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About AHA! Recruiting Experts

Andrea Hoffer, MS, MBA

Maybe like you, my earliest childhood memories are at the dinner table, listening to my parents talk about work. Maybe also like you, small business owners, their work didn’t stop when they left the office.

I’ve always really admired the commitment that both of my parents had to their employees. All of those nights at the dinner table taught me that businesses that are built to last don’t abide by the “butts-in-seats” mentality.

The most successful and sustainable businesses fully develop employer branding, utilize innovative strategies to attract top talent, and make strategic investments that help them retain A-players for years at a time.

As a Holocaust survivor who fled Germany at the age of 6, my mother knew people all had different backgrounds and challenges growing up, so she dedicated herself to creating a culture of support and mutual respect for the betterment of every single person on her team. From a young age, I knew that was something I wanted in my career.

Little did I know that I would be calling on those same principles immediately after college graduation.

Right out of college, I found myself responsible for recruiting, training, and supervising 25+ students as a tour coordinator at my alma mater. My supervisor gave me the opportunity to take complete ownership of building and onboarding my team. It was an incredible experience where I learned a great deal about myself as a leader. For 2 years, I successfully ran student tour operations while pursuing my Master’s in Higher Education Administration.

After receiving my Master’s in 1993, I became a Program Advisor at Queensborough Community College for 2 years. Following this role, I was offered an opportunity to join the Student Center team at Georgia Institute of Technology. I spent 12 years at Georgia Tech helping students become their best selves as well as growing my own professional skills in many areas.

As my career continued at Georgia Tech, I was given the opportunity to step in a business consulting role, overseeing and building several different revenue units, including a professional 1,200 seat theater.

Business Consulting

All of those nights at the dinner table gave me an innate ability to easily find innovative opportunities for business process improvement. Recognizing this herself, my supervisor met with the Associate Vice President and recommended me to save a professional performance center owned by the college that was $1MM in the hole. This seemingly messy opportunity turned out to be my dream job. I found tremendous success in running the theater like a business – with my help, it made a profit within the year.

After operating as a business consultant for various revenue-generating programs at Georgia Tech, I took my passion for business operations and leadership development back to graduate school to get my MBA at Georgia State University. From there, I purchased and then operated a franchise of 35+ employees.

I loved finding creative new ways to hire and get my team engaged. As a small business owner, I saw first-hand why it’s so important to always be recruiting and always be building my employer brand.

Expert Recruiting

One day, I received a call from a colleague in need of a consultant familiar with both business and education to help her grow her team. Simply put, she’d lost money hiring people who didn’t work out and was afraid of making the same mistakes.

As many small business owners know, people are wonderfully messy. We all have different stories – whether it’s our family or our experiences and it accumulates in how we show up day to day.

I was honored to work alongside a small business owner and relieve her hiring and team development fears, empowering her to find effective ways to motivate employees, exceed customer expectations, and conquer business and revenue goals.

Over the next 5 years, I recruited for all positions, from students to high-level executives, and created processes and workshops to improve communication, leadership, and team development.

And that’s how AHA! Recruiting Experts was born.

AHA! Recruiting Experts

Today, we help our clients find, hire, and keep great employees. With a collective 40 years of recruitment, management, and training experience and a desire to take the pain out of recruiting and hiring through research-based, streamlined processes, AHA! Recruiting Experts provides business owners with customized and simple solutions for recruiting, onboarding, and engaging teams.

We’d be honored to help you build your dream team.

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