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Honest HR: Lets go!
4 Plays7 months ago
Welcome to the very first episode of Honest HR: Results Over Rules. This one’s personal. I’m sharing the story behind why I walked away from corporate leadership to build something of my own—Strativis. No scripts, no sugarcoating—just the honest truth about what pushed me out of the traditional HR world and into entrepreneurship. If you’ve ever felt stuck in a system that prioritizes rules over real impact, you’ll get it. This episode is where it all starts—my story, my vision, and why this podcast exists.
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Transcript
The State of HR: Outdated Policies and Processes
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HR is drowning.
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Drowning in outdated policies, bloated processes, and meetings that should have been an email.
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Consultants, they know how to invoice, but do they know how to deliver?
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I've seen both sides of the blade, in-house and external, and I know what it takes to turn bold ideas into real results.
Amy Crook's HR Journey and Leadership at Strativist
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I'm Amy Crook.
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With 20 years in executive HR, I now lead Strativist, a boutique consultancy offering fractional HR, recruitment, and strategy that actually moves the needle.
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On this podcast, I'm pulling back the curtain on HR, what works, what's broken, and how to make it better.
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I'll be joined by sharp minds and real talkers to keep it spicy, smart, and anything but scripted.
Post-Merger Job Market Challenges and AI in HR
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I'm just going to wing it a little bit and talk about me and how I found myself in the position of setting up an HR consultancy in the midst of what is one of the most complex economic environments that I've operated in in the last couple decades.
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I spent my whole career thus far in the talent and HR space and most recently I worked for Glassdoor which I loved.
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I had the best time working at Glassdoor.
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I got to work on some really cool projects and
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I built a phenomenal team.
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I was part of an amazing leadership team and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.
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I grew a lot, learned a lot and worked with some truly phenomenal people.
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But sadly, in July of this year,
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2025, Glassdoor merged with its sister company, Indeed, and it pretty much obliterated all the G&A functions.
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So me, my boss, who is the chief people officer, and the majority of my team were all laid off.
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And so we found ourselves in the midst of being on the job market.
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And it's funny because we'd been dealing with the situation from the other side of the fence, right?
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We had requisitions that were traditionally getting, I don't know, like 25 applications a day that were then getting, you know, 400 applications a day.
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And so there was challenges around
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ensuring that we were still delivering a great experience for candidates whilst handling that volume.
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Something that I've seen not go so well with other organizations at the moment, but we'll talk more about that later, is
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But yeah, we obviously wanted to make sure we were being super efficient with our time and utilizing AI, which is another kind of string to my bow is that, you know, I'm a big fan of...
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ethically applying AI to HR processes to make them more efficient and more scalable whilst retaining the human element of human resources and not making decisions to automate things that really do require that personal experience.
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So as I said, I was on that side of the fence.
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I understand
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what it's like for recruitment teams dealing with high volumes of applications and needing some direction and guidance and probably a revisit of their tech stack to handle that.
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But then I found myself on the other side.
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And while there were positions at, you know, my more senior level that were available, I
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The process was really different to any other time that I'd kind of gone out to the market.
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You know, I was seeing jobs that had been advertised for a couple hours that had over 100 applications already.
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Compensation was all over the map.
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So it was really hard to kind of do a really decent market insight based on what's being advertised because everything
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There was no rhyme or reason.
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You know, titles were all over the place, compensations all over the place.
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And, you know, there's something to be said about, you know, wanting to make sure you value yourself appropriately.
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And I understand that that changes, but not to the levels that I've seen some companies try and advertise senior executive roles for.
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So, and again, more on that later.
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And so I could see that there were a couple of challenges for companies.
HR Challenges: Understaffing and Performance Management
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I could see that, you know, recruitment teams have been trimmed down to the bare bones.
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I could see that learning and development teams were struggling to support organizations.
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in terms of creating efficiencies and AI adoption.
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I could see that business partners were probably struggling through a million reorganizations to try and make the most effective team structures.
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And then, you know, performance management,
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dealing with review cycles.
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Like there's just a whole host of things that are going on at the moment that, you know, we're moving away from more traditional processes and methods and we're moving into a different space where we can utilize tools and technology to help, like I said, create those efficiencies.
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I feel like I'm saying efficiencies a million times and I apologize.
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But we are moving towards a space where that is a big part of our role.
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But what's missing is
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is that the whole idea of like creating these efficiencies is that you can spend more time on the other things that are a little bit more complex and you're not creating these efficiencies at the expense of the experience of your customers and in hr customers are obviously the business and they're also the external talent market so i guess i really wanted to help
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Which sounds super cheesy, I know, but I really love fixing tricky problems, anything that is a little off the wall or has been tried a couple times and hasn't gotten off the ground.
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I love getting involved in those types of projects and finding a way through.
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So there was that component that I really wanted to help organizations that were perhaps struggling with this and then thinking through other organizations that may need support like startups or smaller businesses that need HR support but don't necessarily have the budget to hire an executive full time.
Coaching and Supporting Startups in HR
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So I wanted to offer that as a service.
