WHERE MY PERSPECTIVE BEGAN
My Career Began on the Agency Side of Talent Acquisition.
My professional journey began in the recruitment advertising industry, long before online job boards, digital recruitment campaigns, social media, and artificial intelligence became familiar parts of the hiring landscape.
I started in customer service at one of the nation's largest recruitment advertising agencies, working directly with human resources professionals who needed help attracting the right people to their organizations.
Those early conversations were an education in themselves.
Every client had different challenges. Every hiring situation required a different approach. And every advertising decision needed to accomplish something meaningful.
I learned how important it was to listen, ask thoughtful questions, understand the audience, and develop strategies based on what an organization actually needed.
As my career progressed, I moved into account management, recruitment advertising strategy, client leadership, and more complex consulting work.
I had the opportunity to work for two of the nation's leading recruitment advertising agencies, gaining experience with organizations across different industries, hiring environments, and stages of growth.
Over the years, I've watched the recruitment landscape evolve from traditional print advertising and media buying to digital recruiting, online employer branding, recruitment automation, advanced audience targeting, and artificial intelligence.
What I've found fascinating is that although the technology and channels have changed dramatically, the fundamentals of reaching people haven't disappeared.
You still need to understand who you're trying to reach.
You still need to communicate something meaningful.
And you still need to give people a compelling reason to choose your organization.
Those principles continue to influence the way I approach talent acquisition today.
WHY I FOUNDED STORMS CONSULTING
Sometimes the Real Problem Isn't the One Everyone Is Trying to Solve.
Throughout my career, I've seen organizations invest substantial time, energy, and resources in finding new employees.
They launch recruiting campaigns, expand advertising budgets, adopt new technologies, and explore additional sourcing channels.
Sometimes those efforts deliver exactly what the organization needs.
Other times, the same challenges keep returning.
A company may believe it has an advertising problem when its employer brand isn't connecting with candidates.
A recruiting team may struggle with qualified applicants because the organization hasn't clearly identified the audience it needs to reach.
An employer may continue investing in new hires without addressing the experiences that cause existing employees to leave.
In situations like these, adding another recruiting tool or advertising channel may not resolve the underlying challenge.
What matters is understanding how the pieces connect.
That's one of the reasons I created Storms Consulting.
I wanted to bring my recruitment advertising background, strategic experience, and broader understanding of the talent acquisition lifecycle together in a way that helps organizations examine the bigger picture.
Rather than focusing exclusively on the immediate hiring need, I look at the strategies, messages, systems, and experiences that influence an organization's ability to attract, engage, select, and retain the people it needs.
Because finding a better direction often begins with asking a different question.
THE THINKING BEHIND THE COMPASS
A Broader Perspective Requires a Better Framework.
One of the things I've learned throughout my career is that talent acquisition challenges are rarely as isolated as they first appear. An organization may be struggling to attract qualified candidates, experiencing high turnover, or questioning whether its recruitment advertising is delivering the results it should. It's easy to look at those situations individually, but I've found that when you begin asking questions and looking more closely, you often discover that several things are connected.
For example, what looks like a sourcing problem may actually begin with how an organization identifies its target candidates or communicates its employer brand. A disappointing candidate experience might have less to do with the recruiters themselves and more to do with the technology they're using or the expectations of hiring managers. And when employees consistently leave within their first year, the answer may involve much more than compensation. It could begin with the expectations created during recruiting, continue through the selection process, and become even more apparent during onboarding.
These are the kinds of relationships that have always interested me because they remind us that talent acquisition is much bigger than any one department, process, or advertising campaign.
That thinking led me to develop The Compass, an eight-point framework that helps organizations examine the complete talent acquisition lifecycle. Each point represents a different area of responsibility, but none of them operates entirely on its own.
The Eight Points of The Compass
North — Charting the Course: Planning for Tomorrow's Talent
Northeast — Knowing Your Waters: Understanding Who You Need to Reach
East — Flying Your Colors: Showing What Makes You Different
Southeast — Casting a Wider Net: Connecting With Potential Talent
South — Sounding the Depths: Looking Beneath the Résumé
Southwest — Choosing the Crew: Making a Confident Hiring Decision
West — The Navigation System: Making Your Recruiting Tools Work Together
Northwest — Anchoring Your Talent: Helping New Hires Thrive and Stay
Together, these eight disciplines provide a more complete picture of how an organization attracts, engages, evaluates, hires, and retains talent. They also form the foundation of my Talent Audit, which is designed to identify strengths, uncover potential gaps, and help organizations prioritize the changes that could make the greatest difference.
The purpose of The Compass isn't to make talent acquisition more complicated. It's to give organizations a practical way to step outside their day-to-day activities, understand how the pieces fit together, and make decisions with greater clarity and confidence.
Beyond the Business
A Little About the Person Behind Storms Consulting
Although I've spent much of my professional life working with organizations on recruitment advertising and talent acquisition, there's certainly more to my world than business. I live on a five-acre farm in Okeechobee, Florida, with my husband and our assortment of animals. It's a busy, sometimes unpredictable way of life, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Living on a farm has a wonderful way of keeping things in perspective. There's always something that needs attention, whether it's caring for the animals, tackling a project around the property, or dealing with one of those unexpected situations that seem to come with farm life. Some days everything goes according to plan, and other days you have to figure things out as you go. I've learned to appreciate both.
I think that experience reflects quite a bit about my personality and how I approach my professional relationships. I'm naturally curious, I enjoy solving problems, and I've never been particularly interested in doing something a certain way simply because that's how it's always been done. I like exploring possibilities, looking at things from different angles, and having the kind of open conversations that lead to genuinely useful ideas.
I'm also someone who believes that professionalism and personality can—and should—exist together. I take my work and my clients' challenges seriously, but I don't believe every interaction needs to feel formal or complicated. I'd much rather have an honest, productive conversation than fill a meeting with impressive-sounding language that doesn't accomplish anything.
When someone works with Storms Consulting, I want them to feel comfortable asking questions, sharing concerns, challenging an idea, or simply saying, “I'm not sure where to begin.” Those are often the conversations where some of the best thinking happens.
At the end of the day, whether I'm navigating the responsibilities of farm life or helping an organization navigate a talent acquisition challenge, I believe in paying attention, being adaptable, treating people well, and doing my best to leave things better than I found them.
Let's Talk About Your Organization
Your Talent Challenges Deserve More Than a Standard Answer
If there's one thing my experience has taught me, it's that organizations don't always need another program, another technology platform, or another recruiting campaign. Sometimes what they really need is an opportunity to look at what they're doing, talk through the challenges they're experiencing, and consider whether there's a different approach worth exploring.
You may be struggling to attract the candidates you need, wondering why your recruitment advertising isn't producing better results, or trying to understand why employees aren't staying as long as you'd hoped. Perhaps you're preparing for growth and want to make sure your talent acquisition strategy can support what's ahead. Or maybe things are going reasonably well, but you have a feeling there are opportunities to make them work even better.
Whatever brings you here, you don't need to have everything figured out before reaching out to me. In fact, helping organizations sort through questions, identify priorities, and understand their options is a big part of what I enjoy about this work.
I also recognize that not every organization needs a comprehensive consulting engagement. Sometimes a focused project, a review of recruitment advertising, or a conversation about a specific challenge is exactly what's appropriate. Other situations may benefit from a broader assessment, such as the Storms Consulting Talent Audit. My goal is to understand what you need and help determine an approach that makes sense for your business.
If you're ready to explore what's possible, I'd welcome the opportunity to hear about your organization, the challenges you're facing, and what you're hoping to accomplish.
Let's find a clearer direction forward.