Cameron Smith

Cameron Smith found success by helping others find success.

The corporate recruiter launched Cameron Smith & Associates in 1992 and has gone on to become the top provider of executive talent to the almost 1,400 vendors doing business with Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Cameron Smith & Associates now has 22 employees; revenue last year totaled $7.8 million. In the last three years, it has seen annual revenue growth of 30 percent. The firm has placed about 3,000 employees in northwest Arkansas and played a big role in bringing more than 500 supplier teams to Bentonville, Smith said.

“When I discovered this niche market of working with the suppliers to Wal-Mart, I embraced it and owned it,” he said. “I had a vision of what could be, made a strategic plan and executed it with absolute certainty that it would work.”

His plan did work, but there have been challenges.

In February 2009 during the recession, Wal-Mart announced layoffs of about 800 employees at its corporate offices in northwest Arkansas, “which turned our firm into corporate triage,” Smith said. “We literally shut our business down and counseled hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people on resumes and how to find jobs and we didn’t charge them at all. We just did job workshops for them. It’s what you have to do.”

Smith has also faced down some serious health scares in the past few years, undergoing heart bypass surgery in 2010 and overcoming throat cancer in 2011.

In difficult situations, he remembers the advice of Hank Henderson, CEO of America’s Car-Mart, on whose board Smith sits: Do the right thing. “I know that sounds pretty cliché,” Smith said. “But it’s all about making decisions. Do the right thing and everything will take care of itself.”

He loves his work, Smith said. He loves making matches between job candidates and employers: “I’m just so lucky to be in this business. People are paying you and thanking you at the same time. It doesn’t get better than that.”

Previous Honorees