Sherri Bliss

What I do:

I'm an experienced problem solver who enjoys diving into new, difficult challenges related to humans and work to disect the problem across perspectives and angles, inform an array of possible solutions and ultimately develop a solution that works in the community (the people and the org) I support. I'm an advocate for a work experience that works for people as much as organizations, and in leading in the work experience space, evolving the role of work in our lives, while enabling employees to still deliver high-impact work and enjoy autonomy and flexibility. I'm a truth-teller, I don't shy away from the very real complexity and demands on organizations today, and believe organizations and employees can both thrive in the current, modent environment, and that what organizations need and what employees need are not at odds. I'm curious and don't have all the answers, but I very much enjoy trying to find some answers and exploring and experimenting with possible solutions. I'm mentally flexibile, a devourer of research and data, and love learning. (This is so bad. I feel like if I could do this, I would be golden.)

My experiences:

My entire work history has been in the role of builder of things: new teams, new process, new resource or tool. I have never had a job where there was already an established approach to the work or problem I was hired to address and I have really enjoyed that opportunity to build new things. My expertise is in identifying a compelling problem at work and then developing a simple but long-lasting solution, or range of solutions to that problem. Some examples: Created the first-ever internal talent matching program at Cisco to accompany a large layoff so that impacted employees, for the first time ever, were given an opportunity to be considered for open roles which would continue to be hired despite the restructuring. This resulted in almost 50% of impacted employees finding an internal role. This process still exists to this day, more than ten years after I created and implemented it. Created a simple straigthforward job intake form at Sonos which improved the way we communicated and marketed our open roles to be more about the person being hired into the role, the impact they could make, and the growth and career trajectory available to them. This transformed list-based job descriptions which anchored on a long list of requirements into more of a narrative about the job in its current form and in future potential. This Talent Profile is still used today, more than six years after I developed it. I have built three recruiting teams from scratch as the Operations Lead, and at Sonos was hired to be the lead of the first "Centers of Excellence" Staffing function which would be a standalone recruiting research, sourcing and competitive inteligence group.