Talent Acquisition and Onboarding Services for Growing Teams

A lot of talent acquisition services are built for big companies: an agency, a stack of software, and a process with more steps than you have people. At HRish, I start smaller. Which roles do you actually need to fill? Who's doing the interviewing? What happens on a new hire's first day?

Often the reason an owner reaches out is a first hire, or growth that's gotten messy, with roles unclear and no plan for the next hires. I build practical, people-first hiring and onboarding around what you actually need, not around how hiring is traditionally done at bigger companies. You don't need a hiring manual built for a 500-person company when you have five team members, just the pieces that help you hire well and bring people in properly.

I want the people side of running a company to feel less overwhelming, starting with the people you're about to hire. HRish Solutions works with businesses across Colorado, in Colorado Springs, Denver, Pueblo, Fort Collins & Loveland, from owners just starting out to teams of about 150.

Who's behind HRish

I'm Allisha McCartney, Founder & HR Consultant at HRish Solutions, based in Colorado Springs. I bring over 16 years in HR and a bachelor's degree in business management, with a concentration in HR management. You can read more about me on the About page.

Recruiting and talent acquisition consulting

I'm not a recruiting or staffing agency, and I don't fill roles for you the way an agency does. My talent acquisition consulting is about the process behind the hire, so you can find and choose good people with confidence, this time and next time. If you've been weighing an agency or a contract recruiter, the difference is what stays with you afterward: a hiring process your team owns, and the people trained to run it.

Depending on what you need, the work can include:

• Recruitment audit: a hiring process evaluation that looks at how you hire now and what slows things down.
• Job descriptions and postings: written for the job as it is today, so the right people can recognize themselves in it. In Colorado, job postings generally need to show pay, benefits, and how and when to apply.
• Interview structure: interview guides and candidate evaluation templates, so every candidate gets a fair, consistent shot.
• Offer letter templates: customized to your business and the positions you're hiring for, not one template I use for all of my clients.

When you're in a busy hiring stretch, I can sit in on or conduct interviews, and ongoing HR Operations Support can include help with job postings. I'm not a full-time permanent recruiter, though on a Monthly partnership I can help with your recruiting on a short-term basis.

Hiring strategy

A talent acquisition strategy sounds like something a corporation writes. For a small business it's simpler: which roles come next, when you'll need them, and how you'll find the right people.

I help you plan hiring around growth instead of around the day someone gives notice, looking at the roles you're likely to need now and over the next one to three years.

What goes into the plan I hand over depends a lot on your industry, your company and your needs. Sometimes it's a timeline and checklists, and other times it's a timeline and checklists plus job postings to use, candidate search guides, interview questionnaires, offer letters and training plans.

You come away with a recruiting strategy that fits your market. Recruitment marketing is part of what I do currently, which means showing candidates why your business is worth working for, starting with your job postings. Small business hiring has a real advantage here, since you can move faster and be more personal than the big employers, and a good plan uses that.

Pre-employment and behavioral assessments

Interviews tell you a lot, but not everything. A behavioral assessment can show how someone tends to work, communicate and handle pressure. I use them pre or post hire: before a hire, the results sit alongside your interviews. After a hire, they can sometimes help a team work better together, and some assessments compare two people's working styles, so there are lots of possibilities.

I help you decide whether pre-employment testing makes sense for a role at all, and if it does, which assessment fits what you want to learn. You still make the decision, with the results as one more input.

For background checks and drug screens, I can set up and coordinate them if your business needs that, or advise you on vendors and process. Either way, they should be completed after a job offer has been made and accepted and before employment starts, never before the offer, for risk reasons. The process is the same for everyone offered the same role, though it may vary from one role to another.

Hiring manager training

A good hiring process falls apart when the person running the interview is winging it. Hiring manager training gives your managers, and you if you do the interviewing yourself, the basics: how to prepare, what to ask, what not to ask, and how to score candidates the same way.

It's practical interview training for managers. I build it specific to your business, around your own interview guides, with your managers practicing the questions they'll ask. Your managers keep the interview guides and evaluation templates for every hire after that. A confident interviewer also makes a better first impression on the candidates you most want to hire.

I usually run training virtually, and I can come to your business in person when that works better. How much training it takes depends on the person, the industry and the process: the more complex the process, the more training is involved. I stay with your managers until they feel competent, then follow up as they'd like, with check-ins to see how the new approach is holding up in real interviews. For broader manager skills, like supervising for the first time or handling performance conversations, see Training & Development.

Onboarding program design

Plenty of businesses have an onboarding checklist. Fewer have one that anyone opens after day one. My onboarding services start with what a new team member needs to feel welcome and do the job well, then build the steps around that:

• Before day one: preboarding, so paperwork, equipment and a welcome message are ready when they walk in.
• Who does what: a clear onboarding workflow, so nothing depends on someone's memory.
• The first 90 days: I usually build onboarding as a first 90-day framework, with check-ins along the way.
• Training for the role: the skills, tools and people they need to know.
• How it went: an onboarding survey, so you hear from the new hire what worked and what didn't.

I worked with a client who was experiencing high turnover, especially within the first week or two of employment. I helped them refine their hiring and interview processes, implement a better on-the-job training program, and create a full 90-day onboarding program. This led to better retention long term, lower turnover in the first few weeks for "silly" reasons, fewer workplace injuries within the first few months of employment, and improved performance and customer satisfaction.

Keeping good people starts with a good onboarding experience, which takes a lot less work than hiring for the same role twice. If you'd like a hand with the day-to-day side as people start, I can help coordinate onboarding as part of ongoing support.

New hire orientation

Orientation and onboarding often get mixed up. Orientation is the welcome, usually the first day or two, while onboarding is the longer stretch of getting someone fully up to speed.

I help you build a new hire orientation that covers the essentials without burying anyone: how things work, who to go to, what matters to your business, and what the first few weeks look like. Done well, a new hire leaves it glad they said yes, instead of wondering whether the rest of the job is a policy reading. If you hire often, I can turn it into a repeatable program your managers run without me.