TOP

Utah Business

Nick Cook | Photographed by MANICPROJECT

Nick Cook | HR Achievement Awards 2024

Nick Cook | Photographed by MANICPROJECT
Nick Cook | Photographed by MANICPROJECT

Talent Acquisition Manager | JobNimbus

/in/nick-cook-b91a79bb/ 

What advice do you have for those just starting their careers in HR?

Remember that you are a service center; you are here to serve your employee base. HR can be a thankless job at times, but if you focus on the core functionality of HR — helping people — it can be extremely rewarding. Also, maybe more importantly, question everything in a healthy way. Innovate, stand out and find ways to improve processes and employee experiences. Take the perception that HR is boring and throw it out the window.

What is one piece of advice you could offer employers about talent acquisition and retention?

Referrals are gold. Too many recruiters will dismiss referrals, but that is a huge mistake. If you have top talent, they will refer top talent. Referrals are key to maintaining culture and making sure that top performers are always surrounded by other top performers. The other thing is to do a lot of proactive recruiting. At JobNimbus, we create an RQL: recruiting qualified lead. An RQL is a candidate that has gone through our entire interview process, and we have decided we will hire them when we have an opening. This allows you to proactively find and engage with top talent, resulting in a quicker time to fill and saving the business a lot of money. Our average time to fill is down to two business days.

Savannah Beth Withers Taylor is the assistant editor of Utah Business and a graduate of the editing and publishing program at Brigham Young University. Beth has written content about travel, academics, and mental health for Stowaway magazine, BYU College of Humanities and the United Way of Utah County.