Discovering RecOps: Learnings from a Career Transition into RecOps by Tom Allegretti
As a kid, I never dreamed of becoming an HR professional or working in Recruiting Operations. My dreams were to become a garbage man - my dad always told me if that’s the case, then own the garbage company… Yet, here I am, 13 years into my career, and LOVE working in the HR function, building Recruiting Operations teams, and expanding my experience into other parts of HR to hopefully become a Chief People Officer one day.
Life Before Recruiting Operations
I started my career in consulting, implementing financial modeling software, and then went in-house to an FP&A position at Allstate Insurance Company, leading the expense and headcount planning process. After a few years, I realized I wanted to do something else, so I took some personality assessments (Strong Interest Assessment, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, Insight Discovery, and Strengths Finder) to figure out my interests and motivations. I also networked across Allstate and found a specialist role in the Agency Operations department, where I was first exposed to Program Management. After learning the Program Management basics, I had an opportunity to join a newly formed team in the HR department, where we built a new Project Management Office. We led large HR projects and helped the HR leadership team with strategic planning and executing on that strategic plan. During this time, I was also getting my MBA part-time while working full-time.
RecOps Meet Tom, Tom Meet RecOps
Once I completed my MBA program, I left Allstate, backpacked through Europe for a month, and then moved to San Francisco with the goal of breaking into tech. It took a lot of work to break into tech initially. The first time I heard about Recruiting Operations was through a friend at Dropbox. They were hiring for a Recruiting Operations person on their recruiting team, and they thought I might be interested based on my transferable skills. Fortunately, they took a chance on me and I would be able to use those skills in a new space and role.
It was an amazing role, team, and company where I learned the foundation of Recruiting Operations while also adding value with my Project Management expertise. I led software implementations, process improvements, survey design & analysis, hiring manager workshops, and a Recruiting wiki site for the team.
Lyfting RecOps
After spending some time at Dropbox, I had an opportunity through another referral to lead a team of specialists at Lyft. There I would spend half my time leading large/strategic initiatives and the other half developing the specialists into future program managers given my Project Management expertise. In this role, I built many new processes/programs, helped establish a new tech stack and a new candidate experience survey, and led a large project standardizing our hiring process/data, enabling analytics and reporting. Looking back on this time, I’m proud that I was able to provide my direct reports cross-functional opportunities that enabled them to move into roles that aligned with their career aspirations.
Finding a Mentor Branches Out Opportunities
I loved my time at Lyft but realized, as COVID dragged on, my role would be impacted. Luckily I found an opportunity at Facebook where I helped the Product & Software Engineering pipelines increase capacity and velocity to hire faster. The majority of my time was focused on helping our Data Science recruiting team. It was here where I met an amazing leader, and my mentor for the next several years, Michelle.
Michelle would later become the VP of Recruiting at Aurora Innovation, and I enjoyed working with her so much that I soon became her first Recruiting Operations hire. We reimagined recruiting processes and I LOVED building a new Recruiting Operations function from the ground up with everything I had learned at Dropbox, Lyft, and Facebook. Later I would continue this type of work when I followed Michelle to Branch Metrics.
Branch Metrics presented an interesting set of new challenges as it was the smallest tech company on my resume. I quickly realized that I loved it because I could continue to build the Recruiting Operations function from the ground up and get involved in other HR areas. Some of my favorites included helping our HR Business Partners, collaborating on People Operations projects/programs, and helping to bring new processes and programs into the company to increase positive business results. Sadly my time at Branch would come to an end when my role was eliminated as part of a reduction in force after growing the team to 5 people.
The Next Chapters
My career in Recruiting Operations didn’t take the normal path of moving up the ranks from being a Recruiting Coordinator or coming over after years of being a recruiter. I think there is value in looking at candidates with atypical experiences that have highly transferable skills.
The learnings I have in my career are this:
Several roles in your career will be through referrals or someone you know, so always network - and pay it forward to others in need!
Take assessments to understand your interests and motivators - use it as data when someone asks why you might be changing roles, functions, companies, or industries.
When you find someone you love working with, follow them if the opportunity arises - Collaborating with someone you work well with makes the hard days at work seem trivial because you are working with people you enjoy.
Hire someone with an atypical background - their diverse experience will bring positive value in ways you don’t even realize.
Take time in-between jobs to rest and recharge - however that looks like for you. My time in Europe after leaving Allstate was amazing, and I learned so much about myself on that trip.
So now I’m open to work and looking for that next company who is looking for a leader who builds and makes processes/programs better, faster, and more efficient while also developing their team to achieve positive business results.
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.
