The Development Exponent: A Leadership Perspective
Bruce Holoubek
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Leadership, Balance, and Lifetime Learning with Brianna Rooney
What drew me immediately to Brianna Rooney, CEO of Techees.com and the Millionaire Recruiter, was her ability to develop a thriving business, get results from her matchmaking system for recruiters, and still make family an absolute priority. Her team’s approach to the highly competitive field of recruiting is unlike what I’ve seen with most recruiters -- right down to her philosophy about that competition. “I don’t find other recruiters to be competitors,” she shared. “I want us all to come together to have a more well-respected industry.” That’s why she pours time and resources into providing some of the most comprehensive recruiting training in the business. That’s leadership. I asked her about early challenges and was surprised to learn that her launch into the recruiting space and business ownership was without the usual pitfalls. Her business was up and running fast and she had her first deal in the first month. Challenges didn’t really arise until she was two and a half years in and realized this was more than a small business that she ran out of her room. This was a growing entity that she had to treat like the burgeoning business it was. I am a firm believer that there’s a very big difference between being serious about starting a business and taking your business seriously. The people that fall into the first part but don’t move into the second usually end up in that 85% that don’t make it. Brianna takes it seriously. While she had a passion for being a hands-on recruiter and loved being in the bullpen making things happen with her team – she knew she was hindering the growth of the company because you just cannot (and should not) wear all the hats. Her CEO hat had to take priority for growth to occur. That’s why she took action to put personal and professional development at the top of her to-do list this year and why her company and her team has seen so much transformation. I thought that made for the perfect segue to turn our conversation to our core theme at Contracted Leadership – helping leaders develop mutually meaningful work engagements. From a recruiting client standpoint, creating those experiences starts by ensuring they are matching the right candidates to clients. That matchmaking process often includes a lengthy question and answer session and usually an office tour. What does their career development path look like? What is their interview process and how long does it take? Brianna is a self-proclaimed “nitty gritty” recruiter. Which is exactly what you want to see. “Everyone has to be on the same page,” she shared. I couldn’t agree more. She recently received her certificate in diversity and inclusion so she could add that layer of training on for her recruiters and clients as well. I was interested to find out if she had a defining question that would help her best understand her client’s needs so she could more perfectly match candidates and I love that she said, “Describe your culture and company values and what they mean.” It’s very similar to what we do when we do here with our Contracted Leadership clients. When we embed in an organization, one of our first priorities is to engage with employees and ask, “Tell me what your company values are and what you do to support that?” Sometimes that is a question they can answer swiftly, other times not. Both tell us something about how we can best support the growth of that client and create new paths for those meaningful work engagements. From a recruiting candidate standpoint, utilizing an extensive Q&A process to dig deep into what that person is looking for from their new employer such as what drives them, what industry makes the most sense for them, and even what doesn’t work for them is imperative. With a clear understanding of both sides of the equation, a recruiting team is best able to match wants, needs, personalities, and paths. Next, I wanted to explore the question of creatin
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