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And then just thinking about what's been really beneficial for me as a leader.
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I've thoroughly enjoyed coaching and developing the leaders that I've had work for me over the years.
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And so I wanted to take pieces of that and also pieces of executive coaching that I've experienced and put that all together in a package.
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And then I was lucky enough that about a month into my journey, somebody who I have wholeheartedly respected, valued and trusted since the day that I first had a coffee with her when she was chatting to me about coming to join her team and
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is a woman by the name of Erin Todis.
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She happens to be on the job market at the exact same time.
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And I think I had said to her maybe in May before I really knew that the layoffs were coming that if we were smart, we'd set up a...
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consultancy the two of us because between you and me we could rule the world and you know we kind of laughed about it and you know erin was like it does sound fun but you know we've got like a family to support and you know it's it might be challenging but you know erin found herself on the market and she had the same experience as i did and we were just both like there's gotta be better ways than this like
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We know that we can support people and wouldn't it be great to channel all that energy into supporting as many people as possible and working on as many complex problems as possible.
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You know, neither Erin or I are particularly in our best place when we're just making sure that the trains run on time.
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We want to be in there helping people with their complex issues and challenges and finding solutions and pathways for them to move forward.
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So Erin is also a phenomenal recruiter.
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So she has staffed up so many executive teams.
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in her career and she's worked in all kinds of different environments from like tech startups to like big financial services companies and she has you know never missed in her in her career journey so she agreed to come on board and join Strativist and
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And she is heading up our startup practice that focuses on talent and recruitment.
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So I'm sure she'll join me on a podcast in the near future to kind of talk a little bit more about herself and her journey.
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I won't do that for her, but needless to say, I was completely thrilled that
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that she had decided to come and do this with me.
Building Strativist: Challenges and Support
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Because starting up an organization on your own can be pretty grueling.
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You know, I found myself learning how to be a web developer and
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a bookkeeper, a marketeer, you know, finances, banking, getting everything set up, as well as dealing with, like, local legislation.
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Most hilarious thing was that the state of Illinois actually requires me to put up a poster in my workplace just for employees to see.
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I don't even know what this poster says.
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they like to charge you like for this poster and it's a you know decent amount um so i'm just currently debating what wall in my office that this um illinois workplace mandatory poster is is gonna look the best um so needless to say it's not on the wall yet
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Um, don't come after me though.
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I'll put it up there.
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I promise.
00:11:00
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Um, so yeah, just navigating all of that stuff and, you know, even coming up with the name Strativus, um, even learning how to pronounce it, uh, when I was thinking through it, there was a few options that I had.
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Um, I really wanted something unique and different.
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I didn't want to be, you know, Amy Crook consulting, um,
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And I had a couple options.
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The one I really liked was True North because I thought it would be a cool nod to my Yorkshire heritage back in the UK.
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But I went on to look and see how much that domain was and it was $30,000.
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And needless to say, that was not in my budget at the time.
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Um, so I looked at Strativus and I really liked it.
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Um, it was just like the right amount of, um, fun and uniqueness.
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Um, but because of my British background, I kept pronouncing it Strativus.
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And it didn't really run like off the tongue in a good way.
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So I was like, it's on the fence.
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But then I sent the name to my husband who called me straight away and was like, oh, Strativus, I love that name.
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And I'm like, oh, that's how you say it.
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So once I learned how to say it properly and it felt good, I went back to the domain registry and found out that that domain was 60 bucks, which was 100% in my budget.
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So I stuck with Strativist.
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It's kind of a play on strategy and vision.
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And then I whipped up my branding.
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You know, AI is a beautiful thing.
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It was it didn't take me long to kind of put together like my brand concept and and what I wanted.
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And I've had so much help and support from previous leaders and peers.
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My dear friend Kim Alicia helped me with my, I call it a one pager, but it's actually six pages.
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But she really has such a great eye for design.
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And so she took my information and helped put that together.
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I've been overwhelmed by the kind words of folks that I've reported into over the years, which has been really awesome.
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And just the support from friends and family that really made me feel like this is the right move for me.
Future Podcast Plans with HR Leaders
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So, yeah, and I guess the thing that I kept saying to myself, like after going through...
00:13:41
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you know, the layoff experience, which can be a little soul crushing, even though you know it's not your fault and you haven't done anything wrong and it's clearly not related to performance, you still feel that little bit of a knock.
00:13:59
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But putting together, you know, my website and my information, I was reminded at just the right time how much, you
00:14:10
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time and effort and work I've put into the capabilities that I have today.
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And so it picked me right back up.
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So that's where we're at right now.
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So that's a little intro.
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Next time I'm hoping to get Erin on with me so that she can talk a little bit about herself and a little bit more about her aspirations for her side of the house at Strativus.
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And then I'm really looking forward to having some special guests on.
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Some like phenomenal HR leaders that I have worked with in the past and
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um have got some really strong opinions which I love um and so they're all chomping at the bit to get on this podcast and and have something to say so I'm really looking forward to those conversations um and I hope you are too thanks for listening