From Recruiter to Founder: How Andrew Zuckerman Built a Business HR Actually Needs

[00:00:00] Hello, social media followers, LinkedIn, Facebook, and everyone tuning into our show. Welcome to Beyond The Offer Podcast. I’m your host Rosanna Snediker, joined by my co-host and friend Bill Gates. Thank you for tuning in as we tackle the latest trends and challenges in talent acquisition and human resources. Today we are sitting down with Andrew Zuckerman.

[00:00:18] Andrew is a longtime contact of Hirewell, and we are thrilled to have him on the show over the years. He’s worked at various tech startups, ad agencies, and most recently started his own HR consulting business. We’re very excited for you to join the podcast. Welcome to Beyond the Offer. Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

[00:00:35] Welcome. Yeah. Thanks Andrew. Well, we kick off every show with the same question, so we’d love to learn just kind of how you got into HR and about your background, if you wanna kick us off. Yeah. So I’m probably dating myself with this, but I graduated college during what was called the Great Millennial Scare, which was a period of time.

[00:00:53] So I graduated college in 2012, 2013. When the millennials were entering the workforce and the [00:01:00] social contract almost changed between employee and employer. So, people going in like millennials were expecting different benefits. They were expecting to be treated differently. Their career progression expectations had changed, and I found it really interesting from a business problem.

[00:01:15] How can companies adjust to the market? By 2012, 2013, the recession had really sort of ebbed away. People were starting to get hired in masses again at an entry level. And so I was really curious from a business perspective how companies could adjust and manage that tension. And so I ended up getting my master’s at NYU for HR and then started my career and got to try a bunch of things out.

[00:01:39] Nice. Terrific. Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, over the past year you’ve started, basically an HR consulting services company. If I’m not mistaken, can you tell us a little bit more about New Era HR? Yeah, so I founded New Era HR with kind of one core principle, which is, to be able to help businesses who aren’t ready for a full-time hire [00:02:00] understand that there are other options for them.

[00:02:01] So, like Rosanna mentioned in the beginning, you know, I worked at a lot of different tech startups and throughout my conversations with different founders and different CEOs here in Chicago, what I found was. HR is a ubiquitous need. Everybody on some level, in some way or at some point in time, needs HR.

[00:02:19] But the reality is a lot of these places, particularly what I’d say under a hundred or even 75 employees, typically they don’t need full-time hr. But the opportunity for fractional HR to come in is actually very immature. So what you’ll find is when you look at fractional CFOs or fractional CMOs, the model has worked.

[00:02:39] The model is mature people get it, but when they think about hr, they always feel like they have to hire someone full-time. And the reality is those folks who work very hard in my experience, sometimes they might go 40, 50 hours a week while the CEO is really busy. And then day-to-day operations may not take a full 40 hours.

[00:02:57] And so I wanted to create something that was a little bit [00:03:00] more cost effective for these businesses, but also make sure we’re really focused on revenue growth. I think the big thing for me that I found in my experience was HR can be such a critical driver of revenue growth, even though it’s not necessarily thought of as one of those primary drivers.

[00:03:14] And maybe it’s a secondary or tertiary, but it’s certainly a large driver there. I wanted to really build a business based idea and really kind of help drive revenue for those companies while offering them a more cost effective solution. Absolutely. How long has this been going on? It’s been going on for about six months, so I know we’ll get into it, but I had a baby, a very chunky baby, back in October and I took some time off to just enjoy being a dad.

[00:03:39] And then, earlier in the spring, after doing some research and having a lot of conversations, I launched, April 15th. Oh wow. Well, congrats. That’s great. Thank you. Yeah, so I guess as you’ve been meeting with probably, you know, clients that you’re working with, or even just new prospects over the past six months in today, 2025, what are you hearing is like major HR [00:04:00] challenges and projects that they are wanting to lean in for?

[00:04:03] Fractional support or HR support in a non full-time way?

[00:04:07] So I think what we’re finding when I talk to clients is really three challenges and the first is compliance. So what you’re finding is because funding went up in Q1, a lot of folks are hiring again. And certainly recruiting is a challenge.

[00:04:21] And in fact what I would say is the second challenge. What’s happening is a lot of folks are still hiring nationally. There’s a lot of areas around hybrid work and there’s a lot of different classifications of workers, and so what you’re finding is one of the biggest challenges is actually saying, am I compliant

[00:04:35] from an HR perspective? One of the things that we do at New Era is we do what I call a rapid risk assessment, where in 48 hours we will look at all your HR stuff and we’ll say, here’s where you’re compliant, here’s where you’re not compliant, and here’s what you need to do. And we’re finding that to be really, really popular because so many businesses have this concern.

[00:04:53]  I read a stat that 25% of businesses, particularly smaller businesses, get fined every year via local, state, or [00:05:00] federal. So being able to just come in, take a look, that’s the stuff that gets really scary. The second thing, like I mentioned, is recruiting. And obviously I have some great recruiting partners that I’m talking to, but the market kind of went through this kind of, will it, will it not recession question.

[00:05:13] Right. And the market has not, I’m not an economist obviously, but has stabled out a little bit more where you’re seeing businesses being willing to take a little bit more risk. Obviously that comes off some funding as well, but with recruiting, the question is. Who do we recruit and how do we recruit?

