Meet Santa Blalock, Recruiting Manager at RFS!

Tell us a little about yourself.

I grew up in Washington DC, and moved to LA for college. I went to school for fashion marketing and management, and worked my way up in the fashion industry. After several years, I knew I wanted to pivot and make a career change. I started out as a recruiting coordinator, and eventually landed a position with Marriott as an on-site recruiter/HR manager. After some time in Portland and Cleveland, I moved back to LA and started a new recruiting role with AMS - where I worked up until joining Recruiting from Scratch! 

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What attracted you to the tech industry? 

Looking back, I think I knew I wanted to work in tech my last year of college but I didn't know how to do it or where to start. When I made the decision to pivot into recruiting, I knew I’d eventually want to go to a startup because of the significant opportunity for growth. I knew I could take everything I learned in the corporate world and implement that knowledge successfully in the startup world. 

I also wanted a place where I could be myself. Creating a team and environment where people feel comfortable, and build a team from scratch. 

What does your day-to-day work look like?

As our team’s Recruiting Manager, I work with all our recruiters every day. I help them answer questions from clients and candidates, set goals, make changes to their recruiting process, and prioritize what to get done each day. 

After starting with RFS, I also spent a decent amount of time developing training programs for our team - especially for those newer to the recruiting industry. A good deal of our training involved breaking down the recruiting process step by step. Now that we’ve finished training for most of our team, we’re focused on goals. How do we think through quick pivots, moving through the candidate pipeline, the interview process - all those things? 

I also recruit internally for our recruiting and sourcing teams, and have built out our interview process for growing our internal teams. 

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What’s been one of your favorite accomplishments so far?

I recently worked with a client of ours to renew their contract with us, which means we can now recruit for even more positions for them to grow their business. It’s exciting to work on deals with our amazing clients! I’m able to help our company grow our revenue streams, which is fun to see come together. 

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What do you enjoy the most about leading the recruiting team? 

Most importantly - I enjoy helping my team members be themselves. On my team, there’s people from a lot of different backgrounds, from all different cultures, with all different personalities. I try to make our workplace as stress-free as possible. “Bless no stress” as I like to say. 

But I also enjoy partnering with our recruiting team members on the negotiation process when they’re working with candidates. Salaries, benefits, other parts of packages that candidates are looking for - that’s all part of that process. It’s exciting to help candidates find jobs they’re excited about. I love helping my team close deals when it comes to talent. 

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What are some words of advice you’d give to others in the tech industry? 

To be successful in tech (and in recruiting!) you need to have excellent communication skills and be very curious. Your work needs to be innovative and you need to be adaptable. Also, I would always say to people: think of the positive first before I think of the negative! 

I would also say - as a decision maker, it’s important to give everyone a chance. That is how you really diversify a team. 

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What do you like to do in your free time?

I enjoy traveling! I used to travel all over the US for work. Now my favorite place is Mexico - I try to go three to four times a year. I would also really love to visit Africa. I also enjoy analyzing and investing in crypto.