Life at Wilson | Jim's career journey

My name is Jim Holt.

I'm the VP of Solutions here at Wilson. I've been with the company since January of 2020, been in the RPO space for over 17 years. And what we're going to talk about today is a little bit of my growth and my journey over the course of that time.

So I got into recruiting in a fairly similar way to what I feel like a lot of people do, which is by accident. I was coming out of college. I was a private music teacher and a bank teller and kind of a jack of all trades and decided I wanted to get an adult job. So I went and interviewed with a headhunter for some sales roles and really liked the idea of what they were doing. And so when I got an opportunity to interview to be a technical contingent recruiter, kind of fell into the job and really discovered that I loved helping people, you know, their place in the world and their career and a different job that kind of elevated their career growth and journey. From there, after a couple of years of leading a team of technical recruiters in the DC area, I got the opportunity to move over into that company's RPO space and help to build out their business development team. And once again, was very fortunate to find a field within recruiting that I could be very passionate about and really kind of continue to tickle my curiosity and really kind of play into my desire to always be connecting with people, understanding more about different people and their career tracks and the companies they work in, the industries they work in. So I was with that provider for, gosh, you over 10 years, 11 years, and then made the move over to Wilson. Having understood what John and Kim had built for years and years and having met them at different events over the course of my RPO career, was really interested in coming over and joining and helping to grow the organization.

It's interesting because in some ways it's always been a little bit of the same job. Like my job is to go out and engage people in conversation and really try to understand their challenges that they're dealing with and how we potentially help to solve those. But I think as I've gotten more enmeshed in the organization and more comfortable with just all the different aspects of, you know, Wilson and our service lines and who we are and the global footprint we have. I've actually been able to kind of grow a little bit more internally, helping to mentor folks in the leadership development program that we have.

I think it was really the ability to go beyond sort of the transactional day to day helping out one to two candidates at a time, helping out one to two hiring managers, you know, on a day to day basis, filling roles and really taking a look at much more strategic solutions to problems. So, you know, when you fill a software developer role for a client or a couple of developer roles for a client. You're helping to solve a portion of a challenge or a problem that that company has, but then just take two or three steps back and try to diagnose more of a systemic challenge that they may be having from a recruiting perspective and thinking about some creative ways to help them solve that versus more of that plug and play type of approach that any good contingent recruiter has at their disposal was really attractive to me. It felt like kind of leveling up within the industry and within the space in a big way and moving from, moving into a much more strategic role.

A couple that really come to mind. Empathy is one. people talk about listening all the time, but until you stop to think and put yourself in the shoes of the leaders that you're speaking with, and when they talk about the things that keep them up at night or what's really stressed them out. Unless you think about it from that angle and really put yourself in their shoes, I think it's very hard to design a solution that's appropriate. But again, thinking about the larger purpose and what they're looking for from a partnership, what makes them feel comfortable, what makes them feel heard and seen. I think that sometimes that gets lost in this type of a space. And so being able to approach it with that empathetic perspective, I think really only helps us in terms of connecting with those leaders and giving them not just what they need from a tactical execution solution standpoint, but then what's the overall problem they're trying to solve, what makes them feel comfortable is important.

That it's okay to say no. There are some times when a client wants you to either try to do whatever you can to cut the cost, and by that you might have to try to cut a little bit of capability, and it's okay to say no. That's going to undermine everything we've talked about, in terms of helping to solve their challenge. if whatever the ask is, isn't core to helping to solve that problem, you have to say no. And you have to maybe sort of sometimes pull them out of the weeds a little bit and to say, remember, the larger view is this. what our goal is when we first started talking was to do this. Now, sometimes the real world comes in and kind of makes you kind of tweak or adjust with that broad idealistic, you know, ephemeral goal was that when you started talking, So you have to be realistic there. But I also think it's OK sometimes to just remind clients that, you know, this type of a service is not like going out and buying some widgets. Like it's not just a transaction. There are larger stakes at play when you think about interacting with candidates, you think about impacting people's lives and their roles and their jobs. Sometimes you just have to say like that's not in our best interests collectively, not to mention whether that's in Wilson's best interest or the client's best interest. But collectively, we need to think about doing things the right way because of the people we will touch down the line with this solution. And we want them to have a good and positive experience.

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