The Hiring Tree - Strategic HR Consulting

The Hiring Tree - Strategic HR Consulting When it comes to small businesses, your Human Resources department can make or break your business because it helps manage your most valuable asset: PEOPLE.

Your people impact your revenue, growth, and overall customer satisfaction. Call me to help! Steven J Smith, SHRM-CP, PHR, is the author of "The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction." The book is designed to educate hiring professionals, business owners, and corporate recruiters on how to effectively market their jobs to effectively attract applicants to their roles. Using the analogy of an a

pple tree, the reader will be able to understand how important it is to start with the roots to feed an organizational hiring tree to produce to desired fruit.

I once sat across the screen from an Olympian who told me about the worst moment of her career.She fell across the finis...
09/01/2026

I once sat across the screen from an Olympian who told me about the worst moment of her career.

She fell across the finish line at Olympic trials. Tore her uniform doing it. Thought she was done.

Twenty-nine minutes later, she was handed a new suit, put on fresh skates, and skated again on ice that was still wet. No lap times. No idea how fast she was going. She made the team.

Rebekah Bradford said we must give ourselves grace that we make the right choices in the moment. Then she added this for anyone still competing.

Run through the line.

I think about this phrase now when I sit down with a business owner who is trying to figure out who on their team is built for the next stage of growth. It is never the person with the cleanest resume. It is the person who, when the plan falls apart in front of everyone, does not look for someone to blame. They just get back up and finish the race in front of them.

If you are hiring or promoting right now, stop asking who has the most experience. Start asking who runs through the line when things go sideways. That is the person who will still be standing next to you in five years.

More on this in the latest episode of Podcast with Rebekah Bradford. Link in the comments.

08/24/2026

Because IYKYK 🥵

Companies keep telling us they are laying off HR because of AI.I do not buy the full explanation.Every organization's co...
08/08/2026

Companies keep telling us they are laying off HR because of AI.

I do not buy the full explanation.

Every organization's costs sit in three buckets, payroll, the tools and platforms it licenses, and training. AI added new costs to the second and third buckets, and most companies have not built the accounting to track them separately yet.

So the easiest lever to pull is the first bucket. People.

Here is the part that gets left out of that decision. Layoffs carry their own hidden cost. The employees who stay after a layoff do not work the same way they did before it.

Trust drops. Productivity drops.

Ryan Kohler calls it the layoff tax, and it rarely shows up on the spreadsheet that justified the cut in the first place.

Meanwhile, Gallup's most recent data suggests roughly half of American employees are already watching for their next job, and a lot of that has nothing to do with pay. It is anxiety about AI and silence from leadership about what it means for their role.

If you are worried about AI eating into headcount, reskilling the people you already have is very often cheaper than the layoff, the severance, and the replacement hire that follows it.

Tony and Steven J Smith dug into this on this week's episode of Podcast, reacting to SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor's keynote at SHRM26.

Listen to the Episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-60-reacting-to-johnny-c-taylors-state-of-hr/id1819622195?i=1000779873822

Read the Blog Article: https://thehiringtreebook.com/home/f/why-only-10-percent-of-ceos-actually-value-their-hr-team

SHRM's own CEO just told a room full of HR professionals that only 10 percent of the executives he met with love their H...
08/04/2026

SHRM's own CEO just told a room full of HR professionals that only 10 percent of the executives he met with love their HR function.

Sixty percent tolerate it. Thirty percent see little or no value in it at all.
I have spent years telling clients the same thing Johnny C. Taylor said on that stage.

The CEO is HR's most important customer, full stop. Not the last stakeholder you loop in. Not the person you go to only when you need budget approval.

Your most important customer according to Steven J Smith

CEOs are focused on exactly two things: controlling costs and growing revenue.

If HR cannot connect its work to one of those two things, in language the CEO actually uses, it should not be surprised when it ends up in the 60 percent that merely tolerates the function instead of the 10 percent that values it.

The fix is not a rebrand. It is learning your own company's numbers well enough that you can walk into your CEO's office and make the business case yourself, instead of waiting to be asked.

Tony and I broke down the whole keynote, clip by clip, on this week's episode of Podcast.

Listen to the Episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-60-reacting-to-johnny-c-taylors-state-of-hr/id1819622195?i=1000779873822

Read the Blog Article: https://thehiringtreebook.com/home/f/why-only-10-percent-of-ceos-actually-value-their-hr-team

There is no question that AI cannot fix weak roots. The roots are the foundation of the hiring tree framework and should...
08/01/2026

There is no question that AI cannot fix weak roots. The roots are the foundation of the hiring tree framework and should exist in every organization. When it is lacking, AI only enhances what is already broken. Are you seeing the value of AI in your organization yet?

I ask one question that trips up almost everyone. Not, "what did you build?"But, "how many employees did it affect, and ...
07/29/2026

I ask one question that trips up almost everyone.

