Helene Vo

Flashback to Sept 2023 in Hawaii. I'm walking on stage to accept a Founders Club award at Jobot for billing $1,032,000 in 2022. Sadly, last week was my last week at Jobot. Let me start by saying I'll always be grateful for the EPIC experience I had there. It was an amazing ride with a ton of incredible people. No hard feelings at all. So what happened? Well, my billing numbers fell off a cliff. 2018: $168,000 2019: $480,400 2020: $373,200 2021: $374,200 2022: $1,032,000 2023: $426,100 So far in 2024 I've only billed $28k 📉 Why? Here are all the possible reasons I can think of... - Down tech market? - Layoffs? - Burn out? - Resentment over changes in company policy? - Lost motivation? - Spent too much time posting content? - Regime changes at big customers? - Ineffective email sequences/campaigns? - Not enough cold calls? - Too stubborn to pivot industries? - Req snobbery? - Senioritis? - Negative mindset? - Poisoned by doom scrolling? - Fear of a pending AI takeover? - Self sabotage? I think it was a mix of all the above. TMI? Maybe, but I don't think I'm the only one suffering from these ailments. Thousands of recruiters are experiencing these. Strangely enough, I saw this day coming a year ago. I felt it. I kinda knew it was coming. But is that why it happened? Not sure, but I'm at peace with it and looking forward to a new chapter. A fresh start. A new challenge. So what's next? I'm exploring a number of options. For now, the Imperial Security Bureau Podcast will live on. There are several more interviews lined up. 🤘 Now that I'm a free agent, let me know if I can be of service. Stay tuned for the next adventure! #opentowork

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Hey all... JOB OPPORTUNITY !! mini story included_ 2 weeks ago I posted for this role and we made it through interviews in 1 week. I hate dangling 'speed' in front of people bc I know how frustrated people are (this market sucks!), but this truly was a special, refined process. ⚒ Took the brief > presented a stand-out candidate > interviewed over 5 business days > offer! 🙀 It was wild but in the best way! A dream for a great recruiting partnership. But also a > 🎢. And as things go, it wasn't the right timing for this particular candidate. That's okay! 🥁 That means the role is still open, and I gotta fill it. This client has been interviewing for a couple of months, and by now, knows exactly what they are looking for, and are ready to hire yesterday. So here is what we learned we really need from this most recent interview round: 🌟 🌟 🌟 Have you worked at a startup? Have you worked for a big company? Are you in the Bay Area (able to get to San Mateo 2x/wk for jam sessions)? Can you get down with being an IC for 6-12 months and want to/have experience building a team? Do you want to be a strategic partner and build from 0-1? And hang out in Figma every day? 🌟 🌟 🌟 Please see original post below for all relevant/required info! Hit me up and share with your SF buddies/networks. I appreciate you! This team is cool. Level-headed. Accommodating. Clear-sighted. Passionate. TYSM. 🧡

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🚀 Launching my free guide on salary benchmarking and pay transparency! 🚀 Compensation is never neat, and implementing a structured approach can be overwhelming, but speak to any business that’s been through it and out the other side, and they’ll tell you the results are worth it! When you get this right, it saves everyone time and lets you focus on what really matters – building a successful business. To help you on this journey, I’m excited to share my free guide outlining the steps and key decisions for designing a compensation system that’s fair, consistent, and transparent 💛 The guide draws on my experience working with over 70 global organisations over the last decade and I hope it becomes your go-to resource when creating a pay structure that fosters transparency and trust. Access the free guide here - https://lnkd.in/eJ-58ztN I’d love to hear your thoughts and please consider re-posting this to share with others in your network who might find it useful. #transparency #salarybenchmarking #compensation #payequity #paytransparency

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Happy Friday everyone. To my emerging tech and startup friends. We have a great roster of passive talent that are in the beginning stages of conversations to have something new lined up for Q1/25. So as you are having the budgeting and headcount conversations now, keep us in mind as a strategic partner if you are expanding in leadership roles or Sr ICs. I currently am talking to: - VPs of Engineering - Director of Data Engineering - Director of Platform ENG/Devops Engineering - Director of AI/ML Engineering - Cloud Security Directors - Director of Product Management When you know what you need, let's connect and figure out what works for you and your company. #2025 #Startups #EmergingTech #Hiring #Jobs #LetsGo

