I was talking with a client earlier this week who was having trouble filling a role. I asked him how he was setting expectations for his team. He said, “I’m telling them: ‘This is impacting bottom line revenue, it’s urgent and we have to fill it.’”

“No,” I said, “That’s not what I mean. What I mean is, how are you setting expectations for the weekly expected activities? It’s not enough to just say ‘we have to fill this.’”

Consistency is, I think, one of the hardest life skills to learn. It’s easy to show up on the good days, and very hard to show up on the bad ones.

Lately, though, I’ve been realizing that the real value of consistency is not the results we achieve, but it is the structure consistency creates for our lives when everything else is murky.

I was in the middle of holiday shopping traffic chaos last week when I saw a stalled car clogging up a busy Greenville intersection. The cars were lining up behind it, and you could almost sense the aura of frustration. But right in the middle of it, there was a lone policeman with two red gas cans, filling up the car with gas, and I smiled.

The unspoken reality in today’s employment marketplace is that compensation hikes have flattened, but candidate’s expectations haven’t.

Companies want high performers. Candidates want meaningful work, stability, and leaders they can trust, and a salary bump.

“Supersize that, please.”

We live in a world that is constantly asking for more. More of our time, our money, and certainly more of our emotions. I see this on a daily basis in recruiting, as we navigate negotiations between a company and a potential new team member.

What a fantastic turn-out for our inaugural CPE event, held at the Poinsett Club on November 19th! A big thank you to everyone who joined, and a special thank-you to our speakers.

My daughter, who is 8, refuses to learn how to ride a bike. Point blank refuses. What 8 year old does not know how to ride a bike?! It does not matter how I bribe her . . . she has her mind set on the fact she will be bad at it, and does not want to practice something that she will “fail” at.

I often joke that our job as recruiters is part-therapist, but it’s not really a joke. The truth is we are dealing with human beings at some of the most vulnerable points in their professional and personal lives: transitioning to a new job or adding a new person to the team.

Earlier this month, I had the distinct honor of speaking at the German-American Chamber of Commerce Gateway Awards. Forge has had the privilege of working with many German, Italian, and other European companies as they put down roots or expand in the United States.

Have you ever noticed the number of endless questions that children will ask? Without shame or embarrassment — just because they are naturally curious.

If you’ve found yourself asking, “Why is it so hard to hire right now?” or “Why are people quitting left and right?” but hear “Should I be worried about my job?” at your dinner table the next day—you’re not alone.

It is in most of our natures, I think, to seek certainty.

My kids beg for me to promise them that we will have a certain treat or trip or dessert, because they know I will try very hard not to break my word. So they attempt to balance out the uncertainty with a promise that is still, despite my best efforts, very human.

If I had a dollar for every time someone talked to me about how challenging it is to hire well, I would be a very, very rich person.

The truth is that hiring well is difficult, and there is not a magic pill that makes it easy (We do have an “Easy” button here in the office, but I can’t seem to make it work for this purpose!).

If you’ve been around the Forge community for any amount of time, you know we’re pretty intent on not giving up. It's part of our core values, and how we intentionally show up every day at home and at work.

But it is not without irony that we also talk to people . . . every day . . . about quitting their jobs.

We live in an age of “infinite browsing,” Pete Davis argues in the book Dedicated. If you’ve ever spent a night browsing Netflix for the best movie . . . only to find that it’s too late to even start, you know this is true. From our relationships to our Netflix to job hopping, we are always looking for something better.

In today’s volatile environment, where change is constant and uncertainty is the norm, companies are under pressure to adapt quickly. Priorities shift, teams stretch, and the demands of the day-to-day often take center stage. Amidst the chaos, it’s easy to overlook one of your most valuable assets: the people already on your team. In fact, the highest performers are likely those who receive the least attention from you as a leader.

It's the time of year when we're thinking about our goals-our ambitions, aspirations, hopes and dreams for the year. But all of your professional goals are dependent on who you have around you because you are only as good as your team.

A few months ago, I was reading a book on time management when my husband walked in. He immediately started laughing at me because I am (quote): “ruthless at managing my time.” To be fair, he is probably right. But I love the idea of self-improvement and believe that one of the things that makes humans so very special is our ability to iterate and change.

With the U.S. Presidential election just a few weeks away, you can feel the tension and the unease simmering just beneath the surface. Add to that the lingering emotional and physical exhaustion from Hurricane Helene that hit much of the Southeast, and nerves are, quite simply, frayed.

One of the benefits of parenting children through grade school is that you learn all the history that you might have forgotten along the way. Take Thomas Edison, for example. You may already know that he had little formal schooling—his teacher famously told him he was “too stupid to learn anything”—but you may not know that he was also at least partially deaf.