Not, "what did you build?"

But, "how many employees did it affect, and what happened to your numbers after the implementation?"

Most people describe the program. Few can describe the result.

Claire Lizear was very clear about where she thinks the state of HR is and why. She said, "Business acumen in HR is so low."

And she was not referring to junior roles. She was talking about professionals with years of experience who still cannot connect their work to the thing their CEO actually cares about.

If you run HR, or if you own the business and rely on someone else to run it, here is the test. Can that person tell you, in plain business terms, what their programs actually changed?

Not what they rolled out.
What changed.

If the answer is a shrug, you do not have an HR function yet. You have activity.

Full conversation with Claire Lizear is live now on Podcast.

Listen to the Episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-59-an-hr-department-of-one-the-wild-wild/id1819622195?i=1000778699628

Read the Blog Post: https://thehiringtreebook.com/home/f/how-do-you-get-leadership-to-actually-trust-hr

Six months after we restructured how they managed their people, a business owner sent me a text.It just said: "I took a ...
07/25/2026

Six months after we restructured how they managed their people, a business owner sent me a text.

It just said: "I took a full Friday off for the first time in four years. Nobody called."

That might sound small.
It isn't.

That Friday represented something that most owners in his position had given up as just part of the sacrifice. It's the idea that their business could function, grow, and take care of its people without them being the solution to every problem.

She didn't get there because she found some secret way of handling things. She got there because she finally built what she'd been putting off for years:

Clear role definitions.
A consistent hiring and onboarding process.
Regular performance conversations that didn't require a crisis to trigger.
A benefits structure that made good people want to stay.

None of it was complicated. It just required someone to sit down and build it with her.

That's the work I love doing.

Not because it makes businesses more efficient, though it does.

But because of what it gives back to the person who built something worth running.

If that Friday sounds like something you'd want, I'd love to hear where you are right now.

Drop a comment or send me a message. I would love a conversation.

The best employers I've worked with aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones who made their employees ...
07/23/2026

The best employers I've worked with aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones who made their employees feel like a priority.

That shows up in small, specific ways:

A clear offer letter that actually explains the role and what success looks like.
A first week that's structured. Not "just figure it out."
A manager who checks in at 30, 60, and 90 days with real questions and conversations, not just formalities.
A benefits package that says "we thought about your family," not just "here's what the law requires."
A pathway forward that doesn't require leaving to get a promotion.

None of these ideas are expensive. But they are intentional.

And here's what I've noticed: the businesses that get this right tend to have a strange problem: their employees send them referrals. Not customers.
Their own team recruits for them because they actually want their friends to work there.

That's not a culture you can fake. But it is one you can build.

What would it take for your team to feel that way about where they work?

There's a version of your business where HR isn't something you dread.Where you have a process for hiring that doesn't d...
07/21/2026

There's a version of your business where HR isn't something you dread.

Where you have a process for hiring that doesn't depend entirely on your gut.
Where new employees get onboarded the same way every time, both professionally and completely.
Where performance conversations happen on a schedule, not only when something goes wrong.
Where you know your policies are current, your documentation is solid, and if something complicated came up, you'd have someone knowledgeable in your corner.

That's not a fantasy. That's just what happens when you build the right structure for your stage of growth.

Most business owners I talk to have never experienced what it feels like to have the people side of their business running smoothly. So they assume the friction is just part of the deal.

It isn't.

The friction is a signal that something hasn't been built yet. Not judgment at all. There is an opportunity here to improve your business.

If you could change one thing about how HR and people management functions in your business right now, what would it be?

I once asked a business owner to walk me through what his week looked like.He paused. Then he started listing:Monday — r...
07/19/2026

I once asked a business owner to walk me through what his week looked like.

He paused. Then he started listing:

Monday — resolved a conflict between two of his salespeople.
Tuesday — conducted a final interview for a role that had been open for three months.
Wednesday — fielded a question from his office manager about whether they needed to update their sick leave policy.
Thursday — spent two hours on a performance improvement plan for someone he probably should have let go six months ago.
Friday — sat in three meetings he could have sent someone else to, because he didn't trust the systems enough to delegate.

I asked him, "When did you last spend a full day just working on the business?"

He laughed. Not a funny laugh.

"I'm not sure I know what that feels like anymore."

Here's what I told him: Your instincts built this company. But instincts don't scale. Systems do.

The goal of good people infrastructure isn't to take the humanity out of leading a team. It's to give you back the time and headspace to actually be a leader. You shouldn't be a referee, a fixer, or definitely not the person everyone brings their problems to.

You deserve to work on your business, not just in it.

What does your people management actually look like week to week?
I'd love to hear.

Address

Lehi, UT
84043

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+13853526111

Website

,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Hiring Tree - Strategic HR Consulting posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category