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I’m in immediate need of work! Who’s hiring candidate experience focused exceptional recruitment pros??? I’m available now! I’m looking for a full-cycle recruitment or sourcing role. Based in greater Seattle/Tacoma area in Washington state. Open to full-time/part-time/temporary, W2/1099, Onsite/Hybrid/Remote, and willing to relocate for the right opportunity! General look at some of my experience in recruitment: • 12 years corporate  • 3+ years technical • 3+ years Agency/Staffing/RPO • 5+ years NGO  • 5+ years Executive  • 6+ years Light Industrial/Supply Chain/3PL  • 6+ years of Sales/Customer Success/Call Center/Customer Service  • 9+ years of recruitment team specific leadership experience  • 1+ years of healthcare I’ve not recruited for everything under the sun but I have recruited for a wide range of industries and roles while working for corporations, agencies, and RPOs. I’m open and immediately available to work! I come with references from former leaders, colleagues, and candidates (that I’ve been able to get hired & those I have not). Miscellaneous facts about me: • Boolean is an old friend I enjoy spending as much time with as possible • implemented Greenhouse twice  • worked in over 10 ATS systems • I love panda bears • dedicated to providing world class candidate and hiring team experiences  • pink is my favorite color followed close by rainbow and black • exceptional as an IC or team leader (I love both equally at this point in my career) • I’m an activator • active presence on social platforms as recruitingSHEro  • whenever I say or hear the word Boolean I begin to sing in my head to the tune of Dolly Parton’s, Jolene (“Boolean, Boolean, Booleaann, Boooleaaannnn…”) • open to project, permanent or contract work • I love rainbows • link to my website in comments • there are 20+ great recruiters roaming the planet today who learned recruitment fundamentals directly from my training and mentorship • I love Wonder Woman and what she represents  • there is so much more to me vs. what I can share in a LI post - take a chance on me so we can do incredible things while hiring the right candidates for your open roles without cutting corners because we both know retention is king and one bad recruitment hire can set back recruitment efforts 3-6 months. I NEED YOUR HELP! Who do you know? Can you introduce me to someone who is hiring? Can you refer me to an open recruitment role within your organization? Will you share this post? If you have worked with me, for me or if you've been a candidate that's gone through the interview process with me, are you able to write a recommendation for me here on LinkedIn? Do you have an idea that will help? #HrCommunity #LinkedInCommunity #HireMe

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Partnering with All Pro Recruiting (APR) for your next important hire amplifies the benefits of performing due diligence. Here's why: Expertise and Experience: All Pro Recruiting brings years of experience and industry expertise to the table. They understand the nuances of the recruiting process and have a proven track record of successfully matching top talent with leading organizations. Extensive Network: All Pro Recruiting has a vast network of professionals across various industries. This network allows them to tap into a pool of qualified candidates who may not be actively seeking employment but are open to new opportunities. Personalized Approach: All Pro Recruiting takes a personalized approach to recruiting, taking the time to understand your company's unique needs, culture, and goals. They tailor their search to find candidates who not only meet your technical requirements but also align with your company's values and vision. Comprehensive Screening Process: All Pro Recruiting conducts rigorous screening and assessment processes to ensure that only the most qualified candidates are presented to you. This includes evaluating technical skills, experience, and cultural fit to hedge your bet on your next hire. In summary, performing due diligence in hiring is essential for making informed decisions and mitigating risks. Partnering with All Pro Recruiting, LLC. further enhances this process by leveraging their expertise, extensive network, and personalized approach to find the perfect candidate for your organization's needs.

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I'm honored to be hosting a Voray Dinner on June 4th in Redwood City. To engage and make the event appealing to as many TA leaders as possible, I figured I would try crowdsourcing some theme or discussion ideas! I was thinking something about transferable skills and how we can help other recruiters in the current market could be an insightful discussion. Any other ideas? What would you like to discuss? Previous events covered: ▪ Optimizing the recruiting process ▪ Understanding Talent Metrics ▪ Hiring without LinkedIn ▪ Mastering the Candidate Journey I will make notes and share the ideas that come from our discussions!

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Yo Linkedin Fam! So if you know anything about me, you know I'm always in the tech, always testing and demoing new tools, and as always, proudly connecting folks with each other. Whether it’s Employers to Candidates or vice versa, or just out in the community meeting with new Founders/Execs/Investors. I connected with Andrew D'Souza (Ex-Clearco), and demo’d his brand new tool Boardy and by far, this is the SICKEST and SMOOTHEST AI I've interacted with telephonically, like EVER! Most of the tools I’ve interacted with have before telephonically have experienced a lot of lag, and weren’t really ready to go to market in a way where the end user would have a great experience with it. I called Boardy to talk about my business, and the level of detail this AI could generate and discuss with me, blew my f*cking MIND!!!!! 🤯 This tool will make thoughtful intros to a network of Founder, Investors, Creators & Executives! He’s done a FANTASTIC job with Boardy! I’m swooning over this tool, and it even pumped out a stellar report about the interaction between both of us, and I can not wait for more folks to get in front of this thing to experience its capabilities! 🙌 Do NOT WALK - RUN! 🏃‍♀️