[00:05:27] Right. Particularly in the way of AI, because what’s happening is that you’re actually seeing entry level hiring down significantly, even though you’re seeing mid-level and director levels continuing when you just look at the job reports here. Yeah. And so it’s really interesting to see that companies are really asking themselves as they do typically after a more volatile market or kind of more concerning economy.

[00:05:48] Who should I be hiring? When should I be hiring them and how should I be hiring them? You’re seeing that question a lot and I just met with a prospective client earlier today who was like, we need to hire, I don’t know how to do this. What do we do? [00:06:00] I don’t have the time to figure this out. And that’s really the third thing that the speed of business, particularly when you’re finding with small business and startups, moves so quickly.

[00:06:09] And one of the interesting things that we do at New Era or something I like to find interesting is a lot of fractional models will say, Hey, we’re gonna work five hours a week or 10 hours a week. But businesses are moving so quickly to ask a CEO or ask the decision maker to sit down and say, well, what do I need for 10 hours is actually more work on them.

[00:06:27] Because what they’re finding is oftentimes they’re in a moment of crisis, something has happened, they’re being pulled away, but they’re not having the time to do what they need to do. And so what they need is someone just to come in really quickly, solve a problem. Build different templates. They’ll say everything isn’t working.

[00:06:43] We haven’t done these things in a year. It’s been a long time since we’ve done onboarding stuff. And so you’re seeing someone who just needs to come in and essentially just update things and get kind of what their HR infrastructure, what I call it is, get it back up  to something new, something creative.

[00:06:56] People are more concerned about branding, people are more concerned about [00:07:00] culture. Those things continue. So really what I’d say is the three things, just to kind of summarize it is compliance and risk is a big thing. Second is recruiting, but really recruiting strategy, I would say. And then the third is ultimately one of the challenges is things are typically on fire and or outdated because of just the time being able to manage those things and finally getting to a point where it’s like, I need this, right?

[00:07:23] We’re about to hire people. My onboarding stuff is. You can see how it all goes together. My onboarding templates, I just talked to a client. My onboarding templates aren’t working, but we’re about to hire a bunch of people. Please come in and fix it. that’s what we’re seeing a lot. Okay. Two things that stood out you just said.

[00:07:37] I mean, the 25% of businesses being fined for compliance is crazy. I mean, especially as a small business, that’s a huge risk. So coming in and being able to take that off their plate is huge. And I think, you know, we see clients come to us and they wanna hire their first HR person, and you know, you’ve been in those shoes as well.

[00:07:54] That role can change from what you need. On day one versus a year later. And a lot of times the [00:08:00] candidate or the person who takes the job kind of grows out of the role. So I love that you can kind of come in, consult, put things in place, and then find the right person if they’re ready to hire. Absolutely.

[00:08:10] Absolutely. I have started to see that a little bit more with, companies we’ve worked with that have had compliance issues and they have been fined. Are there, like kind of common themes that are really where they haven’t been compliant in what you’ve particularly been seeing?

[00:08:25] One I just recently talked to was, I think they were having issues with, you know, California laws. Another one was New York related. And they just didn’t realize they weren’t up to a specific code and whatnot. Is there a kind of a common theme on the compliance side that you’ve seen?

[00:08:40] Yeah. So I’ll do another 1, 2, 3. I would say there’s three themes and I will go quickly. One is, being set up as an employer because people are national employers now. Yeah. Certain things like Chicago, in California, every city is different. Philadelphia is a great example. There are different benefits or different things that are required at sort of a local, [00:09:00] state and federal level.

[00:09:01] And a lot of companies, they get the federal stuff and even the state stuff people are pretty decently good at because they’re headquartered in that state. They’re not a new company, they’re operational. But if I’m a Chicago company and I hire someone in Philadelphia, one, I have to be set up as an employer in Pennsylvania.

[00:09:18] And then there are Philadelphia specific laws and then all of those things. So it comes down to am I set up correctly, is my unemployment rate stuff, you know, the really fun stuff in hr Sure. About unemployment tax rates, certain types of leaves that are required. You know, an employee handbook, you’ll often see a lot of these things could be missing because in the handbook you’re required to have all the different laws.

[00:09:39] And typically if you look at an employee handbook, it may be 50 pages, the appendix is 20 of them ’cause it’s all the state and local laws, right?

[00:09:45] We have moved into an environment where a lot of companies are, and I don’t know if you guys are seeing this, are really national employers at this point, right?

[00:09:53] They’re sort of headquartered. They have a kind of a core workforce, then they’re ultimately nationally distributed. I think the second thing is where I’d call [00:10:00] like kind of compliant adjacent, which is training. So, I talked to somebody like sexual harassment training’s a big one, right? Most states and localities are requiring some level of sexual harassment training.

[00:10:10] Well, for example, in California. You are required to take sexual harassment training if you have five employees, and that’s not five employees in California. That’s five employees nationally. And so, and I double check this, so you know,

[00:10:22] check ChatGPT. But to the extent that I’m not authority, but I think I could speak to this.

