Jessica Sergent

I want to be honest about something — I don't have a degree. I became a single mother at a young age, and the traditional path wasn't available to me. What I had instead was hunger. A drive to build a life for myself and my child that nobody could take away.

What I attribute my success to, more than anything, are two specific women leaders who believed in me before I fully believed in myself. They didn't see a resume gap or a missing credential — they saw my drive. They took a chance on me, gave me a seat at the table, and trusted me to show up. And I made sure I never let them down.

Those opportunities changed the entire trajectory of my life. Because of them I was able to grow into someone who now helps other people find their place in this industry. That's not lost on me. Every time I advocate for a candidate who doesn't fit the traditional mold, I think about the women who did that for me.

Success isn't always self-made. Sometimes it's the person who looks at you and says 'I see what you're capable of' before you can see it yourself. I was lucky enough to have two of those people — and I've made it my mission to be that person for others.

The best career advice I've ever received can be summed up in three things — always give 100%, never give up, and never be afraid to be seen.

Give 100% sounds simple until you're stretched thin with no support, no roadmap, and every reason to coast. That's when it matters most.

Never give up kept me in rooms I could have walked out of. There were seasons in my career where everything fell apart at once and quitting would have been the easier choice. But I stayed — and what was built on the other side of that was worth every hard day.

And never be afraid to be seen — that one is personal. I spent time making myself small. No degree, young mom, figuring it out alone. It's easy to shrink when you feel like you don't fit the mold. But Thunder saw me at a dead-end job giving 100% to a job most people would have phoned in — and that visibility changed my entire life. You cannot be chosen for what you hide.

Mid-career, I went through a stretch where everything that felt stable disappeared at once. My boss who recruited me left. My closest colleague left. Our VP of Talent Acquisition left. All within a short period of time. And I was still there, staring at a growing list of open roles, demanding hiring managers on the plant floor, and absolutely no roadmap for what to do next.

I won't sugarcoat it — I wanted to quit. I was stretched thin, I wanted to succeed, but I had no resources and no support. In manufacturing, the pressure is relentless. Positions don't wait. Production doesn't pause. And I felt completely alone in figuring it out.

What changed was a new leader coming in who actually let me have a seat at the table. Instead of just being handed a requisition list, I was asked to help build the processes and procedures from the ground up. For the first time, I had a voice in shaping how talent acquisition would actually work in our environment. I got to train new team members, work directly with the plants to standardize how we hired. It wasn't an overnight transformation — it was small wins, one after another, that kept me going.

There are two things I think about constantly in my work right now — skilled candidates and the next generation of leaders.

On the skilled candidate side, we're facing a real crisis that doesn't get enough attention. The trades aren't being taught the way they used to be. Shop class disappeared from schools. Parents and counselors steered kids toward four year degrees as the only path to success — and an entire generation grew up not seeing manufacturing as a viable, meaningful career. Now we're feeling that gap every single day. Experienced workers are the backbone of this industry and we aren't developing enough people to carry that knowledge forward.

The leadership pipeline is the other side of that same coin. We have seasoned leaders who have given decades to this industry approaching retirement — and there aren't enough young people ready or being given the chance to step into those roles. That's not because the talent isn't there. It's because sometimes organizations aren't willing to take a chance on developing someone younger into leadership. Which — personally — I find hard to accept. Because someone took a chance on me, and it changed everything.

The opportunity is in changing the narrative. Manufacturing is skilled, it's essential, it's a career worth choosing. My job is to help people see that — and to find the ones who are ready to grow into the next chapter of this industry.

Loyalty and belief in people. In my work, I've seen firsthand what happens when someone takes a chance on a person others might overlook — it can change the entire course of their life. That's what drives me every day as a recruiter. I don't just fill seats, I open doors.

In my personal life, those same values show up. I'm a mom first. Everything I've built professionally started with the determination to show my child what's possible when you refuse to give up. Resilience is probably the thread that runs through everything — the belief that if you stay committed and keep showing up, things can turn around.