Jalonni Weaver

From Customer Service To Full Cycle

The starting point was customer service, and the motivation was simple: she wanted more. Jalonni went back to school for a master's in HR management, and somewhere in that coursework came the realization that she needed to pick a lane. The criteria were personal rather than strategic. She knew she loved talking to people. She knew she loved building relationships. Recruiting and talent acquisition sat precisely at that intersection, so she took an internship and started climbing.

What has kept her in the work is that no two days repeat. She describes candidate conversations as something close to a game, in the best sense: understanding a background, listening for transferable skills when the direct experience is not there, and then articulating how what someone is trying to do becomes an asset to a specific role or team. Her favorite part of the job is being the cheerleader who walks alongside a person from the first sourcing message or application all the way to the offer.

The Leaders Who Built The Recruiter

Ask Jalonni who shaped her and she points first to the leaders at a small consulting company where she worked as a sourcer. She already knew she wanted to be more than a sourcer. They grew her into the recruiter she is today, largely by insisting on the harder version of the craft: going after people, reaching out cold, holding intentional conversations rather than sending templates into the void.

Her coordinator years taught a different lesson. She did the administration, the unglamorous work, and it left her with a view of the entire function from coordination through full cycle. Mentors added pressure in the productive sense, pushing her to step into projects, to try something new, to build a relationship with a particular part of the business.

The business partners may have been the most consequential of all. Jalonni made a habit of sitting with people who held the roles she was hiring for and letting them educate her on the actual work. That is why she can tell a candidate what 30, 60 and 90 days look like, describe what agents do on a daily basis, and say honestly that she has watched those teams work and seen that they love their jobs. The alternative, she notes, is repeating a job description back to someone who has already read it.

Keeping The Human In A Machine-Assisted Process

Jalonni was not an early enthusiast for AI. Her initial reaction was defensive, and she was nervous watching the technology displace people across the recruiting industry. Her position now is more precise than pro or anti. She has seen AI deployed to do the recruiting itself, screening applicants at volume, and she has seen it deployed as an administrator that leaves the human intact. Her current team runs the second model: AI helps with sourcing, with shaping the right feedback questions, with working smarter rather than harder, while she still reviews resumes and still talks to people. National Life Group also brings candidates in for in-person interviews.

One category of tool has earned unqualified praise. At a previous job she began using a note taker, and it helped her tremendously. As someone who is neurodiverse, splitting attention between listening and writing was a genuine strain, and candidates who watch a recruiter type and look down often assume they are not being heard. Sourcing platforms that build a search from a job description instead of requiring manual Boolean strings have had a similar effect, freeing her from an afternoon of guessing at keywords.

Her caution is about the endgame. If candidates are using AI and recruiters are using AI, she asks, where does the human come in? Talent acquisition, in her framing, is a human-to-human connection first. She compares the moment to the invention of the internet: pros, cons, and an obligation to learn to use it correctly rather than letting it become the only thing you use.

Advice For The New Year: Stay Open-Minded

The counsel Jalonni offers other talent leaders heading into the new year is to stay open-minded. Tunnel vision is the industry's occupational hazard, and it costs candidates their chances. She traces her conviction to her own path, one where she had to work for everything, build relationships as she went, and advocate for herself. Not everyone knows how to do that, which she considers part of the job during a screening: teach, guide, set people up to succeed.

In practice that means coaching candidates who are rough around the edges but clearly capable of the work. She will move someone forward and tell them plainly what to strengthen and how to reframe their answers. Even when the answer is no, she offers something usable: add that story to your resume, take this line out. When a candidate does not succeed, her first instinct is to ask what more she could have done. Five minutes of honest feedback, she argues, costs a recruiter almost nothing and can change someone's search. Her operating principle is unadorned and consistent across recruiting and life: give people grace, let them tell their own stories rather than telling it for them, and treat people the way you want to be treated.