[00:10:26] That’s a massive trigger. Yeah, a lot of times, you know, there’s this big moment where entrepreneurs become employers and that’s kind of this big theme, and it’s not their job to think about that stuff. That’s why we look at things where things are typically either outdated or in crisis. Or there’s a compliance concern,

[00:10:42] ’cause their job is to grow revenue and to build their customer base. It’s not necessarily their job to worry about the unemployment tax rate of Philadelphia. But sexual harassment’s a big one. They just change something where, I believe it’s in Chicago, managers have to take a two hour training where individual contributors have to take a one hour [00:11:00] training.

[00:11:00] That’s new. You know, there’s classifications around non-exempt and exempt workers, but that, the third one I would say is you’re seeing a lot of concerns around kind of employment law issues. So as you’re seeing kind of things increase with EEOC or different employee debate, different employee challenges.

[00:11:19] Some laws have changed. You know, I think one that I just kind of mentioned was this idea of non-exempt versus exempt. So, during the Biden administration, they actually raised the threshold for the minimum salary that was required to trigger whether or not you can get overtime. Then Trump, during the administration changed it back and so there’s all this confusion, all these different pieces, and a lot of these laws have changed at a federal level, and it’s just a little bit tricky for employers to sort of know what to follow and what’s going on.

[00:11:46] You know, a lot of employees are figuring out classifications differently. There’s different sort of things around how we approach, you know, different federal laws around Title VII, things like that. Obviously Title VII has not changed, but certainly you’re seeing it come up more and more and [00:12:00] more. Yeah.

[00:12:01] Even though we here at Hirewell, you know, we employ a lot of consultants. Chicago had new laws in place this year for contractors and yeah, you’ve just gotta be up to date on that ’cause it changes so quickly. So. Sure. Yeah. Next question Andrew, in regard to kind of, I know you’ve obviously just recently launched this consulting deal, but

[00:12:19] you’ve obviously spent a ton of time on a corporate basis with a lot of, you know, exciting companies. What skills have you kind of taken from those corporate HR roles that you’ve had in your career that has been, you know, able to, to kind of translate into the consulting space? Yeah, so I try not to use, too many cheesy phrases, but I’ll use one here, which for me is always think global, act local.

[00:12:40] So I think one of the things, I started my career at this big ad agency that was sort of the local Chicago office, although local being 800 employees of this big international conglomerate. And the beauty of starting there is I was trained in a way where resources were bigger.

[00:12:54] I was trained by phenomenal people. I actually met you guys, Hirewell, back in the day, when I was working there almost 12 [00:13:00] years ago, 13 years ago. But to me, you have to think really high and use those resources and think what it would take to be able to do best in class. Right? And best in class also means consistent, so HR can apply across the board.

[00:13:15] One example was I was at a company, it was called Smokeball. We were the US office. I was the head of HR for the us but ultimately we had offices in Australia, in the UK, and we did this big global comp project. We did a return to office, all these things. We thought about something at a global level, right?

[00:13:29] What makes sense from a company perspective? What is consistent? But then how do we act locally, right? How do we do those things? And I think it also applies to teams. You know, one of the big things you’re seeing with culture is companies are struggling a lot

[00:13:41] to, really build a company culture in a remote or hybrid space ’cause the reality is your day-to-day interaction is with your team. And so one of the things that I found to be helpful is let’s build a strong company brand, right? Let’s think about all hands. What does it mean? What are our core values?

[00:13:56] But the reality is a marketing team is gonna have a different culture than [00:14:00] an engineering team. And how do we allow these teams the autonomy? How do we allow our managers the ability to authentically lead those teams? And so I think it’s a great skill that I really try and apply over and over and over again because for me now, every client is going to be different.

[00:14:14] If I just came in and said, Hey, here’s all the best ways to do HR, in my opinion. It’s a one size fit all, but a 20 person startup and a 75 person, small company, family owned, they’re going to have different priorities. They’re gonna have different values, they’re going to be different. And so we have to think what’s best in class for HR, but ultimately kind of think about the different businesses and then even scale it down to the different business units within those businesses.

[00:14:39] Yeah, smart. When you look at like some of the companies you’ve worked at that have been more startup and you maybe were like the first HR person to come in, or you were coming in to kind of build out the HR function, what are some of the things you learned specifically for that skillset being, you know, more in-house?

[00:14:55] Yeah, I think we, you need to build for scalability, but [00:15:00] you don’t need to over-engineer. So I think a great one is performance management. Typically, when you come in, you’re the first HR hire. Typically performance management is done in rudimentary and not a negative way. It’s typically always done, but maybe the system hasn’t been updated in a few years or

[00:15:18] maybe it’s more casual. There’s no real sort of strategy necessarily behind it. and I think ultimately,  one of the things I try to do is how do we bring consistent and scalable practices to performance management? So at the end of the day, I think a great thing is, you know, the way in which we give feedback or making sure in every performance review conversation there is

[00:15:37] a conversation about development or is the employee feeling burned out or what do they want to do? Right? Those are things that can scale with a business, whether it’s 10, 20, 50, a hundred, a thousand employees. But in smaller companies, in these startups, we don’t wanna over-engineer to the point where we slow the business down.

[00:15:53] So there are things like calibration and nine boxes, which are phenomenal tools in a startup where managers are being pulled in a million [00:16:00] different directions and the business is operating a very quick speed. You actually slow the business down by doing those things. And even though those things are great tools, we necessarily don’t want to slow the business down until we have to.

