Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Miller-Merrell.
Hi Jessica, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, you could tell our readers some of your backstory.
After graduating from college in 2001, I was new in my HR role, working as a store HR leader for Target. My store location had a quarterly budget of $250 for recruiting and job ads, and I invested all of our budget on job advertising in the newspaper’s classified section. I sought a creative and cost-effective way to reach my candidate community. I was broke and didn’t want to lose my job 3 months into my new role, so I looked online. In 2001, the two main reasons you were on the internet were that you were looking for love or at NSFW websites. I used the former rather than the latter in my recruiting efforts and began using free online dating websites to source candidates that fit my job openings.
My digital love affair (no pun intended) with the internet continued, and I expanded my internet sourcing and recruiting to social networking sites like MySpace. Around the same time, I created and launched a job search blog in 2005 called BloggingforJobs. I started blogging about the job search from a recruiting and hiring manager perspective, and people started writing me back and emailing me. From 2007 to 2009, my internet recruiting activities accounted for 30% of my hires,. I discovered that candidates from social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace had higher retention and lower turnover rates. The work I was doing was outside of the brand. I did it using my social media accounts, and BloggingforJobs was still relatively anonymous. My bio didn’t list my employer and only included my first name and last initial.
My success in these areas was getting noticed, which was exciting, but my employer at the time needed to be more about or impressed by my use of social media. They were fearful of the potential liabilities and risks it posed. After countless conversations with senior leaders about the benefits of social media and digital recruiting, I realized that I had a responsibility to help educate, train, and share resources and best practices with HR and recruiting leaders like our HR and recruiting leadership team. This was a new era we had entered, and digital recruiting wasn’t something we should fear; it was an opportunity to reach candidates in a new and different way.
Fast forward nearly 15 years. Since then, I’ve written several books, spoken at hundreds of conferences, and published thousands of articles about educating, evangelizing, and sharing best practices and stories of HR and recruiting practitioners. And now I’m writing this one. I am a workplace anthropologist, and my educational background is in cultural anthropology. This branch of anthropology is concerned with studying human societies and cultures and their development. My role in HR is to study the culture of the HR and recruiting industry and human society in the world of work. My area of interest within this microcosm is the technology intertwined with this human resources aspect of human society.
Would it have been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not! See previous answer: My blog got me fired, but I also started my own company. Now, I help HR professionals pass their HR certification exams and develop their careers. These are not only struggles but also lessons and assignments learned before I level up as a human being first and a business owner second. I must remind myself daily that these experiences are my own and necessary to grow and evolve. It makes it easier to see the struggles as learning moments focused on your growth and evolution.
I appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Workology?
Following my intuition has been essential to my professional life and career journey. With it, I worked in HR and found my way to the internet as a blogger in 2005. A series of happy accidents have defined my career.
The pandemic changed me. It did for most, and I spent a lot of time deciding what I wanted my future to look like. In the last year and a half since then, I have focused less on work and things like success and more on intention and creating space. I am fulfilling my promises to my pandemic self regarding my personal life and career. I am working less. I am doing more yoga and meditating every day. I’m spending more time with family and friends and saying no to things, people, and opportunities that don’t serve me. I want to be known as not the person who did everything but made a difference and followed my passions within my role: HR, leadership, and recruiting. It’s one of the reasons I decided to get my yoga teacher training certification.
Workology is a destination for the disruptive workplace leader to discuss trends, tools, and case studies for HR, recruiting professionals, and business leaders. The site and community are designed for those tired of the status quo and are compelled to change and transform not just their organization but the world of work and the human capital industry.
We reach nearly a million HR and Recruiting leaders monthly with our website, newsletters, and podcasts. The primary product we offer is Ace the HR Exam, a study program with a monthly subscription model that gives HR professionals an affordable and efficient way to study and pass their HR certification exams. Our students’ pass rate is 95%, unheard of in our business. I created Ace the HR Exam because I wished there was something like it for me when I was studying and taking my own HR certification exams, and I am proud of every single student who has passed theirs because of Ace the HR Exam.
How do you define success?
My view of success has changed a lot recently. I’ve recently made changes to my business and placed a focus on my mental health and wellbeing. It’s one of the reasons I am focused on providing on-demand learning and development for my mental health, my HR community, and my own. I’m no longer subscribing to the hustle culture as a creative entrepreneur. Success for me is working with ease and flow, supporting our HR and leadership community, and doing things from a place of love and passion. I want to inspire others to enter a place where you don’t have to dominate to succeed. Still, through collaboration, boundaries, and a business built on respect and thoughtfulness, you can find more important than success: a feeling of satisfaction that you are making a difference.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://workology.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workologyblog/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/workologyblog
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workology/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/workology
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WORKOLOGY
Image Credits
All photos are by Ashley Edwards, https://ashleyedwardscreative.com/projects.
