Episode 4 - Edie Greenberg

[00:00:00] Welcome to The HigherHer Podcast by Talent Collective, presenting conversations with inspiring women in talent.

[00:00:07] And get ready ladies, because this is the last time you're going to hear a man's voice on this show.

[00:00:13] Welcome everybody to the next episode of HigherHer where we have conversations with inspiring an amazing women in talent.

[00:00:23] I am your co-host Natalie, and I have Chris to hear. We are the co-founders of Talent Collective, and we are so excited to have one of our founding members today.

[00:00:35] As our guest, of course she is a very inspiring woman in talent, but she's also an amazing partner to us and growing our community.

[00:00:43] So we wanted to bring her on and really let her share her amazing story and get to know her a little bit better.

[00:00:50] Edie is our founding member of Chicago, so, Edie, introduce yourself, tell us what you do and maybe a little bit about Chicago and what you're launching.

[00:00:59] Sure. So I am in Chicago, an exciting place to be this time of year, the DNC was just here.

[00:01:08] And so I am a startup recruiter and as the Natalie said, I am the founding member of the Chicago character.

[00:01:21] Very nice.

[00:01:23] And you just recently actually had a workshop session with fellow members and then just some other women that were in the community.

[00:01:34] And you put that together to really collectively bring the women and recruiting together to get their feedback on what do you want to make of that community?

[00:01:42] So I'd love for you to give just like high level overview, what were some of the...

[00:01:48] Sure. So the Chicago community is super excited about talent collective coming here.

[00:01:55] And so I wanted to make sure that they felt part of this community building, so it wasn't just me saying, okay, this is what we're doing next.

[00:02:05] And out of that came a lot of similar themes, professional development.

[00:02:14] You know, some casual networking, whether it means like a coffee meet-up or taking walks together or like a cooking class.

[00:02:24] But I think what we all realize is that, you know, we really want to be with like-minded people just to talk, to come visit right about the field and to kind of talk about how it's evolving.

[00:02:39] I think being up-to-date in a field as far as AI and tools, that's what we all want.

[00:02:49] So bringing a lot of maybe panel discussions, fire sides, as far as just being able to learn from the thought leaders as well as from each other.

[00:03:01] So great ideas came under that and I'm looking forward to, you know, bringing that to this community.

[00:03:09] Well, ED, we're going to transition to you and to your recruiting journey.

[00:03:14] So can you share with us how did you get into recruiting? What has that path look like, what are you envision for your future?

[00:03:21] Sure, so I studied human resources as an undergraduate and not that I went into that major thinking I want to be a recruiter.

[00:03:30] But I knew I wanted to be in human resources.

[00:03:35] And so initially I thought I would be in compensation or benefits.

[00:03:41] And I was more of a general as so I always had recruitment as part of my role.

[00:03:47] And I really began to focus on recruitment when I started a family and was looking really for part-time work and those were the type of opportunities that were more available at that time.

[00:04:00] I really liked seeing how

[00:04:04] recruitment has evolved from like staffing more transactional.

[00:04:09] Now more of a talent advisor.

[00:04:12] So although I've been doing this for a long time, I think I really feel like it's been a different type of role almost every year at minute.

[00:04:21] So I'm really glad that it's my fullness.

[00:04:25] Yeah, love that.

[00:04:27] Thank you.

[00:04:27] Amazing. Well, thank you. Thanks for sharing that with us, Edie.

[00:04:31] Tell us a little bit about we all have a story somebody who really stands out to us and somebody that maybe placed and helped along the road.

[00:04:41] So tell us a story that sticks out in your mind about somebody that you placed somewhere in your journey in recruiting.

[00:04:49] I think all of my best stories are helping women or people of color get placed into text roles or leadership roles.

[00:05:03] And a good story that I have to share is Camille.

[00:05:07] She's actually someone who I just met in person this past week.

[00:05:12] I helped place her out of self-ordinary domain company and had only met her by phone and a video.

[00:05:20] And really built that trust with her that she was able to ask me real questions about the opportunity because she wasn't fully sure if she wanted to accept it.

[00:05:33] So I think that's where we kind of built a friendship and kept in touch because after she got hired into this role it was a talent acquisition leadership role.

[00:05:46] So I ended up reporting to her.

[00:05:49] So I had the opportunity to work with her as a candidate and then also had the opportunity to work with her as colleague and afterwards has been able to see how she progressed.