[00:16:11] Now, as the business grows and gains complexity, calibration in nine boxes are a great way to build visibility and increase fairness in an organization. It just may not be ready for that. And so I think. In a startup, you have to build scalable practices. So if you ever got to that point, it’s a natural evolution, but you’re not over-engineering to the point that you’re giving something to a business before it’s necessary for the business to have it in a way that might end up in inadvertently slowing it down.

[00:16:39] Do you think in terms of scalability for a lot of these companies you’ve worked with, there’s a number from an employee perspective that’s harder to get from? Let’s say 50 to a hundred versus getting a hundred to 500 or something like that, right? I mean, I’m sure it depends a bit on kind of the employee population.

[00:16:57] Is it more hourly versus non and those types of [00:17:00] things, but. Do you see? ‘Cause I think classifications and just company-wise, most companies are under a hundred or so employees within the United States, but like getting from 50 to a hundred I’ve heard is a huge, huge challenge.

[00:17:14] And then scaling from a hundred to five is even, gosh, a totally different one. Yeah. You know, you guys are the experts, so I, I haven’t heard it. And I do think it depends on every company, but I think there’s something really interesting that I’ve seen. So when I talk to, some smaller clients who are, you know, let’s say going from 50 to a hundred, the reality is that 50 employees, everybody knows everybody.

[00:17:38] Everyone knows the CEO, the CEO is in the room, right? And, they are known, their brand is really almost company culture, but a hundred to 500, you start building layers and at a 50 to a hundred, the hiring methodology is a little bit different because I think it becomes much more about values. And I think values are always important, but I think because of the [00:18:00] way we interact with people, and again, you guys are the experts, but I think you’re finding like, do I wanna sit in a room with this person?

[00:18:04] Does this person have the strategy? Because it is your first HR hire, it is your first marketing hire, or your second marketing hire. You really are hiring a different type of person. From a hundred to 500, you may be hiring, you know, more mid-level people or even junior people. And then the CEO is not in every room.

[00:18:20] And so the culture is different. And so therefore, because the culture is different, and then of course the business from a hundred to 500 needs to have more sustainable, you know, kind of consistent practices. The way you recruit is different. So I don’t know if, and again, I lean to you guys to say, is it difficult?

[00:18:34] I would absolutely defer to you guys and say, you’re certainly right. But I think it’s business dependent and I just think it’s about the way in which companies have to hire in those different sizes. And also depends how many times are you hiring one person a quarter?

[00:18:46] Are you hiring 10 people a quarter? Right? How fast are you growing and scaling? Yeah. All over important. Yeah. And, and it’s, I think where we’ve seen it, you know, we’re more on the TA and recruiting experts on that front. You’re definitely much more of a expert on [00:19:00] the HR front, but it’s, you know, I think a lot of companies run into to problems when you have too many people reporting into one individual and you need to scale things accordingly.

[00:19:08] And they’re, you know, you’re managing the manager and whatnot. And that’s where it becomes difficult if you’ve never had people that have actually managed before. Giving them an opportunity and trying to scale that way, it can be a little bit more challenging, but, you know, all definitely,reasonable to be able to fix and fill if you have the right HR resources.

[00:19:25] But, well this is a good transition to kinda more on the HR professionals that you, when you’re partnering with like the business leaders, you know, C-level folks, like what advice do you have when you gain stakeholders trust to smoothly implement people strategies? I’m assuming a lot of the times you may have come into some of these organizations and these leaders may have had a bad HR or taste in their mouth about HR

[00:19:50] ’cause they had, I don’t know, their office manager was doing HR and they didn’t really have the sical aspects. How do you kind of create that buy-in or change the perception? [00:20:00] You know, I think when you come into a business and you’re in an HR leadership role, maybe they’ve had a bad taste. Maybe they’re the first.

[00:20:07] Your job is to build trust and to be a neutral third party advisor. You know, I think our best attribute is to be able to, and it’s also a great opportunity to. Just speak kind of candidly and speak frankly, and speak directly, because we’re able to, because our job is simply in support of the business.

[00:20:24]  .And to speak, of course, neutrally. I really like the idea of collaboration. So I have found that when we launch a people strategy, say engagement, for example, right? Typically, you know, companies will come out with a big engagement strategy or a big recruiting strategy for a team or whatever it may not be.

[00:20:40] It’s going to go better if you talk to the manager, the VP, the C-level executive beforehand versus them seeing it the first time in the room. Even if the whole group like engagement needs to see. Yeah. You know, I think HR. You’ll always find it in any business, in a relationship, you’re going to find a few people who you naturally resonate more, you actually get close to.

[00:20:59] [00:21:00] So like I was closer to the head of sales and customer success in one of my roles, well, those were obviously the revenue generating roles, so I made sure anything that would impact revenue generation, I’d come to them and say, here’s my strategy. Here’s what I think. What do you think? What am I missing?

[00:21:14] And so there’s a level of you’re still holding, you’re not being so collaborative that you’re putting the work on them, but you’re going to them beforehand and you’re getting in that buy-in. And so one, of course, in the room strategically, that person may be able to back you up. But ultimately we, our job,

[00:21:28] beyond being a neutral third party is also be a collaborator. You want these people to come to you and trust you, that you’re gonna be levelheaded and thoughtful and pragmatic when it comes to a people decision, right? They’re not gonna come to you every single day. They’re gonna come to you in a moment of crisis or big, you know, big jump in hiring, whatever it may be.

