I was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview Carrie Collier, a highly successful recruiting leader in our industry. I feel fortunate that she was willing to participate in my blog interview. Carrie Collier is an enthusiastic talent advocate and engagement expert for software, product, and quality engineering professionals. She builds strong relationships with potential candidates with the aim of helping them find a meaningful career at Appian. She often provides advice and finds this just as rewarding in the people-focused world of employment.
One of her favorite aspects of her job is researching innovative sourcing techniques and tools to streamline the recruitment and sourcing process and provide the best candidates for her team. The job market is challenging, and she finds great satisfaction in connecting with individuals at the right time.
She is a fan of useful Chrome extensions, bookmarklets, and recruiting tools. If you know of a good one, she would love to hear about it.
She places great value in ongoing education, especially with post-secondary and non-traditional training programs that help bridge the skills gap in IT. She believes in employee development, appreciative inquiry, and constructive feedback, and finds the most fulfilling part of her job to be placing candidates in their dream role and watching them grow professionally. If you get a chance, she recommends the book “Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go” by Beverly Kaye and Julie Winkle Giulioni.
She loves her family, coffee, wine, technology, and everything about recruiting and sourcing.
She is thrilled to have the chance to give back to the recruiting and sourcing community by volunteering her time with organizations like SourceCon, HRTX, and ATAP. Overall, I’m excited that she was so opened to getting interviewed for wizardsourcer!
Here’s my full interview with the incredible Carrie Collier:
Tell us about your work experience in recruiting – how did you get your start, how did you progress, where are you at this point in time?
TL;DR:
Hi there! Well, I started recruiting after a two year stint with a company called Land America where I worked as an HR Representative. It was a Title Insurance company and my brother Gordon Collier who was a Recruiter there helped me to get the job. After some time, I wanted to try something new and see if Recruiting was my jam too.
Fun Fact: my Brother, Dad, and Grandpa all were in TA & HR – It is in my genes.
It turned out there was a nepotism policy and I couldn’t move into Recruiting with my brother. Once again, he referred me over to a friend with Apex Systems which at the time was an IT Staffing firm (formally AVI Staffing).
In my ~10 year stint working for Apex Systems, I took on many roles and wore many hats. You could consider me a do’er of all things R&D. The ideas were put into outer space by a leader, landed on my plate, and I delivered on them. Every role I was given didn’t exist prior, therefore, I helped to pave the way for things like specialized recruiting, SWAT team recruiting, account focused recruiting, and strategic delivery where I helped train and educate other offices and employees on how to improve fill ratio.
SWAT team recruiting was where I learned about Sourcing: Here is an account, an impossible position, and now I need to go where no other Recruiter has been to find the candidates. No job boards, no LinkedIn… figure out other ways. GO!
Can I say DEER IN HEADLIGHTS? How does one do that?
During this time in my career, I learned about non-traditional sourcing tools, Recruiting Daily, ERE, SourceCon, attended millions of sourcing webinars, followed “all the people”, and joined this amazing sourcing community.
By using many of the tips I learned from the community I was able to break into new accounts, fill niche positions, and have people respond to me that had normally been impossible to reach. I realized very quickly that I was obsessed with sourcing and I wanted to do this forever. Unfortunately, my company at the time did not see the value in strategic sourcing and told me it wasn’t in the business plan.
That’s when I found Appian where Ian Jones, the Director of TA at the time took a chance on me. He knows a lot of people in our community so I am thankful for all the kind words people shared with him as reference.
The rest is history…
I have now crushed my goals 2 years in a row and am a top performer on my team. I love what I do every day and the people I do it with. I legit got very lucky to work with such amazing and smart people.
What is next for me? There are still so many areas of sourcing I haven’t been able to deep dive on and professionally touch. Things like building out org charts and creating a strategic long term plan around target companies, people, and following their changes, etc.. Learning more about strategic long term creative engagement, etc.. I would like to learn more about those areas and of course I want to have my own sourcing team one day.
What are the unique talents you bring to the field?
