https://youtu.be/J1XNsdeRqi8
Chelle Johnson is a seasoned career and talent leader, strategist and coach with over 20 years of experience with medium-sized to fortune 50 companies. She is also the founder and CEO of Best You Career Advantage, an online visionary career coaching service that supports clients through all stages of career search and development. We talk about attracting the best talents, the benefits of emotional onboarding, and creating a culture of inclusivity, diversity, and belonging.
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Attract Talent with Chelle Johnson
Our guest is Chelle Johnson, who is a seasoned talent attraction and acquisition specialist who owns her craft at fortune companies like Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Comcast. She lived and worked in Asia, Latin America, has an MBA. She also speaks Spanish, and she believes in diversity and inclusion and how this process can be leveraged by employers to attract talent. So welcome to the show, Chelle.
Thank you so much. Super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
It's great to have you here. So let's start, you know, my first question is really your journey. So you've been with these fortune companies for many, many years, and then you broke out and you started your own entrepreneurial venture. How did this come about and how's it going?
So I have been super blessed in my career to work for some of the best companies in the world. And in 2019, I just felt really burnt out and completely like my soul had been sucked into the corporate institution. And so I decided to make a change for me. So I started my company, Best You Career Advantage in the fourth quarter of 2019. And you know, who knew that in March of 2020 we would have this huge pandemic, but I was really lucky because unemployment was at the highest at 14.4%.
So I got to be of service to all of those people that were laid off and really scared in 2020. So I've only been in business for about a year and a half, and it's actually going quite well. I love it. I'm able to do what I'm driven by and what I'm passionate about, which is helping high achievers in STEM, which is science, technology, engineering, and math, to really have an abundant life and abundant career.
That's awesome. And don't us, small businesses, small to medium size or privately owned businesses, don't we need those people to recruit into our ranks so that we can accomplish what we want to accomplish with great talent. So how should business owners think about this whole idea of talent acquisition. It's no longer hiring, it's about acquiring the fuel for our organizations that can actually move it forward. What should be the right mindset for that?
So, small companies and entrepreneurs absolutely need to think about the talent that they bring on because the employees represent your brand, your entire product. And so, talent acquisition for small employers and small companies is really essential. And I've actually done several, I've recruited several directors and vice presidents for small companies throughout the United States in the past year, and really understanding where they want to take sales, for example, in building sales and lead generation and CRM systems, bringing in the right person, it will make or break your company.
The same can be true with bringing in a technology person or the right human resources person. So aligning the right talent to the business is what makes or breaks the product, the customer engagement, the revenue. And so as a solopreneur, I know what it's like to be the CXO, if you will. But I also really understand that entrepreneurial journey, because I grew up with two entrepreneurs as parents. My father owned his own business. And so I'm lucky to have the knowledge and the expertise from the big global companies. But now I really take that down and help small businesses to implement processes that are standardized, repeatable and scalable so that they can hire the right people.