[00:21:45] Get them involved early. I think one of the things I find it’s a little bit different, but on employee investigations, I found the most successful tool is to bring the manager in early where appropriate, of course, to say this is what’s going on. If this is what I want to do, here’s how it’s gonna affect your team.[00:22:00]

[00:22:01] HR can be opaque and be behind a wall, or it can be a really collaborative member of the business. And I think the latter is so critically important, and that’s my advice. Don’t be afraid to collaborate. I think HR often feels like because either there’s one or two of us, or because we’re HR, we always feel like we have to know the answer and be the most strategic and be all buttoned up.

[00:22:21] It’s okay. Everyone else is collaborating with each other. You’re no different. It is okay to say, here’s my idea. What am I missing? You actually are seeing it on this side of the house. Does this work for you? What doesn’t work for you? It is okay if your idea is not perfect, it is okay if you need to go back to the drawing board.

[00:22:36] It is okay if someone hates it. The idea is you are collaborating with the business to deliver people’s strategy that meets business goals. And so it is okay to not be, not be behind a glass wall all the time. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great advice. And like you said, getting people involved early I think is key there.

[00:22:53] ’cause you get buy-in, but they also feel like they’re part of the solution, so. Yeah. Okay, just shift gears kind of back. I know you were talking about [00:23:00] your career right out of your masters, you did start in recruiting, which now your partners and we’re here for you for that, but would love just to hear a little bit about, you know, anything that stuck out from starting and recruiting and kind of what did you learn from that?

[00:23:14] Because a lot of people in HR do start out in the recruiting seat and then kind of transition into more of a generalist role. Yeah. I think. If I think about what I’ve taken from being a recruiter, I think it is the ability to move quickly and wear many different hats that at 11 o’clock you’re interviewing an account executive.

[00:23:32] At 1230 you’re interviewing an HR manager, and at three o’clock you’re interviewing an accountant. I think that is so critical for an HR person, particularly in startups where I have truly run open enrollment and answered benefit questions at 11 o’clock, and then presented a global strategy at 3:30.

[00:23:48] It is just the nature of the business and recruiters learn. I think for me, what I learned was, one, being able to switch hats rapidly, but not do it in a way that is, sort of running a [00:24:00] muck, right? That when you’re interviewing an accountant, after you interviewed an HR manager, you don’t wanna be asking the wrong questions.

[00:24:05] So learning how to switch hats. But do so in a way that is seamless, is something I learned from recruiting. I also think recruiting teaches you to hustle. Really being able to sort of say, I own this. I’m going to be the reason, you know, do I wanna source 50 more candidates or do I want to do X?

[00:24:21] And, and I very believe very strongly worklife balance. I’m not saying, you know, to skip lunch, but what I’m saying is. You learn to take ownership of your work from recruiting and it makes you feel so good when you get someone that job or you know, in my world now you see a project get over the finish line here.

[00:24:36] I think that’s a really great thing. And I just, I love it. I think recruiting was a great experience. I have a lot of respect for you guys who continue to do it. Because I think the third thing that I’ve learned is that everything is outta your control. At the end of the day, in HR, what I like to say, you know, I’m a big political geek, is we serve at the pleasure, at the end of the day, even if you’re, you have the best idea in the world and you think it’s gonna change strategy, and you’re gonna get everyone to love your business.

[00:24:58] If the CEO says [00:25:00] no, the CEO says no. That is just the nature of it. And in recruiting, you cannot force somebody to accept an offer. You cannot magically wave a wand and get candidates into a pipeline faster, and recruiting teaches you that there’s a difference between effort and ability, right?

[00:25:15] Can I close this role and am I working a hundred percent? And I’ve learned that effort matters more than ability. Obviously ability matters, but the sooner you accept that everything is outta your control, and the sooner you accept, the best thing you can do is put a hundred percent effort and then not take it too personal.

[00:25:29] Remember that you serve at the pleasure is something that I’ve really taken with me for a long time. You know, I remember the days where you would cry when someone wouldn’t accept an offer. You’d have to go back to the drawing board or things like that. I remember those days and it’s just. The world continued.

[00:25:42] You’d fill the role, you didn’t lose the client, whatever it may be. So I think that’s a good lesson to remember, everything is not always in your control. That’s a good piece of advice. I do think it’s interesting to, I mean, some of it’s a bit into your control, but like, you know, for the most part you’re not a puppeteer in convincing them to take jobs, but

[00:25:59] i’ve heard [00:26:00] from multiple people in HR that recruiting’s a great spot to start out ’cause you get to learn so many different areas also of the business through the vertical of recruiting. Right. it’s a bit different than you go into a business partner role and you’re doing, talent management,

[00:26:15] employee relations. Right. You know, sometimes you don’t get in all the ins and outs and details of what they actually do on a day-to-day basis, but when your job is to figure out job descriptions and understand what their function is within the business, it definitely becomes a bit easier probably to do those other things in HR, I would assume too.

[00:26:32] Yeah. A hundred percent, you know, and I was really lucky. I went from recruiting to learning and development and then into kind of HR business partnership. And so I got to say, okay, let’s hire the best people. Let’s hire the people we think we’re gonna do the job. Then let’s see actually how we develop those people once we’re in the room.

