We’re excited to share our new recruiter spotlight featuring Tammy Hart, Team Lead, Recruitment & DE&I at RippleMatch, the recruitment automation platform changing how Gen Z finds work. RippleMatch and Fetcher have a lot in common: both are platforms to connect companies with the right talent. Both also celebrated Series B fundraising rounds earlier this year, underscoring the value that recruiting tech has for today's talent teams. Tammy understands that behind great tech is a great team, and she's responsible for building that team!
Below, Tammy shares how she's built her career and the one thing that's surprised her over the last year of recruiting.
What led you to a career in recruiting?
I started my career in hospitality, and in hospitality, it’s all about making people happy. I was a bartender for many years, and I fell in love with the operations and the human side. From there, I really got into the onboarding and management track. I was tapped by someone starting a hospitality-focused recruitment agency and I jumped at the chance. I helped build that out to a nationally recognized hospitality recruitment agency, and then I was approached by RippleMatch in April 2021… and here we are!
How did you end up in your current role at Ripplematch?
I was approached by an agency recruiter about the role, but what sold me on RippleMatch was the very first conversation that I had with our Director of Talent Acquisition, Jackie Carlson. She’s my boss, but she’s also become my mentor and a friend.
RippleMatch is really designed to change the scope of how people find work. Instead of going on Indeed or LinkedIn, our platform uses AI and automation. When you think about it, we’ve started to automate so many things in our lives – how we eat and order food, how we date – and RippleMatch is not dissimilar. Job seekers and employers are directly getting matched with each other.
74% of people that sign up to use the platform identify as an underrepresented minority – veterans, first-generation college students, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, etc. I wanted to work for a company where I could be a part of something where we are diversifying the workforce and expanding access to opportunities.
RippleMatch just raised a Series B – congrats! As a leader on the recruitment team, what is your top priority in the coming months to a year?
From a hiring standpoint, we had people say no initially and then the Forbes exclusive came out. These people came back to us and said, hey wait a minute – I am interested. So the Series B definitely benefited us from the standpoint.
In terms of recruiting, director of product marketing and enterprise account executive are top searches for me. Later in the year, we’ll be looking to keep scaling out our product and sales teams.
Right now, a big focus for me is building out a strong DE&I program. We’ve hit over 100 employees and we need to make sure departments have what they need for our culture and values to be preserved. I'm working on building out employer resource groups and establishing a diversity board. I think the most important thing is just listening to everyone at RippleMatch, and making sure they feel heard.
What’s your favorite part of your job now?
I can talk to people all day long, and I do. Yesterday, somebody really made my day because they told me how relaxed they felt during the interview. I told them, “I’ll be honest with you - I am reading questions, and I do have a script.” However, at the end of the day, we are two people having a conversation and I feel like I did my job if the candidate also feels like it’s just two people having a conversation.
What’s been your biggest challenge as a recruiter, and how have you managed it?
I always need to be consistently re-evaluating our benefits, what our message is, how I’m approaching candidates and how I’m interacting because there are a million companies looking at the same people, for the same roles. So it’s all about how do I stand out, and how do I get buy-in? When I talk to folks, I’m very open about how wildly competitive the market is. I fully believe that confronting the challenge head-on by encouraging the conversation. [Candidates] can go anywhere right now…but here’s why they should come to us.
The Great Resignation and the competitive job market are challenging, yes, but I embrace these challenges.
What’s one thing that has surprised you in the last year about your job?
One thing that has surprised me in the last year (and that I’m trying to learn more about) is how important data is in recruitment. I really want to maintain and track accurate data to understand how to get better, and how to resolve pipeline issues. Reading data is so important to understand how to predict how searches will run in the future.
Using data is changing how I do things, because I’m able to get ahead of the pain points and troubleshoot why something isn’t working much more quickly.
For instance, tracking the number of phone screens I’m doing vs. how many are getting passed to the hiring manager. Knowing this helped me realize that we need to tighten up search parameters, and look for a different skill level because there weren’t a lot of screens getting passed me!
What advice would you give to someone who is just getting started as a recruiter, or who is interested in being a recruiter?
You have to go in with confidence about speaking with people. Take your list of questions and frame them in a way that makes you feel comfortable. You want to approach recruitment as authentically as you possibly can. Make it human and approachable, right off the bat. I think that is what has given me a lot of success.
How do you think your job as a recruiter will change over the next few years?
When I first started, I was a full-cycle agency recruiter. I was bringing in business development, sourcing, negotiating, scheduling interviews – I was literally doing the whole thing.
I love having these platforms now, like Fetcher. I love sourcing, but it’s time-consuming, and I think that Fetcher does it in such an amazingly articulate way. It’s cutting my sourcing time in half. AI and automation are going to keep changing the scope of my work, and saving me time.
Thank you, Tammy, for sharing your experiences and expertise with us! We appreciate your insights into today’s recruiting landscape.
Know a recruiter who we should spotlight? Tell us about them via email at hello@fetcher.ai.
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