Outside of my close circles, I’m generally quiet and not very outgoing. The fact is I’m pretty introverted and when I’m done socializing, I’m done. Therefore, I think people who don’t know me that well, and in some cases even those who do, can think me rude in social settings. In reality I am just out of energy and need to go be alone so I can recharge. My mom actually felt this way until I cleared it up with her recently! I really do care a lot about other people but it’s exhausting to be around them for lengthy periods of time, no matter how much I might love them.

I am really good at seeing potential in people that they might not see themselves. I am not sure this is totally untrainable, but I know it’s from decades of being genuinely curious about people, research, and looking for trends and patterns. When I talk with people, I often pick up on gifts and untapped potential and encourage people to explore those areas further.

Jokes about rape are completely tone-deaf. Anyone who thinks it’s funny to poke fun at that level of intimate physical, emotional, and mental violation is not someone I’d want to be around.

At dinner recently! My husband and I do pub trivia almost every week at our local Irish pub with a couple other guys that worked at the same company as him. Shop-talk often happens and since I’m the only person who hasn’t worked at this company I sometimes feel left out of the conversation. My husband noticed I was quiet one particular evening and I told him there was just a lot of shop-talk and I had nothing to contribute. I also mentioned that I don’t often get asked about myself, what I do or like, etc. He made it a point to ask me questions and get me more involved in the conversation the next time. (did I mention my husband is a great guy?)

This is timely because I just finished bingeing it on Netflix, but Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid / Cobra Kai franchise. I think we are all a bit like Johnny… we can all be jerks sometimes and make bad choices – some more than others – but I believe there’s a part of every person that desires to be better and is willing to work toward it. I think they’ve done excellent character development to show that side of Johnny in Cobra Kai.

When I moved to Cincinnati to take my first job in recruiting, I lived on my brother and sister-in-law’s couch for 2 months while saving up enough money to get my own place. When I finally got my own place, I rented a nice apartment that I unfortunately overestimated my ability to afford with my small salary. About 7-8 months into my lease I was having trouble paying all of my bills, and when my lease was up I had to move again, this time to a pretty dumpy place in a not-so-nice neighborhood. I lived in that dumpy apartment for 4 years and worked hard to live below my means while I paid off my credit cards and other debt. Lesson learned!

Shortly after I graduated from college I moved to Tampa and took a job at a fitness club doing sales. It’s the one and only job where I can remotely claim putting my college education to use (BS in Exercise Science). I lasted a month in that job – I suck at sales and the pay was terrible.

I like helping people get to know each other. The quicker we can find common ground with others on a team, the more easily we can start building trust! I think this happens because I like learning about people and seeing what I have in common with or what I can learn from them, so I want the same for others.

Yes, on more than one occasion. One was as a member of a talent sourcing team where I was new to sourcing software engineer profiles. I’ll admit, my attitude wasn’t very good initially – I was jealous of the abilities of my teammates and angry at myself for not being better. By the end of my tenure with the team however I’d developed good relationships with my teammates and established some valuable skill trade-off partnerships with a couple of them. Another time was when I took my first full-cycle recruiting role. My attitude was better there – I asked my teammates lots of questions whenever I stepped into unfamiliar territory, and they were more than happy to share their knowledge with me. It was a great team. My manager at that job was awesome, as well. She gave me enough autonomy to figure things out and be creative, but she flew air cover for me when I needed it.

We need to get diversity, inclusion, and belonging right as TA professionals by being objective, consistent, fair, and compassionate. I think a great starting point in doing that is talking with and listening to people, absent any preconceived notions or assumptions, so we can better understand each other’s life experiences and unique perspectives. What scares me right now is that while I see conversations happening, I think we are still too quick to dismiss experiences we either haven’t personally lived through, can’t comprehend ourselves, or that we don’t agree with. It says that we’re not truly listening to understand yet. I have hope that we’ll get there eventually.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that we can be productive while working remotely in talent acquisition. Companies who’ve seen success in remote work this year most likely had productivity-based goals for their teams already in place and were able to flex those goals to accommodate new working environments for their team members. That’s what I’d like to see more of post-COVID. It doesn’t matter how many hours your butt occupies a chair each day – your production and results should speak for themselves. While agency recruitment has been better at this for a long time, I think we’ll see more corporate TA teams understand and embrace this moving forward.

Alicia Gilliam – she is my current boss and has been my manager previously at two other companies. Clearly I think highly of her! She gave me my first opportunity to be a people manager. One of the best lessons I learned from her in our first company together was the “no surprises” approach to performance reviews. She taught me your direct reports should not be surprised by things brought to their attention in reviews. I’ve made it a personal mission to carry that through with my own teams, to provide feedback and correction as soon as possible and not wait until review time to share.

Amy Chiu, Victor Ongpin

Thank you to Amybeth Quinn taking 20 Questions for The Brainfood Tribune.