[00:26:47] And then let’s ultimately see how they end up being successful, what the challenges are along the way. And so for me, I was really lucky because in, and not the perfect way, I got to go through a little bit of a life cycle and got to really see, and actually being a learning and development [00:27:00] person and seeing how people take skills and what they learn helps you be a better recruiter, helps you be a better partner to the recruiter because you learn what skills are more easily attainable, what skills are more necessary.

[00:27:09] And then as a business partner, of course, you get to do the same thing just from another perspective. So I was really lucky to be able to do everything. And I feel very grateful. And that’s the beauty of working at a large company, in the beginning because you have the opportunity to move around and do things like that.

[00:27:22] Absolutely. Well, speaking of that, transitioning, I’m sure we all remember graduating from college and, you know, I’m sure you’ve probably done even some recruiting, folks right outta of college. But what advice would you give to. You know, a 22-year-old, your 22-year-old self, or other listeners at that, similar age that are looking to get into the professional workforce.

[00:27:43] Not necessarily just HR, but just the overall professional workforce itself? Yeah. You know, I thought a lot about this, and this is where I’m grateful you guys sent the questions over, a little bit earlier so I could think about it, but I think there’s two things I would say, and again, I think it’d be another little phrase that I would use that probably makes me sound a lot [00:28:00] older than I like to pretend I am.

[00:28:01] But I think one is be curious and the second is be humble. I think as an entry level employee, you or a 22-year-old employee who may very well not be entry level, you have the opportunity to learn anything you want. Even if you’re a recruiter recruiting coordinator, I’d never thought as recruiting coordinator, I would be leading HR, be running my own business.

[00:28:20] Right. And that’s just the way of being curious. And I wasn’t always curious. I’m not, this is not a holier than thou example, but at 22 years old, you have the opportunity to learn everything. If you are an SDR at a software company, which I’ve seen, and you’re 22 and you are curious about customer success in the other side of the house.

[00:28:38] If you’re curious about marketing, you’re curious about engineering. You have the flexibility in your career where you have not, you are still building your skill. And I guarantee, and I’ve said this a thousand times, if you ask for that VP of marketing or that VP of customer success to sit down with you for a half hour.

[00:28:54] That person will sit down with you for a half hour and if you ask questions and you be curious, that is [00:29:00] so important. And I think the other thing is being humble, which is at 22, you don’t know the same things as those VPs. And that is totally okay. And I think we all, whether we’re 22 or 34 or 60 years old, we all want to feel like we,

[00:29:15] you know, project ourselves. Well, being 22, you’re still learning how to be a professional in a business. It’s so awkward now ’cause you’re on Zoom 75% of the time. What is that? Being humble and being okay to learn, saying, I don’t know, asking for help. To me is what’s going to get you so much farther. No one is expecting you to know everything and it is okay to say, I think it looks so much better for someone to try some for, for rather than to try something and to not do it right because you just didn’t know what you didn’t know.

[00:29:46] And it’s always okay to try, but to, if you have a choice, I’m gonna try doing this on my own without all the information. Or I’m gonna go to my manager or go to a peer and say, Hey listen, this is what I think the idea is, but I’m not really sure. Can you help me? [00:30:00] That. And if people view you like this, you will go so much farther in your career and you will go quick because I know people want to grow quick because it’s that curiosity and it’s that humility that makes people wanna work with you and makes people want to continue growing and will keep you continuing to grow.

[00:30:17] My first time being an HR director or head of HR to business. I knew far less than I knew now, and I still don’t know everything.I know basically nothing. I would, I would say for the basis of this. But we’re always learning in every single role. And even if you’re an SDR for a year or two, you’re never, ever, ever gonna know everything.

[00:30:34] So stay curious and be humble and be okay with it because it’s exciting. Get to be in a business. You get to learn things, you get to try different things. And who knows where your career is gonna take you. And that gets to be really exciting. And so I encourage people to lean into that. That’s great advice.

[00:30:49] That’s also why I feel strongly when you are entering the workforce. I know hybrid obviously is more appealing these days, but like you wanna be in an office and learn from people when you’re right outta college, ’cause so [00:31:00] much of that is in the moment too, I think back to when I graduated of just like hearing other people and asking for feedback in the moment.

[00:31:06] So not that a fully remote job outta college is the worst thing, but I do think there’s benefits for those folks to be in some type of a corporate environment on site. A hundred percent. And you know, there’s also a beauty for those who aren’t or those who are hybrid or those who feel more comfortable.

[00:31:20] People who use Slack and Teams, it is the same. It takes four seconds to send a message, Hey, have some questions. Wanna learn more about what’s going on in marketing? Do you have 15 minutes? People all have Calendly links book the time, do whatever. It truly takes five minutes. Yeah. And so I agree with you.

[00:31:34] I’m a, an office person, in my heart, but there are so many different ways businesses work and operate as well. And I think there’s always a way to make it work, even in a remote environment. Just being more intentional about it, I guess, if you’re in a remote environment. Yep. Well I do subscribe to your newsletter.

