I’ve been fortunate to find a career that caused my passion to sprout. My introduction to recruitment came while I was working at a Public Relations agency. My client, an executive recruitment firm, recruited C-Suite executives for tech firms around the country and used media outreach as a new business and branding strategy. PR wasn’t a natural skillset for me, but recruitment captured my attention.
In 2013, I left Public Relations and moved into staffing. Initially, each day was a struggle as I questioned my motives, actions, and reasons for working within recruitment. I staffed (rather, attempted to staff) medical and administrative roles that would pay less than $15/hr. I couldn’t stomach the idea of negotiating someone’s hourly rate down $1-2/hr to bring in more revenue. I struggled. Was I perpetuating lower wages? Would I want a phlebotomist making $12/hr jabbing needles into my arm? I had no passion for my work.
A year later, I was introduced to recruitment for media, advertising, and tech. I started to notice that most people, regardless of age and experience, lacked the knowledge of how to accurately represent themselves for different career opportunities. People started asking me for advice and I threw sweat equity into familiarizing and learning recruitment as much as possible.
I joined my current company, Synergy Interactive, in 2016, and continued focusing my recruitment efforts within tech and creative for digitally focused organizations around the country. When you’re focused on specific skillsets, you see patterns emerge for those who receive the positions and those who are quickly bypassed. Yet, no one says anything about it.
While there are undoubtedly many more experienced recruiters out there, I struggle to find those that share their knowledge without expecting financial benefit. Interestingly, it is when I provide value without expectation that I feel the most fulfilled.
I truly believe that I will become a better recruiter by sharing my knowledge.
My goals:
• Provide strategies and insight for job seekers to represent themselves without needing recruiters or resume writers.
• Disrupt the traditional client-centric recruiting model while pushing towards a candidate-centric approach.
• Demystify the recruitment world and recruiting practices.
• Rebrand recruitment into an ethically driven career while weeding out those that drive questionable practices forward.