We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Krystal Hicks a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Krystal, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience an industry-wide U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.

Jobs have been my job for more than 16 years now, and I’ve worked through numerous market fluctuations and two notable recessions. While I’ve worked in staffing and career services, the biggest “industry U-turn” I’ve experienced was when I was working at a global chocolate manufacturer as their U.S. Recruitment Manager between 2016 and 2019. In this pre-covid market, candidates took the upper hand, and employers were frantically trying to figure out how to attract and retain great talent. This was a massive departure from previous job markets where employers had all the power. They not only had the volume on their side, but they could pay / demand what they wanted because there was slightly higher unemployment and fewer opportunities to choose from.

Leading up to 2016 though, I actually had noticed the tides shifting in real-time. Before joining the chocolate company, I ran career services for a university and my team and I noticed employers becoming more and more frantic to attend our career fairs. We noticed more “rotational” and “new grad programs” popping up, trying to secure smart grads before they could get snatched up by other companies. I had a front-row seat when I then joined the employer side and began hunting for this talent myself as a corporate recruiter. Luckily, the chocolate company was incredibly determined to lead from the front, so we invested heavily in an innovative employer branding strategy. This not only provided me with best-in-class assets to leverage (progressive benefits, in-house perks that young top talent cared about, etc.), but it also gave me an interesting view into which companies did NOT invest in their talent acquisition strategy. The companies that tried status quo recruiting (aka “post and pray” method) struggled to attract the talent they wanted, so they had to settle for the applicants that received. Some would lean too heavily on their branding or their product portfolio, assuming “well, people love our {insert product/brand] so we don’t have to pay as much /offer anything new…they’ll keep applying… we’re not worried.” I know those companies said that because I talked to their recruiters – and we stole a lot of their talent.

The market keeps us honest. It’s important for companies to not let their ego get in the way of their “candidate experience”/offerings, because that pendulum can swing right back over to the other side in the blink of an eye.
(Ahem… in comes a global pandemic.)

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I decided to create JOBTALK after years of having to apologetically say “no” to people who fell “outside” of my job’s direct client base. I remember being in career services at the University of New Hampshire, and I would have parents calling me saying, ‘I know you have been working with my son/daughter this year, and I was wondering… could you take a look at my resume?’ I hated not being able to help people due to a lack of time/bandwidth on my part, or sometimes a conflict of interest dictated by my employer. I do this work because I love it, and because I’ve seen time and time again how even the tiniest course corrections in someone’s process can make all the difference in their search or situation. Launching JOBTALK in 2019 was about finally stepping into the driver’s seat and leveraging my skills and experience to benefit my community and clients in a more direct and meaningful way.

I currently see about 400 job-seeker clients each year. For many, we’re roadmapping different options because they’re unsure of “what else” they can do with their skills. For others, we dive into more tactical items, like resume revamps, interview prep, LinkedIn, etc. I spend about 80% of my time with my clients and about 20% of my time doing public speaking, in-house workshops, and corporate consulting related to improving organizations’ hiring processes, internship programs, and other talent/recruiting-specific issues they may be dealing with. While I no longer “place people into companies,” I love coaching junior recruiters and helping teams build out their employer branding strategies so they can attract and retain the talent they want – not just settle for the talent they get.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

When I launched JOBTALK, I had already been working in the employment sector for 11 years. I had built up a LinkedIn network of over 8,000 connections, and so when I posted the announcement to my network that I was opening my own career counseling practice, the response was overwhelming. I was immediately flooded with warm, heartfelt congratulations from former students of mine from when I ran career services at two different higher ed institutions; from professionals I had worked with/hired when I was in staffing and in corporate recruiting; and from everyone else in my ecosystem who came to know me as the “jobs lady” over that time.

That response was encouraging, but also very validating. It allowed me to see in real-time that I had done right by people that I had worked with. Recruiters (both agency and in-house corporate folks) can quickly soil their reputation by being unresponsive, unhelpful, or cold/apathetic. I learned early on the difference a quick response to an email could make. We build and break trust in small moments, and I never took that for granted with colleagues or candidates, and I got to see – on my LinkedIn post – just how much of a lasting impression that effort can make.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I am a firm believer that if you put yourself out there and do right by people, they will refer you to others in their life. While I certainly leverage and credit the 12k+ connections I have built up on LinkedIn since 2008, the majority of people I work with one-on-one come from referrals. I am fortunate that I don’t have to spend any money on marketing or lead generation, and I make sure that my social media / LinkedIn / website messaging all highlights ways that people can help their loved ones by gifting services and referring them to me if/when they find themselves in a less than ideal job/organization.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jobtalkllc.com
• Instagram: @jobtalk.llc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JOBTALKLLC
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystalhicks/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jobtalkllc

Image Credits

Photo credits: Larry Rose / Raya Al-Hashmi