I never set out to be a recruiter. I’ve been organizing since I was 17, and professionally since I was 18. I thought that I was going to be a professional labor organizer for my whole life, that I’d run campaigns and win big for workers everywhere. 

Right out of college, I started working at New Working Majority, a small consulting firm which unfortunately closed last year. I was doing digital online-to-offline organizing with small business owners and alt-labor organizations. But once organizing became my full time, permanent job, something changed. I was expected to run a national digital organizing program at 21 with few resources, less than ideal support from my clients, and the constant and persistent devaluing of digital organizing. In 3 years, I was burnt out. My coworker at NWM started doing recruitment and I figured I could fill some of my client hours doing the same while I figured out what I wanted to do about organizing. Just a few months later, I decided to step away from professional organizing and do recruitment full time. 

Some people don’t believe me when I say I’m passionate about hiring. They think it’s almost a necessary evil, something no one likes to do but everyone needs to. I see it differently. I’ve experienced abuse at the hands of employers, and some of the worst of it has been at movement organizations. We’re often told that we need to suffer through bad hiring and employment practices if we’re really passionate about this work, and that’s absolute nonsense. It all starts with hiring. Add together an organization that didn’t conduct an intentional hiring process and hired someone unprepared for the role to a job seeker who’s desperate and doesn’t know what they’re getting themselves into, and you have a recipe for negative experiences all around. 

It can and must be so much better than this. I am back to professional organizing part time, and just as I ask my members to imagine a world different than the one they live in, a world where there is justice and liberation, I ask my clients to imagine a world in which hiring processes are not cumbersome and do not take up valuable capacity that could be spent on building power. I ask my job seekers to imagine a world in which they don’t go years between jobs. I ask them both to imagine a world in which the right job seekers are connected to the right organizations. 

My aim in everything I do with my recruitment practice is to work toward that world, one hiring process and client at a time. This will take a long time; organizations can move forward on inertia and not give their hiring or employment practices a second thought. It’s deeply baked into our movement. But what we’re doing isn’t working; we see huge burnout in all movement staff, but especially organizers who are expected to be on and available all the time. 

I’m still looking to win big for workers everywhere. But now, it’s different for me. Now I also want to win big for movement workers, for the folks who keep this work moving, who keep it possible, people like you. I have committed my life to building power to win change, and I see equitable hiring as part of that. So, welcome to the all new Alina Sipp-Alpers Consulting recruitment shop. Whether you’re a job seeker or a hiring organization, I’m here to help you. I hope we can work on advancing our movement together.