Discovering RecOps - How Experience in Other Careers Gives Perspective in RecOps by Ashley Wines
At 28 years old, I had tried on several careers: I spent 10 years in food service at local restaurants and large companies like Olive Garden and Starbucks; I spent four years in fundraising for scholarships & student programs at the University of California, Irvine; I then spent three years in higher educational publishing at Cengage Learning on a product & marketing team building a brand new all-digital learning product. None were quite the right fit, and I was faced with choosing a new path while still not being sure exactly what I wanted to do. I knew I liked working with people (hello 10 years in food service + a psychology & anthropology degree!), so I figured the HR space was worth a shot. I blanketed the internet with my resume on every entry-level HR and Recruiting role I could find.
In comes eShares (now Carta), a 200-person fintech startup in San Francisco. I had never worked in tech and never for a company that small. They took a chance on me as their first-ever Recruiting Coordinator with no previous experience in the field, and as change is the nature of startups, within the first couple of weeks, I was the whole Recruiting team. I got the opportunity to learn our business well by scheduling interviews for all functions, and became an expert in our systems by necessity to streamline my workflow. There were times I felt completely out of my element having no experience in Recruiting prior to Carta, but ultimately found that it is okay to be wrong and make mistakes when I’m learning something new - in fact, it is normal and expected. I tried not to let it derail me and instead, learned from it for next time. I also found that if I trusted my instincts, stayed curious, and kept empathy top of mind, I would always head in the right direction. People are people in the end, and whether it was my interviewers or candidates, keeping in mind that human connection was key.
Six years later, I’m still here at Carta and have supported its transformation from a 200-person startup to a thriving global equity platform with nearly 2000 employees. From the RC role I progressed to Recruiter and Senior Technical Recruiter, and ultimately transitioned back to RecOps where I’ve had the incredible opportunity to build this function from the ground up. Recruiting Operations started with overseeing our RC team and owning Recruiting systems, and has since grown to own strategic Recruiting and People initiatives, global Recruiting processes supporting Carta’s expansion, and structured learning and development programs supporting onboarding and ongoing growth for our Recruiting team.
Every day I lean on both my Recruiting and previous experience, to better support my team and my stakeholders. When I first took the RC role at Carta, I worried I was starting over again, but in actuality, my past experience has made me a more well-rounded partner to my team and the business I support. So many of the skills I learned in customer service, fundraising, and product development were rich training for Recruiting - here are just a few:
Customers are customers, whether internal or external: At 16 I started bussing tables and moved through various service roles like serving and bartending. I genuinely enjoyed creating a seamless dining experience for someone, providing options and insights, supporting special requests, and ensuring that their meal is timely and correct. Service is a core tenant of RecOps - our customers simply happen to be our candidates, Recruiting team, interviewers, and business stakeholders. At the core of it, I want to support them having a seamless experience using our tools, understanding our work and process, and making sure they feel supported every step of the way.
Data entry can teach you how systems and tools are structured: In fundraising for university scholarships, I was responsible for adding donor information into our database. While the data entry was boring and tedious, it taught me how databases treat data in separate fields, what’s reportable, and why data integrity is so important. Most systems and tools follow similar structures, so the more of them you work with, the easier it is to ramp on new ones, which is hugely helpful in administering Recruiting systems!
Be genuine. Get to know the people you’re working with to better support them: I helped run events for donors and learned about what was meaningful to them, and then could connect them with scholarships and programs to donate to that aligned. Matching a donor’s interests and motivators with the right donation opportunity is very similar to understanding a candidate’s skills and interests and matching it to the right opportunity at your company. Ultimately, it’s about people and what’s important to them, and my role in Recruiting is to truly get to know what that is, and work to align it with the right opportunity.
It’s always important to know your user and test your approach: At Cengage, I ran regular product user testing and marketing feedback sessions with our customers. I got to run through wireframes and understand their workflows - why and how they would adopt a solution, manage the change within a group or institution seamlessly, and recognize the importance of creating early advocates. When I stepped into RecOps and started implementing tools and features, building workflows and frameworks, all of this came back to me. It’s just as important to test early workflows or tools with your team and get their feedback and buy in to ease those transitions as it is to do it in product development.
The stronger your business acumen, the stronger partner you can be: One of my core values is curiosity, and that is something that has served me in every role I’ve ever held. The deeper my knowledge of my customers, my products, the business strategy, the way an organization is structured and communicates, and how the industry I’m in moves and changes, the stronger a partner I can be to my customers, my team, and my company. So get curious, whether you’re bartending, building product, or building workflows. The more you know, the better you’ll be at what you do.
Six years ago I would never have been able to predict that I’d have found such a great fit in Recruiting and RecOps, and particularly at Carta which continues to support my professional growth with new challenges and opportunities. I had no idea how well-suited I was for this world, and am grateful I took a leap into a new industry and found I hadn’t “wasted” any time by taking a more circuitous path to find my passion. The key thing I’ve learned is it’s never too late to join the field of Recruiting and RecOps (it’s my 4th career!), and you are more capable and qualified than you think. So take the leap if it’s calling to you.
Disclaimer: The views expressed and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author. Since we are critically-thinking human beings, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time. Please do not hold them in perpetuity.