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[for my very close recruiting network] EQ Engine is *thoughtfully* looking for two full-desk Technical Recruiters (who excel at sourcing) to join our small, tight-knit team on a consulting basis. About EQ Engine + the Opportunity: We have curated a portfolio of extremely high-quality startup opportunities that are simply not available to the average job-seeker, and require truly gifted candidates. Candidates and clients alike see the difference in our approach, commitment, and results. In order to keep the quality of our partnership high, we are keeping the bar on our recruiting team extremely high, so please know I will only be responding to people I personally know and have worked with. Location: Remote from USA **We strongly prefer tenured recruiters with a network of engineers to offer our search portfolio on Day 1, not just a hired gun. So, a few years of experience working in SF, NYC, SEA, Austin or any major tech hub is strongly preferred. Ideal Recruiter Profile ✅ You are a proactive, trustworthy owner ✅ 5+ years of technical experience in sink/swim recruiting environments - a mix of agency, startup during hyper-scale or very early stage startup experience is ideal ✅ As a recruiter, you dig in on candidate motivations, and can speak engineering, software, product, ML and system architecture ✅ You know what is going on in AI, which GPT was most recently released, how many AI companies are in SF vs NYC...things like that :) ✅ You can source anything, and iterate quickly on a new profile until you are calibrated...then you hit the target over and over, because it is fun! ✅ You are a passionate seller who can embody the ethos of a company with your communication, and truly be a partner to me, clients, candidates and our team ✅ You have experience managing clients 1:1 in tough situations, and would be comfortable partnering to co-manage clients with me, at times ✅ You take your craft seriously, and think strategically as well as creatively, always looking for competitive advantages and experimenting with new ways to do things ✅ You have opinions, but know when to push back, when to give, and when to drop what you are doing to focus on something more important ✅ You have experience working on highly specific Engineering/Technical searches, and placing candidates 💰Compensation: I take very seriously the opportunity to own EQ Engine - which to me, is an opportunity to not only build the future, but along the way to help good recruiters who are great people to build the type of life they'd like for themselves. There is real potential for financial + skillset gains, if you want to focus. I'm happy to share revenue figures with you 1:1, they are quite compelling. Thank you for reading! As a reminder, I will only respond to people I actually know, so call/text if you'd like to be considered quickly - thank you. Thank you! - Ryan

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🛠 What tools are start-ups using to build operations and hire their teams? Show me your start-up stack! Here are tools I'm actually using: 👯‍♀️ Hiring: Onward Search for contractor and fractional roles across digital marketing, design (and neurodivergent + AI training experts), Bravado for our sales team (we're hiring a CSM!!), and DOXA Talent for a few roles testing out the offshore trend. RecruitmentMarketing.com is helping a lot of founders make sense of what strategy and approach to take as we've seen on our RFP inquiries. 🖥 Website: WordPress, Jamyr for video integrations, VEED.IO and Vimeo 🤝 Job Board: Niceboard, has been great for customization and easy job categorization to our niche. 🤖 Our tech product: Ruby & it's fully customized and proprietary by our genius engineers and data experts. Shortcut + Figma 🚂 Team Ops: Slack, Asana, Google suite 💰 Sales: Apollo.io and LinkedIn 💎 N.S.T. (new shiny tool): every business leader probably needs to know about: Swydo. The best customized reporting on the growth analytics of the company - it aggregates everything and we no longer have this massive excel spreadsheet with all these manual updates and pivot tables. Every month we meet for virtual lunch to talk about the #AItools we've discovered, and constantly testing things to find ways to automate processes and optimize our productivity, or save time. So far, I toggle between a few: Canva design AI, Gemini, ChatGPT, Olympia | Your Winning AI Team Tag another founder and show your stack. #showmeyourtechstack #foundermode #hrtech #TAtech #recruitmentmarketing #talentacquisition #recfestUSA #recfestUK what did I miss? #founders

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Hot Take: I am concerned by how many people use LinkedIn as a showcase channel for the companies they currently work at: the products, the features, etc. I know the intention is to "wear the company t-shirt," but for me, it gives me a feeling of "company first" which makes me wonder: what about the person? A particular pet peeve of mine is corporate background imagery in one's LinkedIn profile. What I see happening in my coaching practice is that, when a client identifies themselves with their companies, the sense of loss and fear are much greater when the time comes to make a change. Because of this, people can then have a lot of trouble rethinking who they are professionally when they're transitioning to a new role. My opinion: I see LinkedIn as a professional branding platform: much like in an industry networking event, you should take the opportunity to meet people and showcase YOUR value as well as YOUR style: formal / informal, practical / imaginative, directive / insightful, and so on. That signals to other like-minded professionals what you're about and the culture you'll thrive in. It's a win/win. Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts on this? #HotTake #Fortune500 #LinkedIn #Branding #CareerManagement #WomenInLeadership #FemaleLeadership #FemTech #WomenInBusiness