I like to present and share what I know in practical ways and how I use it daily. It’s fun to know the neat cyber sleuthing stuff but I haven’t ever really had to wander too deeply from the surface. It is fascinating though… and why I think it keeps a lot of us here.
ONE DAY we will have to go do that “INSANE THING” someone taught us about 3 years ago. That stuff is in my back pocket.
I absolutely love training people and geeking out with anyone that will listen. In fact, just as Steve Levy (and others) will take my calls randomly (even on a weekend!), I give back by doing the same for others who need advice, help, or want to talk about a new tool. I have had the opportunity to chat and meet so many cool people from presenting at HRTX, connecting on LinkedIn, and attending events.
We all have the bug, the vibe, whatever you want to call it. It’s real.
Share your biggest success story in recruiting so far?
Oh man, I think I am keeping any reader here longer than they thought they would be. My biggest success honestly is just stepping out of my comfort zone, asking all the questions, and talking to people that I never thought would talk to me, ever.
Because I have done these things, I am now in a job that I love, have had all the best advice on how to get here, and have a huge support system I can fall back on for help and encouragement.
What is that quote? “You never work a day in your life if you are doing something you love”. I have found that and it came with a bonus side family that I just appreciate so much.
If it wasn’t for my brother being so cool and in the know in the recruiting community and my Dad for letting me cry at him when life has sucked bad on the recruiting rolling coaster… I wouldn’t be here.
I’d probably be a private investigator though… I did get my degree in Criminal Justice. LOL
What is the best advice you’ve received during your career path, and from whom?
SLOW DOWN 😌 – “Steve Levy”
I am just one giant ball of energy and smiles. Side note, I also am incredibly shy and have high anxiety. Steve has helped me in so many ways to become grounded, slow down, and he has encouraged me to stop overanalyzing everything. It’s always right in front of my face what I am looking for or one shift in my thought process away to finding strategy to get what I need. I am forever grateful for his part in helping me get to Appian. He is probably tired of me saying this by now.
What’s your favorite recruiting tech tool?
Ha… can we only have one?
What is my challenge, role, or mission?
What is infosec like? Am I blocked?
What kind of computer do I have?
Just kidding…
Honestly, I have so many favorites and it has been based on my end goal, who I work for, what security precautions I have to take into consideration, etc. I will say, I always have Highlight This, Sourcewhale, AmazingHiring, Magical Text Expander, OctoHR, Andre Bradshaw’s Github Bookmarklet, Seekout, HireEz, OneTab, and Momentum Dash on my toolbar. They are life.
What do you hope to achieve in 2023?
To effectively inspire others to catch the same vibe I have and source strategically like its no-ones business, add value through market intelligence and employment branding, all while being incredibly successful in producing hires for the company.
I think I need to write that on my wall. #VisionBoard
Any future predictions on talent sourcing?
Not so much predictions as it is to embrace change and be uncomfortable, without these things we will no longer learn… when you stop learning… that’s boring. Stay curious, ask why, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
What’s your favorite Boolean String?
Any Boolean I build with a wordcloud, another bookmarklet of Andre Bradshaw, and working in some site operators for XRay – AROUND(X) and intext: are some of my favorites.
Tell me about your current role? How’s that going?
It’s going great! I am expanding my horizon (with the help of ChatGPT for research) to India sourcing and learning a whole new culture and sourcing workflow. It’s been great to start something new and almost re-invent your strategy working with a global team.
Anything else you would like to add? 🙂
This is my open invitation to connect with me on socials and talk geeky. I am here for all the ChatGPT drama and “why isn’t this working” chats. I also am here for “what was that tool so and so brought up in that last webinar” and sharing all the knowledge. It is a community of learning and I never want to stop.
Check out Carrie’s interview on Dueling Sourcers:
- Unleashing the Power of AI in Talent Sourcing: Meet Noon - May 17, 2024
- Demystifying Natural Language Search: Crafting Effective Boolean Strings - April 26, 2024
- The Art of Context: Why Rushing to Conclusions Can Lead Us Astray - April 25, 2024