[00:06:02] Within that company she had promotion since she's been there and she has just stepped into a fractional role.

[00:06:10] So it was just wonderful just to be able to meet her in person and for her to share her journey there and just how grateful she is that you know I helped.

[00:06:23] I helped her in that process.

[00:06:25] It sounds like you really elevated her in her recruiting career and such an interesting dichotomy right like you ended up reporting to her.

[00:06:35] Yes, that's cool.

[00:06:37] So when you think about someone who has helped elevate you in your recruiting career, man or woman otherwise who comes to mind for you.

[00:06:46] And what's the reason?

[00:06:48] Sure.

[00:06:49] Without a doubt I would say Nikki Anamson at hustle hunters.

[00:06:55] I joined her company as her founding recruiter.

[00:06:59] Hustle hunters is recruitment startup and for a long time it was just me and Nikki working together.

[00:07:06] And I think she recognized early on how good I was with candidates and their candidate experience and really engaging in the people who identify.

[00:07:19] I, candidates who would be a big fit so I would just get fixated like oh my god I found the person and then I would just be relentless like I would.

[00:07:30] You know try to get the candidate from these multiple channels and then once I was able to engage with them and get them into the conversation and then you know in some cases place them in that role.

[00:07:40] It was just so exciting. So I really appreciated how she allowed me to just you know take off with it. She also gave me the opportunity to work directly with these founders many female founders and I was able to be a tailorizer to them just because many times recruitment was not their area of expertise.

[00:08:07] So you know, to answer your question she just really elevated me as a recruitment leader and we have had so many great wins together and.

[00:08:24] And I would say for sure she's been she's she's been great as far as helping me in my career.

[00:08:32] That's so nice and you introduced me to Mickey recently and I have the pleasure of having a call with her and she is just absolutely wonderful. I can see why she's somebody that you really look up to and you know respect a lot.

[00:08:48] I had a great conversation about the partnership between a hiring manager and the recruiter and really you know not being an order taker and how to get that relationship to be more strategic.

[00:09:04] And impactful and really come with you know a lot of knowledge and expertise to the table and hiring managers you know they don't recruit full time usually that's not their expertise. So how do you come to the table and gain the confidence of that hiring manager so.

[00:09:24] So you know, something to add that that I learned a lot from Mickey is that she would always respectfully push back when she felt.

[00:09:35] That there was bias there, which I just appreciate it because you know we really centered just bringing diversity into these talent polls and early on in the.

[00:09:53] The building of teams and so it was just great just to be able to witness how she was able to get the trust of these hiring me managers and they were open to listening to her and really kind of shifted their mindset many times.

[00:10:17] That's Sony. Yeah, not everybody has that gift so must have been to be able to learn from her and we're going to shift to our last question here.

[00:10:27] So this one I think is a very human question doesn't relate to recruiting necessarily.

[00:10:37] If you could reflect on something maybe a challenge that you had somewhere in your life whether it was in a personal capacity or a professional capacity.

[00:10:46] What would one of those biggest challenges be and then also what did you learn from it?

[00:10:50] I think this really helps us connect with one another and feel really human so we'd love to hear from you.

[00:10:58] Sure, so I I love sharing the story because it's very fresh.

[00:11:03] So I would say the past year what I I like to refer to it as my menopause meltdown.

[00:11:12] I think it was like oh my god what the hell's happening to me like I think I'm one crazy and so and I really did think I was going crazy and I think everybody like around me thought I was going crazy too.

[00:11:24] And so it wasn't until a friend brought up to me she said you know we're kind of on the same age.

[00:11:31] It's probably low estrogen and so I Google that and realize by holy crap this is me like every symptom.

[00:11:42] Yeah, and I've been more of a private person.

[00:11:48] I've been so my menopause meltdown I think.

[00:11:51] I needed that support system and realize just how willing people were to you know support me and help me find those resources and so I've been kind of like a walking billboard.

[00:12:14] Check your estrogen.

[00:12:18] But I also think that when I share my personal story, there are so many people who I met who can relate maybe none.

[00:12:31] It's certainly to that but whether it's like another health issue where they kind of felt like you know what's going on with me.

[00:12:40] And so it's just mainly realize that you know hearing other people's stories.

[00:12:47] Really matters to me and then also allowing them to hear my story I think has helped them to.

[00:12:56] So I think it's just made me just more aware that people you know are going through stuff and you know give them grace and to you know hopefully.

