Her Story
About Jenna
I've been in recruitment for about 11 to 12 years in the advertising industry. I started as a receptionist at Publicis after college - I was a communications major from Syracuse and knew I wanted to work with people. I had an intuition about humans and grew up in a creative family, so I had a drive to move into some sort of creative space. The HR team saw that I was great with people and everyone's favorite human when you walked in the door, so they asked if I was interested in recruiting. I moved into a coordinator role supporting all the recruiters and have been doing it since. My career evolution has been interesting - I've stayed in recruiting, but my roles have always leaned towards a bigger picture. I've sat in hybrid roles across people experience and talent development. Early in my career, I moved to LA and worked at RPA, where the head of people suggested I get coaching certified. In 2020, I took a life coaching certification during COVID, and that experience really spearheaded what the rest of my career looked like. Now I work for Publicis holding company, specifically within their production umbrella, hiring mainly across all the disciplines of production. What keeps me in recruiting is my ability to understand the bigger picture of what a business needs through its people. I understand that a business is its people, and the ability to create such a deep impact with whoever walks in the door is massive. I typically sit in roles where I might lean into some HR discipline, or talent development, or learning and development training. I'm a trainer in addition to a recruiter - I did a training for my team on strategic recruitment and how to partner with a business as roles evolve. I'm really focused on sitting in roles where I can have a deep impact on a business. I have a knack for understanding leaders and what they need and what they're excited about, and understanding the talent that will bring a nice complement to that.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jenna
01What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
AI has become instrumental in my work and there isn't a day that goes by where you don't talk about it. I use it in many ways - from a clerical perspective it can organize information faster, but where I'm really enjoying how AI is working into my processes is that it allows me to more quickly understand gaps in my thinking. After 12 years in this industry, I have a really good awareness of the creative agency space, so I might get tunnel vision where I just go full force looking at the really good shops and studios. But from a DEI perspective and to keep myself honest in having an expansive net and looking for talent in interesting new places, AI has helped me do that. I can put in my brief and say this is my role, this is what I'm targeting, this is the type of challenge the business is trying to solve, and it will say great, you're looking at all these shops, have you looked here, or this is an interesting thing to go research. It gives me some gaps and helps me look at gaps that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise. The industry is moving so fast and evolving so fast, and everything is in flux a little bit, so I try to keep flexible if I can.
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