Built for Change: Tracey Friend’s Career Crossroads

Gerry Crispin: Welcome to anyone who is taking a look at this. This is a series that I started in 2026 to interview folks I’ve known for a good deal of time who’ve basically had a great ramp — an interesting career, going back and forth in a variety of ways. I’ve been thinking that the decisions we made all along the way were kind of interesting, and in some instances they evolved and matured, and people learned to ask better questions at some point.

So today I have Tracey Friend with me. Tracey has been involved in recruiting for the better part of her life — even though, Tracey, you can’t be more than 30, but then I met you something like 30 years ago, so maybe you’re a few years older than that.

Tracey Friend: Yes.

Gerry Crispin: So that’s kind of good. I want to jump right in. Tell me a little bit about your first time getting into talent acquisition. What possessed you to jump into that? Because I can’t imagine you went to school for it.

Tracey Friend: No. In fact, I went to school to be a counselor, a psychologist. I got all the way up to my doctorate and worked at a psychiatric hospital, but I really wanted to work in HR. My first job out of college was in an HR department for a staffing firm. I did HR for maybe three weeks, went through all the training they put us through, and there was an opening in their large accounts group. The leader said, “Your personality would be a better fit for recruiting.” So that’s how I wound up in recruiting.

Gerry Crispin: Wow.

Tracey Friend: Yeah — technical recruiting, of all things to start.

Gerry Crispin: Technical. It’s interesting — I’ve probably interviewed a whole 30 people at this point, and I would tell you technical recruiting tends to be one of the keys. I don’t know if it’s because it was a little more complex, or you had to figure out a little more about the personalities that would be successful in some of those technical jobs. Did you like it?

Tracey Friend: Oh, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And it was the impetus — this will age us — when OCC, and then the internet, started. They put me on a special committee to figure out this thing called the internet, and that’s when you and I met, back in my 20s.

Gerry Crispin: I remember you being in Florida for some reason.

Tracey Friend: I was. I was in Tampa.

Gerry Crispin: There, okay.

Tracey Friend: Cool. I was in Tampa, and that’s when I was gutsy enough to go out and do internet recruitment training, and started my company.

Gerry Crispin: Well, not only did you do recruitment training at that early stage, but I remember Peter Weddle had one of the first “Think” casual conferences, in Connecticut.

Tracey Friend: That’s where it was.

Gerry Crispin: And you showed up at that, if I recall — as did the founder of Monster, myself, about a dozen other people. I remember you were just very hungry for all of this.

Tracey Friend: Oh, and I had no fear, no filter. If there was a way to learn something the hard way, I did a really good job of that back then. But I was smart and determined at the same time, so it was a really interesting time. I met you, I met so many incredible people — Shally, and different people along the journey that you stay in touch with. Now you laugh, because you go, “Oh, we’re old now. We’ve been there, done that.” And we’re so much calmer, whereas before —

Gerry Crispin: Well, now there’s a new world of AI, and it’s almost the same attitude — you have to take that same approach about something you’re not quite sure what it is and how it’s going to impact the rest of your life. If you don’t jump in, if you don’t act in a somewhat fearless way, it’s hard to make a move.

Tracey Friend: Yeah, it is. And that’s actually been a lot of fun — that’s what I’ve been spending the majority of my time on. I started a class about five months ago, so it’s been interesting. But it’s that same tenacity, that same curiosity: give me more, let me understand.

Gerry Crispin: So where did you go from there? What was your next move?

Tracey Friend: So I created Claybrook & Associates.

Gerry Crispin: Right.

Tracey Friend: And then from there, sold it to PeopleClick.

Gerry Crispin: Oh, God, yeah.

Tracey Friend: This is a long time ago, right? We did implementation, account management, sourcing, and training. And then — if you remember — I started the first job aggregator, and PeopleClick took that technology. That was before HR-XML existed, so there were a lot of workarounds behind the scenes, posting to newsgroups. Remember newsgroups? So there was building that company, it got acquired, and afterward I went out to Seattle for a year and worked for Microsoft. It was the first job I ever got fired from.

Gerry Crispin: I remember when you went to Microsoft. So that’s a shift. Was it still a learning experience, or something you should have made a better decision not to do?

Tracey Friend: That’s a great question, because you can look back and go, “Shoulda, woulda, coulda.” Again — feisty entrepreneur, young, didn’t understand politics, didn’t understand that in some environments you can’t be outspoken; you really have to collaborate and interact differently. If I had to tell my younger self something, I would have taken on a mentor rather than gone right into that environment, because what I learned the hard way was about political alignment. I think that was a good lesson, because as you climb your career, political alignment is that gauge for how well or how poorly you do — and it may not be about your capability. It’s about alignment, and adapting.

