Laura Klein

I attribute my success to the great talent that has worked for me throughout my career. My success was really because of the talented people who worked for me - if you hire great people, it makes my job really easy. I've been fortunate to have phenomenal mentors who enabled me to be a leader and fly and have success. I also think my fine arts degree taught me to look at hundreds of different possibilities and find different ways to solve problems. In graphic design and corporate marketing communication, we had to find 500 ways in a day to solve a problem, and that thinking really gave me the ability to see all the possibilities and approach challenges in new ways. I never really saw something that I couldn't find a way to solve with a lot of different options. I love diversity of talent because everyone brings different skills and different possibilities - if they were all like me, we wouldn't have succeeded.

I encourage women every day to get into the search and recruiting field - it's a great field where women can be highly successful. Women are equally capable, and it's a great equalizer, probably better on the EQ piece than a counterpart might be, and I think that helps in evaluation. The field has great advantages - you can work remotely, live anywhere in the world, even in Belize, and do this job. You don't have to be located in one place. You can take off and do this job wherever you need to do it, which has great advantages for flexibility. However, there are some disadvantages to be aware of. If you work for a small boutique firm like mine rather than a large top agency with thousands of people, you have to get used to the fact that you're not interfacing with people externally all the time in person - you're doing a lot of phone interviews and remote work. If you feed off of others and need that stimulation from being around people constantly, this probably isn't that type of role.

The challenges in this field are really about identifying great talent and leaders - people who are genuinely interested in building a career, not just chasing money. That's the biggest challenge from a candidate standpoint. From a client standpoint, the challenges are making sure there's alignment about what leadership needs to be within a particular company. Technology changes are happening in the industry, so we're certainly screening for that and need technical leaders. But the real challenge is continuing to find candidates that are really interested in investing in their careers and wanting to lead through people. You have to be able to have the EQ piece, and not everyone out there sees it the same way. The ability to get results through and with your people is really what we look for, and then finding clients that see that as a value, because that's where the retention is going to hang in the balance. If you want to lead with people versus just manage on skills alone and push alone, you will have retention problems. Technology is ever-changing in our field and we're constantly adjusting to that, but there's nothing better than a great conversation with talent. There's not going to be an AI tool or anything that's going to eliminate how we vet and evaluate talent. You can take all the tests, but it's about a great conversation, asking questions, deep diving, and being able to hear the experiences from the individual that's really going to do the work.

The first and strongest value would be my faith and God - it guides me and keeps me very steady. Family is why I made the switch to running my own company, to make more time for family. And then I want to be able to give back in the community, and that's where I spend my spare time if I have it. I have a mission statement on my website that reflects these values.