[00:31:48] So I got your latest newsletter and you talked about just talent, you know, personas and viewing HR as a business inside a business. And I know we’ve kind of discussed probably some of that already here, but just kind of tell [00:32:00] us more. What do you mean by that? Yeah. So I am a true HR nerd, and this is kind of my like geeking out spot at the moment.

[00:32:08] And so I’ll start with the latter, which is kind of a business within a business. I think this is coming from working at an ad agency and working at a marketing company and then moving into B2B where there’s always a customer that you’re thinking of. In many ways, our employees and the business are both HR’s customers, right?

[00:32:23] And sometimes they’re in compliments, sometimes they’re in contradiction. Whatever it may be. That’s a different, a whole different conversation in itself. But the way I look at it is when you think about our employees in general, our employees are our customers. And when I say that, when I think about that angle, what I mean is when we sell a product to them, we are selling performance management.

[00:32:42] We are selling our benefits. We are selling, The way we do culture, right? We are selling them on a product, and that’s our product that we deliver for the business. And I like to think of that way inside. I really like to say like we operate as a business within a business because our job, we have our own customers, we have our [00:33:00] own marketing that we need to do.

[00:33:01] We need to make sure HR is seen in the right way. We need to make sure we’re right, right? We’re the right business partners. We’re  accessible to employees we’re deemed as fair and consistent, but the business can also trust us to, you know, Make sure we’re, they’re taking care of the business as well.

[00:33:14] And then ultimately, you know, with this idea of talent personas, because of my marketing background, I started thinking a lot about customer personas and this idea where, you know, the person at a 10 person company, the buyer. Right. So I worked at a legal tech company so we can use software. The law firm with the five lawyers is a different profile than the law firm with a hundred law lawyers.

[00:33:38] The buyer is different. The needs are different. Right. That to me is the same idea as talent personas. The 22-year-old employee that we talked about, has different needs than the 40-year-old employee. And it’s not of just about age. The engineering employee has a different need than the marketing employee because typically they have different skill sets.

[00:33:59] You know, we can [00:34:00] probably say marketing people may be a little bit more extroverted in general than our engineers. They’re going to have different things and then you can dissect that in a million ways. There are some people, and we see this a lot in HR, there are some people who love their job, who don’t necessarily want to grow in terms of taking on a leadership responsibility, who wanna be the best individual contributor, they wanna be the best people in the world.

[00:34:18] Those are amazing, amazing people that we want to keep. They have different needs than somebody who wants to be the VP of their department. And so as we think about these things, we can actually take a precision based approach to performance management. We can take a precision based approach to, how we even recruit those people.

[00:34:37] So when we hire a director of marketing versus director of engineering, and we know the personas are different, we may source different, we may interview different, and we may onboard different. And so I’ve been playing a lot with this idea that if we take this idea of personas and if we look at our employees as our customers through this lens, you’ll actually find what you have is many different types of people.

[00:34:58] And I want to be thoughtful about. [00:35:00] Generalizing categories, right? I know in the newsletter I gave a couple different examples of types of folks. The reality is you could drive yourself crazy and create 900 personas, but we want to keep it a little high level and just recognize that with a little bit more precision based approach.

[00:35:12] It goes back to what I was saying earlier where performance management in a business is always gonna be the same, always, always, always. It always should. It should be consistent. It should be fair, it should be transparent. Every employee should be treated the same, but how we give the feedback to somebody who is

[00:35:28] a skilled person who wants to be best enrolled, like I said, versus a 22-year-old new enroll wants to be the VP of the department, get promoted is going to be different. And that’s where we think local. And I think that’s where personas helps us. It just helps us think like marketing strategists and I think it’s a great tool because sometimes

[00:35:44] in HR, we forget that not only to your question earlier, how do we sell in something? We are building things. We have to constantly be selling. We have to constantly be selling in new ideas, new strategies, new ways of doing things. Oftentimes when we look at OKRs for HR, they’re often [00:36:00] project based launch, new performance management, builder recruiting strategy, you know, higher X amount of people.

[00:36:05] Those are all things you have to be able to sell. Absolutely, absolutely. Looks like. Obviously hiring. We have to sell the way in, but you’re seeing that. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, one thing we talked a little bit more about was, earlier on was kind of work-life balance. But, you know, recently you’ve become a new parent.

[00:36:24] Congratulations. Thank you. You know, I know that, it’s never necessarily completely easy to navigate being a new parent and especially also starting a new business, but how have you kind of navigated through that transition and, kind of manage the work-life balance while also starting a new, HR consulting business?

[00:36:42] Yeah, I think, you know, I was really lucky. My mom, had an amazing career, and I saw, I grew up with somebody who did both. And I think you have a lot of different perspectives on it, and no perspective is better than the other. My perspective on it is, you have to make compromises on both sides of the aisle.[00:37:00]

[00:37:00] You know, we have the most amazing nanny in the world, but the nannies here till five o’clock, and my son goes to bed at seven. I don’t get hours and hours and hours a day with my son. But there are times in which where I wanna be with my son, let’s say it’s going to the park, or I had a doctor’s appointment, say for example, where I will take the morning off, I will be with my son, we’ll go to breakfast, I’ll be totally present, and then when he goes to bed at seven, I’ll hop on line for an hour and a half.

