In this strategic, advisory role, I support 221 Virginia State agencies, offering expertise in organizational change, HR policy, and legal compliance and assist with addressing issues in each agency that impact the 111,000+ State of VA employees across diverse levels and specialties.☑ SHAPING HR POLICY: I develop innovative HR policies, stay abreast of legislative changes and craft talent development initiatives to keep the team well-informed and in compliance. I spearheaded the introduction of alternative hiring processes for candidates with disabilities, enhancing accessibility and fostering inclusivity.☑ PROJECT MANAGEMENT: When the State of Virginia transitioned to a new Applicant Tracking Software (ATS), I was part of the 4-person team that contributed to crafting the Request for Proposal (RFP) and assisted in building a more robust ATS, enhancing system functionality.☑ PROCESS IMPROVEMENT: As a super user of the new ATS system, I created tip guides, developed resources and facilitated training to empower users in navigating the system. This initiative eliminated duplicative paperwork and significantly reduced the employee onboarding process from 12 hours to as little as 3 hours per employee.☑ TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: I am a certified Windmills trainer through the VA Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) and travel statewide to deliver trainings. ☑ TALENT ACQUISITION: As a former recruiting manager, I consult with talent acquisition staff from over 100 agencies. Together we identify staffing shortfalls, proactively engage in succession planning and successfully reduced their time to fill from 92 to 48 days.☑ CANDIDATE SOURCING: I often represent the State of Virginia at job fairs and participate as an interview panelist. I initiated the recruiting network action team—an assembly of 800+ State of VA recruiters meeting monthly to exchange information, resources, best practices and knowledge to optimize talent acquisition efforts.

I taught leadership and military science concepts to 100+ high school students as their ROTC instructor. In this role, I get to mentor, coach and develop students into future leaders and provide them with tools for success, whether they decide to join the military or not. I enjoyed working with the students and have put many of my recruiting, human resources and employee development skills to good use. For example:☑ RECRUITING AND RETENTION: In order to continue, our program has to have a minimum of 100 students. For the last 4 years, I have actively marketed the program in order to increase our recruiting. We have met our goal every year and have maintained up to 117 students in the program. Once we have the students in the program, I work to build a team-focused group that ensured retention.☑ TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: As an instructor, I make a daily impact on my students’ success. I oversee the development of our learning objectives and I always employ many different instructional methods – including lecture, hands-on learning exercises and multimedia presentations – to ensure I engage and reach all the students, regardless of how they learn. I implement and modify existing curriculum and create interactive, informative lesson plans and teaching materials for all learning styles. ☑ COACHING AND COMMUNICATION: I offer daily performance feedback and counseling to my students. I have to be flexible in my communication style as I interact with parents, guardians and students from all cultures and backgrounds as well as school administrators, local partners and other educators. I continue to use my skills in conflict resolution to overcome communication barriers, mediate disagreements and listen to complaints. Of course, I handle confidential information and I ensure that I protect this information in accordance with HIPAA and Privacy Act regulations.

At first glance, this position may seem out of character with my experience and skills. However, as the direct supervisor of up to 70 union employees, I constantly applied my human resources background. In addition to overseeing production and quality, I also participated in the following human resources functions: ☑ Resolution of compensation/benefits issues. Assistance with the union contract renewal negotiation process and mediation of issues with union representatives. The contract negotiations included benefits, compensation and retirement pension or 401K programs. ☑ Human resources support all the way from new hire orientation, communication of policies, procedures and benefits through performance evaluations, counseling, discipline and termination as needed.

In this nationwide senior leadership role, I was part of the executive Staffing and HR Management team that supported 6K recruiters operating across the U.S. I directly advised US Navy senior leaders, including the national chief recruiter and the executive leadership team, regarding the interpretation and application of human resources law. Additionally, I managed and allocated $1.2M budget. In this strategic leadership role, my key contributions included:☑ TALENT ACQUISITION: The Navy often needed to attract and recruit specialized candidates such as doctors, nurses and engineers. In order to target these specialty candidates, I planned staffing and recruiting events to attract and engage the right candidates. I created, communicated and implemented the strategic recruiting plan that included marketing, candidate sourcing, selection, on-boarding of candidates and compliance. I audited hiring and selection practices to ensure fair, unbiased and consistent hiring, promotion and staffing decisions.☑ CANDIDATE SOURCING: I achieved great personal success as a recruiter and I leveraged my skills and experience to create a robust program that enabled recruiters to create a candidate pipeline and identify applicants – especially for high-visibility, critical career fields.

In this regional role, I was able to make a direct impact on up to 140 recruiters who were out in the field sourcing candidates. I spent 3 years directing up to 140 recruiters in a region that covered the southern half of Florida and Puerto Rico and 3 years in Minnesota overseeing 120 recruiters that covered 7 states and 350K square miles. I oversaw human resources and staffing as well as performance and production. I was a Certified Sales Trainer and I constantly delivered training that contained actionable methods to directly improve each recruiters personal productivity and effectiveness. I had a multi-functional role:☑ EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: I constantly created new curriculum or modified existing curriculum to train my team to achieve success. Although military recruiting can often be seen as a numbers game of just finding “bodies” to fill positions, I taught my team to focus on quality through effective needs assessment, targeted presentations and integrity. This helped the team meet their goals, but also ensured higher retention rates. ☑ STRATEGIC STAFFING AND SUCCESSION PLANNING: In order to meet short- and long-term staffing needs, I actively participated in strategic succession planning. ☑ RECRUITING PRODUCTION: An important part of this role was production and staffing. When I took over as the Minneapolis regional director, the team had not met their recruiting goals in 3 years. Within 60 days, we had met our goals and continued to exceed them for the next 3 years. I collected, monitored and analyzed our performance metrics and KPIs daily in order to identify improvement opportunities. ☑ HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT: I was the compliance manager that ensure our practices followed HR law such as EEO, ADA, FMLA and HIPAA/Privacy Act.