Wendy-Jayne William’s success story began from small beginnings to the top of the corporate ladder

Wendy-Jayne Williams has been a leader in the world of business for decades but behind her success, she admits there were many hurdles.

• Five words that launched $55m business

For Wendy-Jayne Williams, it all started in a three-bedroom Housing Trust home filled with happiness and hardships. At its heart was her devoted single mum, driven by love and strength as she scraped and scrapped to provide for seven sons and daughters.

“Sometimes it was difficult even for my mum to feed us,” says Williams, who now credits those tough times for helping to shape her into one of South Australia’s leading businesswomen.

“She would be rationing, trying to make meals last and stretch. She always went without, never bought for herself, never had new clothes.

“I was always helping out, always worrying about the challenges Mum had.”

Today, Williams is head of a recruitment and employment empire that stretches all over Australia and employs more than 1000 people.

The 60-year-old is one of the state’s biggest corporate names with a passion for helping people and using her financial success to support her family – blood and chosen.

But growing up in her Windsor Gardens Housing Trust home, it was a story of toughness and struggle – and learning valuable lessons she would draw on as she rose to the top.

Jobs Statewide CEO Wendy-Jayne Williams and son Bailey, 26. Picture: The Advertiser/ Morgan Sette

Her father left when she was 14, leaving mum Diana to look after the big family on her own.

School was a battle.

The family’s strict Jehovah’s Witness religion, which banned birthdays and Christmas, was a target for bullies at Gilles Plains Primary and Strathmont High.

“It was the school of hard knocks out there,” says Williams, who was done with school by the time she reached year 11.

At 15, she worked in a sewing factory before taking on a string of sales jobs at Myer and David Jones, where she worked hard.

Her first pay cheque bought swanky jeans for herself – and a pair for her mum, too. “It was nice to treat her with something new for once,” Williams says.

Married at 17 – “that’s what Jehovah’s Witnesses traditionally did” – and living in her own Housing Trust home, Williams worked hard to eke out a life for herself while her new husband’s mental health spiralled.

Wendy-Jayne Williams with her son, Bailey. Picture: Supplied

But one painful, heartbreaking day – when she was just 23 – set her life on a whole new path that ended at the top of the corporate ladder dealing in millions of dollars worth of contracts.

Already reeling from having to drop her struggling husband at hospital for treatment, Williams received a devastating phone call about her dearest, lifelong friend.

“She suddenly got fluid on the brain and she died. She was 23 and she was about to get married, I was going to be matron of honour,” says Williams, who was grappling with the avalanche of so much grief at once.

“I’m very much a believer in there’s a day in your life that changes your life.

“When your whole world falls apart, that’s the day of your new life … you’re sitting on a whole new path of reinventing a new life.”

Williams gave herself a year to grieve and address her husband’s deepening issues, eventually summonsing the courage to leave him. She also broke up with the Jehovah’s Witness church.

“Mum left the church at the same time. We all decided that we were putting that behind us,” says Williams, who is still spiritual but would “never get involved in another religion”.

“Leaving is a very difficult thing to do. You’re learning to think for yourself and form your own ideas about life,” she says.

But Williams emerged from that tough time with her sights firmly set on a new future.

She signed up for courses to improve her skills – computers, typing and shorthand – at the local community support scheme at Holden Hill.

At the end of one course, the organisation was so impressed, she was offered a job.

“I said ‘yes, I’ll help out’,” says Williams, who went on to be instrumental in lobbying politicians to keep the scheme open when it lost its funding. “We said, ‘we think you should give us another go’ and so they did. The manager asked me ‘would you like to stay on working here?’ and the rest is history.”

Within eight years, the organisation had grown to 40 staff and was a five-star provider of a federal government employment program. It eventually became Jobs Statewide, growing to 27 branches in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne

In 1999, Williams founded commercial labour hire company Excel Recruitment to give her the experience she needed to make her dream of going national come true.

Sweating through 70-hour working weeks, struggling to sleep with the worry of bringing her big plans to life, that dream is now a reality.

Wendy-Jayne has built a successful empire, taking the resilience she learnt during her childhood. Picture: Supplied

Excel has grown from one office in Currie St to having branches in Victoria, Sydney and Brisbane and has a national agreement with facilities provider Spotless Downer.

She acquired labour hire business Rexco in 2010 as part of her ongoing national expansion strategy. It also has offices in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

“Someone once said to me when I took over business in Queensland, a very male-dominated industry: ‘You’ve crashed through a lot of glass ceilings.’

“I said: ‘Did I? I didn’t see them,’” says Williams, who had bought her first home in Paralowie at the age of 29.

“It’s only a barrier to you if you see it. Go around them, go through them.”

Outside of work, Williams was seeking thrills – getting her boat licence, driving rally cars and riding motorbikes. She started seeing a fellow motorbike club member and together they “spent a lot of time living life, doing things and getting out there and exploring”.

The relationship was fast and furious – but it didn’t last. When Williams found herself expecting a child at 33, she was on her own.

“The last thing I wanted was to repeat history and be a single mum as well,” she says.

“You feel like it’s the worst thing that’s happened to you, it feels like your world is crashing around you again. And then it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever done in your life and you understand your mum more and the sacrifices she’s made.”

Once again, it was Williams’s strong and supportive mum who was there for her and little Bailey, letting her stay in the workforce and keep building her business. Bailey, who pursued a dance career when he was younger, is now 28 and plays a pivotal role in Williams’ recruitment empire. He heads up her Sydney-based company, Metier Recruitment – a job he’s managed from the Adelaide office since the covid pandemic.

Williams says he’s inherited her attitude to “jump in and learn what you don’t know”.

These days, she loves to use her considerable good fortune to “look after those that looked after me”. “And that’s what makes me happy, that’s my spoiling. Looking after my family and people who have become my family,” says Williams, who has bought her mum a home near her own bayside place, where she lives with Bailey and his partner.

Reflecting on her past – something the forward-driving Williams has a “problem” with – she indulges a moment of appreciation. “Coming from not having two cents to rub together and having a few challenges in life, to then work really hard and really achieve something – that is something to be proud of,” she says.

“My life and my upbringing gave me a big understanding of how tough life can be. It gave me a lot of empathy to realise that people just can be unemployed because of circumstances in their life.

“They could have had great jobs but things happened in life that have set them back. We get to help them turn their lives around.”