[00:13:09] Direct them to resources that might help because you know once you do find like the solution I mean it's a game changer I think once I once I got on on home therapy I mean it was a game changer so.

[00:13:24] So that's my story.

[00:13:26] Oh my goodness, what a funny certain.

[00:13:28] I'll find it but like you know very again human story and when I start acting crazy and having symptoms I'm going to come to you and get all the advice.

[00:13:40] Everything I'm going to post it could be like oh there's bad traffic.

[00:13:44] It's my pause.

[00:13:45] You know I feel like you should do like a workshop or a session in town collecting about that or so I have in the mentor network and have that be you're thinking right I'm sure there's plenty of people in there.

[00:14:06] That could benefit or even you know my age perimenopause someone had to meet the other day like oh man that starts now.

[00:14:14] Yeah.

[00:14:15] So we got to thank you for being vulnerable with that.

[00:14:20] Any final last words of wisdom anything you would share with the world of women and recruiting.

[00:14:28] So I think I want to end with just you know recognizing you guys as you know leaders in town collecting building this community I think it has really helped me.

[00:14:44] Especially just kind of how I describe like how I kind of went through a hard times past year and so just having this community has been great.

[00:14:54] You know women, women founded women community so you know also being able to talk very comfortably about you know women's health is great and then you know I think there has been this energy just around the field.

[00:15:12] It's been a challenging field for recruiters in the past few years.

[00:15:18] So to have a solid community of people who are sticking together and who you know really believe that we can make a difference as far as you know even the reputation of recruiters.

[00:15:34] I think like I'm always you know giving our point of view when people have complaints about us.

[00:15:42] You know I have to just speak up for us.

[00:15:45] Like you know we are rooting for candidates so us to get a bad rap is just not fair.

[00:15:53] So telecoctive has really provided these developmental opportunity professional development opportunities as well as networking opportunities and I just love the community.

[00:16:07] So thank you for building something that didn't exist and you know just for just continuing to progress in this field.

[00:16:20] So.

[00:16:21] Thank you for building something that didn't exist and you know just for just continuing to progress in this field.

[00:16:33] So.

[00:16:33] You have just given back so much to our community not only with starting Chicago but it also runs a kind of support group.

[00:16:44] For women who are job searching and you know I think there could be this misconception that recruiters know how to job search but it's a lot harder to do when you're out there on your own and looking for work and it's.

[00:16:57] And a little bit easier when you know there's other women alongside you and who can share tips and tricks and leads and.

[00:17:06] You know helps that goals for yourself for the week and just so it's not such a lonely.

[00:17:11] Road to travel so just wanted to thank you for giving back in all of these ways to the community and we just appreciate you so so much.

[00:17:20] Thank you.

[00:17:22] Where can people find that that is that still the Monday motivation.

[00:17:25] Yes, I still it is a recurring weekly.

[00:17:32] Drop in where we're on zoom and you know people who are job searching can really kind of.

[00:17:44] You know, bounce some of their ideas or you know just share their challenges and like Chris to say you know all over recruiters when it comes to our own searches sometimes we just kind of get stuck.

[00:17:57] And really need that support from others to say yeah like yes go ahead and follow up like for the third time it's okay.

[00:18:07] Or you know just it's okay to to sometimes even bypass the recruiter if you know the hiring manager, you know so we're just there to.

[00:18:19] You know be support to each other and there are some regulars who are part of it and you know I think it's been.

[00:18:30] Reassuring you know we encourage each other and we will also just kind of share like you know I think you know recruit recruiter roles are coming back like and and that is encouraging for all of us.

[00:18:44] So yes, I appreciate how when I asked Chris to if there was a group that existed.

[00:18:51] That you said no but you would be wondering.

[00:18:57] So I think another thing I love about Tim Clark that is like you have a great idea and it is an alignment with what you know your mission is you guys just a great.

[00:19:08] That is so true.

[00:19:11] Yeah, all right, Edie well thank you so so much for for being here with us today.

[00:19:17] We loved highlighting you and find Edie on LinkedIn will be really late.

[00:19:24] Are we just like where like where's mom I'm like okay fine she'll find her all LinkedIn center.

[00:19:31] Exactly exactly well perfect well we will link your LinkedIn to the show notes people can find you and thank you everyone for joining this episode of.

[00:19:41] I hope you guys have a great time.