Belt Power, LLC

Applying Staffing Expertise to Modern Talent Acquisition

When my human resources career began, there were no online job boards, standardized ad formats or recruiting best practices being taught in college. Staffing meant newspaper ads, oddly placed bathroom-readers and good old networking. Moving from sole HR support to staffing leadership provided a front-row seat to recruiting technology as it evolved.

As the tools changed, the tactics changed. Monster.com transformed resume searching, and Indeed later shifted staffing from post and pray to a more proactive, sales-style approach to build talent pipelines. That shift made HR a stronger business partner. One saying that has guided my work is that all people problems can be fixed by fixing your hiring pipeline. Strong pipelines give leaders confidence to address performance, protect culture, reduce cost-per-hire and invest more intentionally in retention and technology.

I’m so grateful to have built ATS processes from scratch, creating API feeds and learning everything from Boolean searching to HTML coding. When traditional channels fell short, apprenticeship programs, no-budget internships, and even guerrilla-headhunting became necessary creative solutions.

Those experiences shaped a practical approach to identifying and attracting talent today. The best staffing professionals are resourceful. They solve the problem in front of them, even when the tools, budget or playbook are not there. Sometimes you are stuck, and you just figure it out.

Strategies for Developing Employees for Long-Term Success

Teach people how to solve their own problems. Simon Sinek once said, we’re getting millennials and Gen X in our companies and now have to pick up the slack. We’re putting them in corporate environments that aren’t helping them overcome the need to have instant gratification, and we need to teach them how to be good employees.  Something that message spoke to me. If HR is not part of the solution, we are part of the problem.

When HR teaches employees how to solve routine problems and have constructive conversations, organizations see stronger engagement, lower turnover and fewer recurring employee relations issues. HR can then spend less time investigating everyday work drama and more time improving the employee experience.

The technique is simple. Listen to the employee’s perspective and determine whether the issue is serious or routine. Role-play conversations they could have to resolve the issue, and communicate that they’re responsible for communicating their boundaries. Ensure follow-through if they return with the same complaint and ask about that conversation. If not, send them back out to try again or offer to join.

Another saying to guide you is, HR can’t care more about their problem than they do. Development means teaching people how to put out some of the fires they helped create.

Balance Business Needs with Positive Employee Experience

It starts with clear expectations, transparency and genuine interest in where candidates want to grow. They are only candidates before the offer, and once hired, they become your employees. So stop selling something you aren’t. In other words, you’re hiring your own problems, so set your company up for success at the beginning. Be honest about the culture and the role.

Understand where your company or the role is on the candidate’s career journey. Sometimes the opportunity is not a forever job. It’s a transferable skill set. Help a pre-med student see that a customer service role in your pharmaceutical company is a way to build bedside manners, managing expectations, communicating clearly and defusing upset customers. Align your sales pitch to match their career goals or address their pain points in their current role by providing them with a solution.

That is the sweet spot. Aligning business needs with a candidate’s skills, interests and goals, and then being honest about how the role can help them grow.

Lessons to Foster Workplace Growth

Some of the most valuable leadership lessons come from mistakes. This includes being too authoritative in the name of efficiency, becoming too friendly and then having my heart torn out when I had to terminate a friend, thinking I was the smartest person in the room and talking more than listening.

One important leadership lesson is that HR is not there to tell the business what it can and cannot do. You’re not the employee gate-keeper. The business tells us what it needs, and we advise, coach and guide leaders toward people-solutions that are legal, ethical and aligned with organizational values. Don’t tell the business no, tell them how.

“When HR teaches employees how to solve routine problems and have constructive conversations, organizations see stronger engagement, lower turnover and fewer recurring employee relations issues.”

More than 20 years in HR has clarified which hills to die on when it comes to integrity, ethics and employment law. Strong teams are built through sound judgment, healthy relationships and leaders who make it clear that both they and the company are rooting for employees to succeed.

Advice for Future Talent Acquisition Leaders

Be an HR Generalist first. Learn staffing, training, compliance, benefits, HRIS, legal, payroll, employee relations and all the HR Things. Pay attention to what you naturally gravitate toward, where you make the biggest impact and what work earns the strongest recognition.

Once you become a Swiss-army-knife of HR, and then sharpen your favorite tool. If staffing is your strength, become a Recruiter. If HRIS is your lane, apply for Analyst roles. Start broad enough to understand how all the pieces connect.

One of the biggest mistakes early-career HR professionals make is specializing before they know what they are good at, what they enjoy or what options exist. Once a resume reflects a specialty, it can be difficult to break away because employers often focus on previous experience instead of future potential.

The broader your foundation, the more leaders will see that you have a foundation in all HR competencies, and that foundation makes you stronger, more credible and more strategic.