Gerry Crispin: Well, it’s kind of interesting, because you’ve spent a good deal of your career working in corporations, with employers, hiring for them, as opposed to consulting. But you’ve gone back and forth a few times too.

Tracey Friend: Yeah. After that, I went to EDS, and worked in their HR outsourcing, as a portfolio manager for their staffing and recruiting group, and really got entrenched in HR outsourcing and recruitment outsourcing on the business side. For the next 20 years I stayed on the outsourcing side, with the exception of going to Countrywide to do systems and strategy work for a couple of years. But it was all around the outsourcing space — running recruitment outsourcing or being part of HR outsourcing. It allowed me to — I think the gift I took from all of that was, one, the real ability to design solutions, because I think that’s a gap today. If I was to tell my younger self something, I’d say: continue to develop those skills, because building out solutions is a highly transferable skill that not many people have.

Gerry Crispin: Right.

Tracey Friend: That’s a good skill to have. I look at it and go, I evolved that. The business side, too — as TA professionals, we often say to our recruiters, “Learn the business, so you understand your value and how what you’re doing impacts it.” I came from the business side, so I got the perspective of receiving from a TA group, and why that’s even more important. So I have zero regrets. The other thing it taught me was how to build a mean business case, and that served me well as I transitioned from the outsourcing space into corporate, running corporate TA functions. You need to understand the business, you need to understand politics, you need to understand solution design — but also what’s meaningful right now for the company, not the beautiful aspirational goal, but what’s going to help the business right now. So I think it’s all led to things. My only regret is that I always wish I’d had a mentor who taught me more in my 30s about how to navigate successfully through a company in my 20s and 30s.

Gerry Crispin: That’s an interesting insight. As I think back, I spent 10 years at Johnson & Johnson, and I had two mentors who not only had my back but whispered in my ear to help me avoid some of the landmines — one of which you just mentioned. I remember going to see the head of marketing, who had a particular problem with some of the sales force not being as successful as they could be. It took me only a week to come back with a five-year plan for figuring that out. His response was, “In five years, you’re not going to be here.” I said, “Neither am I. I need a solution I can use now.” He said, “Give me another week.” I came back a week later and said, “Here’s what we could do now.”

Tracey Friend: I love it. You know, I look at this TA profession, and I look at what we’ve done, and I look back and I see cycles. They may feel a little different, they may look a little different, but at the end of the day it’s still a cycle. Now you just look at it, evaluate it, and say, “How can I help my teams navigate through this cycle purposefully?”

Gerry Crispin: Let’s talk about this cycle. I really have only a couple other questions, and one is — we’re in a new cycle. How do you see the next couple years playing out for TA?

Tracey Friend: It’s been interesting. In the last few months I’ve talked with a lot of TA peers and leaders, and I think as TA professionals we’re being asked to continue to do more with less. If you’re in a global role, the global complexities of all the different laws are going to challenge and add more administration to this function, because the technology can’t keep up with the compliance requirements that vary so much around the globe. So it adds this administrative burden, and that’s where I’m hoping AI can really be impactful. But I also see a struggle right now between TA and HR — should TA just fill positions, while HR does the workforce strategy and workforce planning, the things we’ve always touted TA to be a partner in? I think there’s some friction in that TA-partner realm right now, and it may just be because we’re all doing more with less.

Gerry Crispin: I think that’s certainly a piece of it. There’s an expectation that we’ll be able to do more with less as technologies evolve, but that still takes time — it takes proving them out, and that can take a lot more than a few days from an expectation point of view.

Tracey Friend: Yes, it really can. I look at our function — we’re still going to have to fill positions, we’re still going to need a value proposition. And what’s interesting is when I look at my daughter and my son, they look at these roles as disposable. They don’t have the same work wants that we did, and they’ll leave something because it doesn’t fit what works for them at that moment. They may wake up tomorrow and feel differently, but at that moment, it didn’t work for them. So I think as TA professionals we’re navigating through generations, through the economy, through technology — how do we hire and stay competitive while the economy is changing faster than companies can change?

Gerry Crispin: But has that really changed for us? It might just be a little bit stronger weighting on one thing or another. But that’s part of the expectation of coming to the table with a better understanding of the marketplace than the hiring manager, who has a whole different set of expectations about availability and interest. We have a lot to help guide them with — we should have a lot of knowledge and wisdom to guide them — and we’re going to have to elevate our game to know those pieces you’re talking about.

