “I do employee relations, I hire and fire people (when necessary), and I’m also the receptionist and the IT person. I do whatever needs to be done, and I love my job. I can tell you every single employee’s name. I can probably tell you their spouse’s name as well. I can tell you how many kids they have, if any. I have built a relationship with every single employee, and I absolutely adore it. When we started, there were 80 of us, and now we’re at around 260.”
While the growth at Blount has been impressive to see, Amanda is even more impressed by what the organization stands for and the people that work for it.
“I love the vision of the company,” Amanda said. “Our core values keep me going. We work really hard to meet our goals and to see projects get done. I’m a huge believer in ‘We Value People.’ That’s part of my job. HR rides a fine line of what’s best for the company and what’s best for the employee, and I absolutely love that I can be an employee advocate for this great company.”
