Sasha Erickson

It Started in a School District

Most people in talent acquisition arrive by accident, drifting in from sales or operations or generalist HR work. Erickson did not. Her first job was recruiting, as a recruiting associate at Denver Public Schools, and she has been in and around the discipline ever since.

Starting in public education shaped her early. School districts hire against calendars that do not move, for roles that touch thousands of families, with none of the budget or brand leverage a well funded private employer takes for granted. What is left is the fundamentals: know your people, know your market, tell the truth, and build relationships before you need them. Those instincts carried forward into every environment she has worked in since, including her time at Beckler, the Ogden, Utah company where she worked alongside several of the recruiters she still measures herself against.

Everybody Is Recruiting

Erickson's central operating principle is deceptively simple. "I do think everybody is recruiting," she says. "Every manager, every person in the company should be recruiting and tapping into their network."

It is not a slogan. It is a distribution strategy. Every employee who maintains real connections outside the building is a live pipeline, and when a seat opens on a team, the manager who has been quietly keeping in touch with strong people already has someone to reach out to instead of a requisition to post. Erickson has watched the pattern hold across her career: the very best candidates typically come from individuals already connected to someone in the network. That reframes the talent function's job. It is not only filling roles. It is making sure the whole organization is wired to notice good people all the time, not just when a hiring manager panics.

The Leaders Who Shaped Her

Erickson is unusually specific about who taught her what. The first is Bud Meadows, her current CEO, whom she calls the number one recruiter in the company. Meadows built his career leading sales organizations, and he applies the same discipline to talent: constant networking, close connections kept warm, always someone on hand he wants to bring in. From him Erickson took the power of staying connected, and something quieter she considers just as important. Meadows values keeping things simple and doing a couple of things extremely well. He expects managers to be present with their employees, to hold consistent one on ones, to actually listen, to solve the small things, and to keep every person clear on where they sit inside the company's mission and vision.

The second is Ryan Miller, who led the recruiting team during her time at Beckler and whom she calls the most talented recruiter she has ever worked with. Miller kept every candidate conversation personal, honest and genuine, referencing the specific things that stood out in someone's background rather than running a script. He was transparent about what the company did well and where it was still growing, and his energy was infectious enough that Erickson wanted to work there because of the way he described it. As she puts it, he could be completely honest and still sell a company like you were about to go work for Disneyland. She has tried to embody that balance ever since.

The third is Todd Austin, president of the company and, in her estimation, its second best recruiter. Austin drives a strong in office culture, pushes for genuinely meaningful benefits and recognition for employees, and is a vocal proponent of what the organization calls red shoes living, giving everyone he encounters a red shoes experience. What Erickson took from him is the least technical lesson of the three and possibly the most durable: be genuine, and treat people really well.

She reserves a separate kind of credit for Ben Williams, now a talent acquisition manager at Schreiber Foods, whom she describes as the strongest mentor she has had and the person who built her foundation in HR. She also points to Floribel Duran, VP of People and Talent at Beckler, as the most knowledgeable, organized and responsive HR leader she has ever worked with.

AI as Leverage, and as Risk

Erickson's read on artificial intelligence is refreshingly two sided. On the practitioner side, she sees genuine opportunity. AI lets recruiters move faster, scour the internet and platforms for strong talent, absorb large volumes of data, and understand how candidates match a profile in a fraction of the time. It removes the busywork that has always competed with the actual job. Let the technology capture the notes, she argues, so the recruiter can spend the conversation fully present with the person on the other end.

Her advice to other talent leaders is direct: stop hesitating. "Lean into AI and open the gates," she says. Whatever the task, the question should be how technology can make it a little bit easier, with a clear eye on keeping company and candidate information secure while doing it. She understands why some organizations are apprehensive. She simply does not think apprehension is a strategy.

The other consideration is more sobering, and it is the one many leaders still underestimate. The same tools have raised the risk profile of the hiring process itself. Recruiters are no longer only assessing whether someone is qualified. They are also verifying that the person on screen is who they claim to be and that their intent in joining the company is legitimate. Erickson's response is to train, not to panic. Teams need to know the red flags, including whether a candidate appears to be reading from a screen, and leaders need to stay current on both AI trends and security trends so they can get in front of them rather than react. It is a tool, she notes, and it can also make things a little bit trickier.

The Standard She Sets

What connects the threads is a refusal to let recruiting become transactional. The network beats the job board. The honest pitch beats the polished one. The manager who runs a real one on one keeps the person the recruiter worked so hard to find. The technology is worth every bit of leverage it offers, right up to the moment it starts substituting for judgment.

Erickson holds herself to the same standard she admires in the leaders who shaped her: be present, be transparent, be genuinely useful to the person on the other end of the conversation. In an industry increasingly tempted to automate the human part away, that is not nostalgia. It is the durable advantage.