Tracey Friend: Oh, yeah. That’s where I think AI has been truly instrumental. In the last two years I’ve played an extensive role in workforce location strategy — essentially the pretty word for offshoring. When you offshore, it’s not just about where labor or talent exists, but the cultural aspect of it — how do you engage what’s meaningful and purposeful in that culture, how do you cultivate people in that environment? It’s different — the Philippines is so different from India, so different from Poland. It’s not just how do you recruit in those markets, but how do you engage people in those markets and work with your business partners there. I’m seeing a big mistake right now where people try to smear a US approach across the world, and you get a “talk to the hand,” or a nod — they hang up and do what they want to do anyway.

Gerry Crispin: Absolutely. I realized many years ago that I didn’t have much of a global set of experiences, and in the early 2000s I began looking for opportunities to go to China, to India, to other countries. Before long, I was fortunate — with China Gorman and a couple of others — that every year we’d take a delegation to a different country and meet with ministers, employers, and associations involved in how work gets done culturally. I was always shocked — there were light-bulb moments like, “You do what to hire people?” Those are the kinds of things you bring back, and you realize hiring and recruiting have a cultural component you cannot ignore, at your own risk — certainly if you’re a multinational American company. You can’t let the head of TA and their key people operate without a global point of view. I think you’re absolutely right — those are big learning things that will continue to be in the next few years.

Tracey Friend: I loved being able to immerse myself in those cultures, and I loved the trust that was built with my team and my counterparts, because it’s just different — it’s people, and they interact and are motivated in their own beautiful ways. But it’s different from us, and we all work differently.

Gerry Crispin: There are new Tracey Friends coming up all the time — fearless, out there, looking for advice in terms of leadership. From a mentor’s point of view, is there one or two things you still think they should be pushing as they navigate their careers?

Tracey Friend: Since I’ve been on my sabbatical, there are a couple of things that have become clear. It’s really about looking at how you work — are you someone who’s problem-solving, upfront about, “Here’s what I can do, here’s what I can’t solve, and how I move it forward,” and can articulate that? Or are you someone who prefers to fall in line and just work in line? Those are two different working styles — neither is wrong, they both have a place. But be okay with the way you work, and when you evaluate your job or your next role, ask whether it brings out the best in you. Because sometimes accepting the wrong job is the wrong job.

Gerry Crispin: Yeah, I absolutely agree.

Tracey Friend: Mm-hmm.

Gerry Crispin: What I’m hearing from you is that you really need to know yourself — the things you’re comfortable with, that make you feel good about what you’re doing and accomplishing — and make sure there’s alignment with the culture of the company you’re going to.

Tracey Friend: Yep. The other thing is, mistakes are not bad. They may feel bad in the moment, but they’re not bad — that’s probably how we learn best. But as you align, have conversations with your upline leader and say, “I will make mistakes, and let’s talk about the kind of coaching I like.” Be upfront about how you both navigate through mistakes, because that’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s with purpose — so in the end, it’s a teaching moment, not a moment of shame.

Gerry Crispin: Right. You know, the only other thing I keep hearing — not only from you, but from others I’ve talked to, which I think confirms my own point of view — is that you need to surround yourself with people along the way who are beyond just a network, but really part of a community of peers and colleagues you can call, who will call you back, who will tell you the truth, not just what you want to hear. You need a good group of those.

Tracey Friend: Mm-hmm.

Gerry Crispin: I think one of the things you could do is look for them — not only internally, but your budget should include a little bit of external support so you can build that broader network. I think for all the folks I’ve talked to, part of their success comes from their ability to solve problems by contacting their peers and colleagues and getting their insights as well.

Tracey Friend: Yeah. I’ll tell you, that’s a lesson I think I only really started to learn in my late 30s. If I was to give coaching and advice to somebody younger — build them now. Be okay with hearing the things that don’t make you feel comfortable. I know I wasn’t, but I didn’t know the value of it, and now I do, and I welcome it. But it took some hard beatings — I always say, you know, like McFly. I learned it that way, and some of us do, but I have no regrets either. I would tell my younger self to be okay with that. I just didn’t have parents who were in the business world — they were teachers.

Gerry Crispin: I get it.

Tracey Friend: Mm-hmm.

Gerry Crispin: Well, listen, on that note — thank you. Appreciate the conversation, as always. Over the next couple of weeks, you’ll find yourself — and me — out there, engaging in this.

Tracey Friend: I can’t wait to see you all.

Gerry Crispin: Life is good.

Tracey Friend: It is. It is. I’m glad, I’m glad. Good to see you, Gerry.

Gerry Crispin: Good seeing you, too.