Courtney Blaylock

The Leaders Who Shaped Her

The leader who hired Courtney out of college took her under his wing. He taught her the ropes, invested in her understanding of recruiting and technology, and promoted her into sales with a simple charge: go do it. As the company grew and he rose through its ranks, his title never mattered in how he treated people, a quality she considers essential in staffing. Even when he sat two or three levels above her, she could ask him to lunch to talk something through, and he was always there. Her takeaway was lasting: leaders who keep climbing should never forget the people feeding the business they support.

She learned from contrast, too. An early direct manager was a micromanager who pointed fingers, and for a time the experience wore on her confidence. The accessible leader above that manager helped keep her steady, and the episode gave Courtney a clear picture of the kind of leader she would never become. It also sharpened her sense of how much a manager's approach shapes a person's belief in their own ability.

At Beacon Hill, Courtney has held five different roles and reported to four different leaders, and she describes them as consistently the same in the best sense. Each looked at where her strengths lay, where she needed coaching, and how to get her where she wanted to go, then moved her into roles where she could keep growing rather than pigeonholing her. When a family matter involving her mother required her attention, her leaders told her to stay home, sent food to her doorstep, and looked after her team. "Work isn't everything," she says. "It's important, but it's not everything." The effect, she notes, is that she returns wanting to work even harder for her team and for the leaders who stood behind her.

AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement

Beacon Hill has invested in Copilot company-wide, and Courtney calls the technology amazing while admitting she is still learning every day. Her early experiments involved trial and error, including the assumption that the tool could simply do the work for her. The lesson she drew is direct: "You're getting out of AI what you're putting into it." Strong results depend on the right prompts, the right agents, and valid information going in. The company supports that learning curve with weekly training on using AI to make each day more efficient.

The practical payoff is real. Courtney is quick to note that she is not a developer or a database administrator, yet AI lets her build out sharper screens tailored to each client search. It also helps her team capture candidate videos to share with clients and dig deeper on every role. Note-taking alone has been a major gain for someone who once wrote frantically through technical conversations, only to find her own handwriting unreadable later.

She has also seen what happens when adoption lacks direction. One client recently described an enterprise running three different AI platforms, with only about 10% of employees given access and no roadmap, a situation the client called chaos. For Courtney, the takeaway is that excitement alone does not deliver results; AI has to be implemented correctly, with a strategic vision. And it should remain a tool. The relationships with candidates and clients, the industry knowledge, and the discipline of keeping up with trends are still the backbone of the work.

Advice for the Year Ahead

Courtney's counsel for talent leaders fits in a single line: "Be consistent, persistent, and patient." Her market has weathered a difficult stretch, and she has watched accomplished colleagues she has worked with for years decide to leave the industry as conditions grew harder.

Her view is that the people who stay present through the downturn will be the ones best positioned as staffing comes out of it and absorbs the impact of AI. Persistence and patience, she argues, are what separate them. Her advice is to keep the hard times from wearing you down, and to keep striving toward what lies ahead and toward the work that drew so many people to this field in the first place.