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I did not start the trend but I love seeing so many folks celebrating their new roles in TA over the past 24 hours! If you would like to take a break from applying for a few minutes I promise it'll introduce some positivity to your search. There can be always be more to learn as we conduct our job search folks, tips are always welcomed right!? 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽 https://lnkd.in/gsEZyCaE #congratulations #talentacquisition #hiring #jobs #jobsearch #openforwork

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The marketplace is improving (most notably in tech). Job search coaching isn’t even the main part of my practice, but in the last five weeks, nine clients have signed offer letters for jobs across multiple industries and roles. It’s a friendlier environment for job seekers, and that’s great. But even in the best job-hunting markets, a job search can feel like strapping into the tallest, twistiest roller coaster in the park. You often are on a ride filled with emotional dips and climbs that mirror anticipation and uncertainty. I encourage my clients to approach this ride on two fronts. The first is logistics:: tailor your resume, network effectively, prepare for interviews, and have an outreach and application action plan you perform consistently. When followed diligently, this process leads to the next career opportunity. It’s the second front – emotions – I’ll be focusing on this week. Specifically, I’ll focus on learning to deal with the highs (positive interview calls) and the lows ( an unexpected rejection) of a job search. In the posts, I’ll lay out proven steps to successfully navigate the roller coaster while emphasizing the importance of your emotional well-being. If you’re in the middle of a job search, hold on, keep going, and remember that your resilience and strength will always guide you through the highs and lows. #JobSearch #JobSearchCoaching

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Laid off, let go, or looking for a new job? Join us this Friday, May 31 at 12 pm ET. Recruiter Rapid Fire. Back by popular demand! Evan Feldman, recruiter extraordinaire, will join us once again to answer all of your questions about Candidate-Market Fit, the Never Search Alone process, and the recruiting process in general – i.e., how recruiters think, why it’s important to target recruiters (and not just hiring managers), and any other questions you bring with you. We will dedicate most of the hour to YOUR questions. Please feel free to post your questions here in advance or just show up with them. We will get to as many as we can! Don't miss this opportunity to learn and grow with like-minded individuals. Register now (link in comments). #jobsearch #neversearchalone

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Syelo invests exclusively in early stage companies building recruiting software (not to be confused for HR tooling). Every company we have reviewed is building for internal recruiting teams never external. Why? With respect, the complexities, nuances, strategy, and day-to-day tasks are entirely different from one another. An internal teams core value is to systematize and uphold processes that scale. An external team is focused on filling head count. Recruiting Agencies have a TAM of $47b. Recruiting Software has a TAM of $300m. So why are so many founders hyper fixated on building software for companies? Pain. It is a lot harder to sell to agencies. A recruiting agency needs very little software/tooling to be effective and what currently exists works. They also have really tough margins (at scale) so convincing them that a product will 10x their output needs to be clear and effective. Businesses building recruiting departments have a variety of needs and nuances that complicates standardized processes so niche products/solutions find a fit in an already saturated market. In our humble opinion if you are looking to build a next generation company in the TA space you should be building for external recruiters first and foremost.

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🌟 Wednesday Wisdom for mine fellow, Recruiters 🌟 As we dive into the second half of the week, let’s take a moment to reflect on why we do what we do. Recruiting isn’t just about filling positions - it’s about building dreams, shaping futures, and connecting people with opportunities that can transform their lives. It’s about recognizing potential and championing talent, even when the path is challenging. Here’s a little midweek motivation to keep the momentum going: 1. Celebrate the Small Wins: Every candidate who finds a match, every successful interview, and every positive feedback is a step towards something bigger. Acknowledge and celebrate these moments. 2. Embrace the Challenge: Recruitment can be demanding, but remember, every challenge is an opportunity to grow. Stay resilient, and let each obstacle fuel your determination. 3. Impact Lives: You’re not just filling a role; you’re impacting careers and contributing to someone's journey. Keep your purpose at the forefront and let it drive your passion. 4. Stay Inspired: Surround yourself with positive energy and keep learning. Your enthusiasm and knowledge are contagious and can inspire those around you. Keep pushing, stay focused, and remember why you started. You have the power to make a difference. Here’s to a productive and inspiring rest of the week💪 #WednesdayWisdom #Recruitment #Motivation #TalentAcquisition #KeepPushingForward

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We had a great Learn With Lori strategy session today with our Rally Inside platform users, diving into our new 2024 Social Recruiting Strategy Benchmark Report. Thank you to all of our users for contributing into our collective knowledge of what works (and what doesn't work) to attract and engage talent on social media and other digital marketing channels. One of the big takeaways 👉 go beyond employee stories and spotlights to celebrate your people and teams for their amazing contributions and accomplishments, both at your company and in the community. The public report is dropping on Monday, July 1st so be sure to visit our Rally® Recruitment Marketing site to grab your copy! #recruitmentmarketing #socialrecruiting #talentacquisition #employerbranding

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