[00:37:23] And so I think sometimes we worry so much about what worklife balance is supposed to be. And you read these articles of like, I have to get up at 4:00 AM I have to exercise, I have to make breakfast. Like it is totally great to have those days. It is awesome and I think it’s wonderful and I think we should all try and do it all whenever we can.

[00:37:40] But there is also a reality that these two things can often live in conflict with each other. And it is something that we have to make a decision. You know, am I growing the business as fast and rapid as I would be if I wasn’t a parent? No. Let’s be honest, right? My attention is pulled away on the weekends.

[00:37:57] My attention is pulled away for a couple hours a [00:38:00] day. You hear a lot of entrepreneurs who work 80, 90 hours a week. I’m not able to do that because I choose to also spend time with my son. And that’s a choice that I make. That’s a, an intentional choice. But also, like I mentioned, my son loses some time too.

[00:38:12] And so it’s difficult, and I think it’s a personal decision that everybody has to make for themselves, but I think I have accepted and I would encourage those where it lines up, and their experience with mine to accept that you have to compromise on both sides and you have to make peace with that.

[00:38:29]  And at the end of the day. It’s about, you know, making sure there’s meaningful time for both and being present for both. I think the thing I loved about my mom was my mom was not on her, you know, I’m aging myself again, but was not on her Blackberry, or her pager, at dinner. Right. She worked, and you know, my mom traveled a lot and sometimes she wasn’t there, but my mom would dinner or playtime or wherever it was.

[00:38:50] My mom was at the play. My mom was playing with us. My mom was present during dinner, but she’d work at night. And she would sometimes, and sometimes she’d have to, and sometimes she wouldn’t. And it was just a [00:39:00] reality. And I really respected that and admired that about my mom. And so I try to, bring that ideal to my, to myself as my business grows and as my son grows up and, comes into the world as well.

[00:39:10] Yeah, good advice. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I’m in the same boat as you with a new baby in the past year. And I think two things that you said, like everyone’s situation looks so different, and that’s okay, like how you create it. But I’m in the same boat as where like before kids, it was like, okay, I’ll get to this on Sunday, or I’ll do this, you know, in my downtime, there’s little downtime now.

[00:39:28] So it’s like when you have an hour to knock something out, whether that is work-wise or be present with your child, you are a hundred percent in versus kind of juggling multiple things. So yeah, thanks for sharing and we love hearing about your little guy. Well before we wrap up, we do like to ask just kind of a few more casual questions to get to know you a little bit more on a personal level.

[00:39:47] So first one, we were curious what was your first job, whether it was high school, college, would love to hear what that was and would love just to hear what you learned from that experience. I was a waiter at an Italian [00:40:00] restaurant. Okay. And I learned, which I think I still apply, is to always make sure you have food on you because, you know, I’d keep a little cheese in my apron and I would munch in between tables.

[00:40:10] But like, even now, like we get busy. Sometimes like, listen, like I just schedule a meeting, 12 to one. Like, it happens like you’re gonna miss lunch, you’re gonna do things like keeping an RX bar with you. I like to joke. I have an emergency Snickers for bad days, which I eat about five out. I don’t have five days outta my seven days bad.

[00:40:26] But my Snickers, my Snickers habit would tell you otherwise. But I think always have food on you and always make sure you have a second to stop and eat, because that will creep up on you. Will always creep up on you real quickly. So I think, I think that’s good. Always have a good, always have a snack of choice.

[00:40:40] Always have a snack of choice. Well, I’m sure as your little one starts eating more, it’ll be good for parenting advice too. Snack. Exactly, exactly. .That is a piece of advice you certainly need with kids. I’ll snack for whenever they’re ready to cry. You have a bargaining chip, that’s for sure.

[00:40:55] But yeah. The other question, if you could have, only one, you [00:41:00] know, place to travel every year, where would it be and why? That’s a big question. I think for me it would be going to, I debate, but I think what I’m gonna land on is going to London. I love London. London to me, is the center of the world, and every time, you know, once a year, all the time.

[00:41:21] I love traveling. I used to travel a lot more, obviously before I had an infant. just going and being in a different city and London is easy. I’ve been on the direct, I’ve been on the overnight flight from Chicago to London many times, and it’s just. You wake up, everyone speaks English. No matter how jet lagged you are, you don’t have to adjust to a new language and you’re just somewhere else, and the food and the culture and the shows.

[00:41:41] And I think it’s just so nice to get away and be somewhere else. I think some people are great beach people, obviously. Anyone who’s listening to this can tell. I’m a little more on the type A side, so, usually two, three days on a beach. I’m like. Let’s go. Yeah. so I think Big City, definitely London, incredible place.

[00:41:58] And just sort of a little bit easier [00:42:00] with language and, even the time zone, things like that. Absolutely. Yeah. No, it’s a good, good spot to be. And it’s not too long of a flight from Chicago. What is that, four? Well, probably six hours I would say. Well, that’s all the time we have for today.

[00:42:15] Thanks for tuning in to this week’s, episode. Today we met with Andrew Zuckerman and discussed HR in the startup space, starting your own HR consulting business, navigating through being a parent while working and much more. We’ll be back again next month with a special guest. Quick reminder again on how you can support our Beyond the Offer podcast.

[00:42:35] You can find all the content on our Hirewell social media platform, which you can find hirewell.com. Andrew, thanks for joining and take care everyone, and thanks for tuning in.