Interview With Aspiring Recruiter, Trena Luong – A Reminder Why We’re In This Game

Trevor Vas (@trevorpvas), Director at ATC Events, and Trena Luong (@TrenaLuong) research assistant to Dr John Sullivan, sit down at the recent #ERE14 conference  in San Diego to discuss why she wants to be a recruiter. A brief video to remind us why many of us got into recruitment in the first place.

Lessons from Trena:

• It’s important for students to understand the whole recruitment process before they graduate, so they know what it is, how you get recruited and also what it’s like to be a recruiter.
• Recruitment does change lives! Stop being so cynical.
• If we can recruit the right person, in the right way and bring them in, this talent has the potential to change an entire company and our small perspective changes everything.

Watch the video interview here or read the full transcript below:



Trevor: Trena, Trevor Vas from ATC Talent Talks
Trena: Nice to meet you
Trevor: You’re currently working with Dr John Sullivan?
Trena: Yeah, I’ve actually been working with him for about a year now.
Trevor: Wow, that’s a wonderful experience, he’s a legend in recruitment.
Trena: It has been. Michael Jordan of HR! Can’t say much more than that. It’s been amazing working with him
Trevor: Trena I understand you have aspirations to join the internal recruitment space. Is that correct?
Trena: Yeah [laughs] they call me the spy recruiter around here, for the convention.
Trevor: So, why do you want to get into recruitment? What’s your driver?
Trena: I actually did a project last semester with John Sullivan, and it essentially covered remote college recruiting in Asia for women engineers, and designing that process was actually, it pointed me to the idea that- if I can design a process that can be implemented into a company and can change it, something minor that can make a huge difference, within one specific area, makes all the difference. I then I actually decided, you know I’ve been in sales for a really really long time, so I’m a people person so can’t design all the time, but that loses the people aspect, and I love getting to know the people from a personal perspective so I decided to go into recruitment after that.
So this semester I’ve been getting recruiters to the classroom where he teachers at, and the biggest idea I want to outreach to every single student is ‘you will be witnessing recruitment on the back end and the front end when you graduate’, so you have to know the process. You have to be knowledgeable of the process, someway and somehow. By bringing in the recruiter we teach them, so this is recruitment, this is how you get recruited but also this is how you become a recruiter at the same time, so you get the whole 360 of it. It’s been amazing (by gavce). I love that, and I want to be able to change lives, and I know how silly that sounds, ah how “oh I want to be able to change lives!”, but if you can recruit the right person, do it the right way and bring them into the company, this talent can change a company and that small perspective changes everything.
Trevor: Trena that’s wonderful. I wish you every success for your career.
*View more of Trevor’s Q&A Hot Seat interviews from #ERE14.