Life at Wilson | Angie's career in talent acquisition

Hi, my name's Angie Hahn, Senior VP of Talent Acquisition and Solutions. I'm based out of Phoenix, Arizona, and today we'll be talking about my career journey at Wilson.

So I have held now four roles at Wilson in the nine years I've been here. I started in a client service delivery position where I was primarily supporting our clients, and helping with really expanding our services while also executing with our partners. After just shy of three years, I moved into our talent acquisition position. So I was our VP of TA and I helped with all of our growth and solution offerings from a global scale. We were in real high growth mode at that time. So we were making hundreds and hundreds of hires each month. We expanded into new markets, into some low-cost markets, so some like Romania and Poland. We also started to expand into South Africa. We also supported, of course, our EMEA and APAC services. it was a really wide robust role, but was also supporting our clients in a service delivery model as well. So I was operating still as a client service delivery leader and then also our internal talent acquisitions leadership with my team across the country and also globally. Once I moved from that talent acquisition role internally, my experience expanded where I had a global team. I was client services delivery and also ⁓ operations. So at that time I had a rather large team where we were supporting all of the Americas in APAC markets for our clients operating with RPO services as well as contingent executive search services. I also operated in a solutions role, so I would help with consulting on either client recommendations or also working through discovery and would help with not only the contracting of that, but then also executing with a delivery team and then partnering strategically with that client. And then after about four years in that position, I moved into my current role, which is global solutions, supporting within facets of our realm. And I've been in that role since the new year.

I just started in my new role a few months ago and there's quite a few things I'm excited about. But one that really stands out the most is Wilson has given me the platform to work and partner and workshop with industry leaders attending conferences and just industry events. I'm able to speak to and share topics that I'm incredibly passionate about, share trends and trajectories of what we think our industry will be doing, and then really networking with those leaders across the businesses globally.

So what really sparked my interest in joining Wilson almost 10 years ago was I worked in a corporate talent acquisition environment prior to joining here. And one of our premier vendors and partners was actually Wilson. So I was a client for almost a decade before joining Wilson and coming to the RPO environment. I had started my career 20 plus years ago in agency, had then transitioned into a corporate environment and then was able to work with Wilson in that corporate environment and knew that I really wanted to kind of wrap around out that trifecta of talent experience. And for me, it was to join an RPO, but I was very, very specific that I'd be joining Wilson or no RPO at all.

The skills that have been most valuable to me over the course of my career has been my ability to be very agile. Also following those instincts, right? So want to call it gut instinct or, being very decisive, understanding exactly what I want to do and making that decision and feeling very confident in that decision. And then also being very solutions oriented. I think we're faced with a lot of challenges in careers, a lot of challenges within this industry in particular. And I think that it's really important that you just kind of put your head down. You collaborate closely with whomever it is that you're working through that problem and coming to a solution that's going to be best fit for all parties involved.

One of the most important lessons I've learned throughout my career is to lead with empathy. Empathy of others and also empathy for oneself. I think that when you're pursuing your career and you're passionate and you're putting a lot of time and energy into not just your growth, but your people's growth, your team members growth, that it's really easy to kind of lose an overall understanding of what someone's needs are. So I think if you continue to lead your day, lead your calls and meet with others, that's a very humbling way to work with somebody. And I think empathy always needs to be utilized, right? I don't think we ever should stop having empathy. Again, it builds greater understanding and trust with whomever you're working with.

The one piece of advice I would give somebody who's starting their career was to absolutely put your all into it. I think if you really pursue any facets of your life, whether it be career, personal, yes, professional, it's important that you show up, you put 100 % in, you ask the questions, there's no dumb question, you are involved and active and I think that passion and performance will follow that. And so I think just showing up and absolutely taking the day head on each day, regardless of how you might wake up or how the day might look on your calendar and how your day might fall apart because that's what happens with calendars and scheduling. I think you just need to show up, do 100 % and just follow your passion and I think that passion will continue to propel you into your career.

To explore career opportunities at Wilson, please visit our careers page.