Kimberly Hansen

Her Work: Recruiter

“I feel kind of like I’m in a zoo”

 Kimberly Hansen says she feels like she is in a zoo “because there’s all these windows looking out at the atrium with all the green trees and people can always watch me the whole day long, they can always see what I’m doing. I’m very visual within the company, so it’s kind of interesting.”

Ms. Hansen just moved into this space within the past week. She tells me that she likes her new workspace better especially because she is physically close to the two employees that she works with on the HR team. Kimberly says that in her old workspace it was “very disjointed and I didn’t feel as supported actually. Here we’re all in touch all day long because we’re 5 feet away from each other, so that’s actually really nice.” She tells me how she feels more supported in her new location and says “I also feel like they can see me now and they know how hard I’m working all day long and they can see it, and I can see how hard they work all day long” which seems to create a much stronger team for her. Ms. Hansen says “I love it. I feel much happier.”  She speaks with a positive attitude and smiles frequently.

Ms. Hansen’s work includes a lot of interviewing and working with people because the company hires 20-25 people a week. I am surprised by how many new hires take place there but she tells me that as a call center that high turnover rate is pretty typical. She tells me that there are a lot of tech-people here and a bunch of entry level employees as well and she says “that creates a different element than when I was recruiting for structural engineers which I did previously. So it’s just a completely different cross-section of the population which has been fascinating, and has been a huge blessing to just open my eyes to a slice of life.”  She says that her experience here has “been a very eye-opening humbling experience in a lot of ways and I’m grateful for that.”

I ask her about her office and she says that she wanted some color in the office so facilities painted it blue for her which she says is calming. Her previous workspace was a large office which she shared with another employee. She says “my lighting I don’t like, to me it feels like I’m in a doctor’s office, so I actually had them take out some of the light bulbs. I still need to get a lamp or some soft lighting.” Ms. Hansen tells me “I love tons of natural light during the day. I don’t even turn lights on during the day” and the large windows looking out to the atrium where there is a skylight seems to provide a decent amount of natural light.

Kimberly Hansen is the only person who mentioned the bathroom facilities during an interview. She says the “bathrooms are horrible here. It’s worse than my high school. And I think that has an effect on employees.” She has some positive and very reasonable suggestions that might improve the bathroom facilities.

When I ask her about her ideal work environment she says “I thrive on multi-tasking. I actually enjoy having to juggle a ton of things at once. I kind of thrive on chaos. I like an environment which is really creative.” “I just like chaos and constant change which you get here. And I like interacting with people all day long. I would go crazy if I was just sitting by myself all I day. I wouldn’t feel like I was using my talents. I want to make a positive impact someway somehow each day.” She tells me that her work and her job “fits with who I am and where I’ve been.”

I ask her to put her experience with her work into a few words she says “My work is purpose driven work in a lot of ways because I’m helping people. Essentially I’m giving people jobs they really need. I’m able to positively impact somebody each day by offering them an opportunity that they didn’t have yesterday, so to me that’s very gratifying and I’m very thankful for that piece of it.” She tells me how great it is when an employee comes to her and shows her a new outfit they got with their first paycheck and just simple things like that. “Really life changing things that are so simple to people but that mean so much to them.”