Helping a Mother Get Back into Recruiting

Consultant History

This is Gail’s journey—a talented consultant who was looking to re-enter the corporate world after taking time to raise her children. During her time away from the corporate workforce she chose to work as an elementary school teacher so her schedule aligned with her children’s life activities. Now that they’ve moved onto high school, she is able to go back to focusing on her career within Human Resources.

The Challenge

Prior to her break from the HR world, Gail had almost a decade of recruiting experience in a variety of industries—from financial services, landscape management, healthcare and telecommunications. At this juncture, Gail really wanted to return to her success in Recruiting after leaving it for over 9 years. With such a large gap of working in HR Recruitment, Gail found it challenging to get the opportunity to interview.

Companies were apprehensive to consider her because they felt that her recruiting skills were out of sync with the advent of newer recruiting tools. The concern that most companies raised—was Gail ready for the challenges of hiring talent in the digitally connected world?

We thought so and our team went to work on finding Gail a path to her new career.

The Solution

Working with one of The Squires Group Senior Resource Managers, they highlighted Gail’s skills that she mastered while teaching that would appeal to potential hiring managers. Gail also agreed to consider both contract and contract-to-hire positions. Both approaches would be great paths to find a new perm job because clients would be able to test her skills and her fit-factors for their environment while she would be working on-site with them.

As we worked on presenting Gail to our clients, The Squires Group Account Management team also highlighted the success that Gail previously had as a recruiter prior to moving into her teaching career. Moreover, they highlighted her core recruiting strengths like relationship building, communication, dedication and professionalism—which are all vital and timeless skills for successful recruiters. As a result, The Squires Group was able to open the door for Gail with a local bank that needed to respond quickly to a surge in recruiting for loan processors.

The Success

After an initial phone screen and on-site interview, our client decided to engage her as a consultant for a 60-day project to meet their surge recruiting needs. To date, their team has been very impressed with Gail’s success. So impressed, that they extended her for another four months!

Gail is still supporting our banking client and they have extended her contract again. Today they have her focusing on recruiting corporate positions within the bank and assisting HR with special projects.

So, what’s the best news for Gail as a result of this journey? She’s gained valuable new experience with today’s digital recruiting tools and has proven to herself and her new employer that her core recruiting skills are still relevant—and are still in demand to help companies solve their talent solution challenges.