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In this episode of the She Lift Project Podcast, Cynthia Kirkpatrick sits down with Alison Niermann, founder and CEO of Tilley Partners. Alison is an executive recruiter and leadership advisor who helps organizations hire the right people and build teams that actually work. They talk about how to recognize your true professional value, how great leaders hire differently, and why protecting your spark at work changes everything.
This episode is for professionals ready for growth, leaders responsible for hiring, and anyone questioning their next career move. You will learn how to clarify what makes you valuable, how to show that value in conversations and interviews, and what strong hiring and culture look like behind the scenes. After listening, you will be able to approach your career or your team with clearer focus and make smarter decisions about where you work and who you hire.
0:00 Intro to She Lift Project Podcast
0:24 Meet Alison Niermann and Tilley Partners
3:28 What executive search really involves
6:56 Understanding company culture and hiring fit
10:35 Hiring mistakes and AI generated resumes
12:22 How the recruiting process really works
15:43 The “One Sheeter” career clarity exercise
17:48 Helping professionals see their true value
21:20 Leadership, strengths, and building strong teams
25:09 How leaders create real workplace culture
30:16 Why networks matter, especially in St. Louis
34:47 The changing job market and hiring trends
41:51 Working across departments and building influence
45:13 Alison’s Hiring to Thrive framework
47:29 The PATH leadership model explained
54:20 The story behind the name Tilley Partners
59:11 Why people are the real product in business
1:02:00 Helping employees connect to purpose
1:04:56 How to connect with Alison
Content Notice
This podcast and all She Lift Project content represents the opinions of Cynthia Kirkpatrick and her guests. The content here is for informational purposes only, and should not be taken as professional advice – financial, legal, medical, or otherwise.
Views and opinions expressed in the podcast and across all She Lift Project media channels are our own and do not represent that of our places of work. While we make every effort to ensure that the information we are sharing is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
“If you follow this methodology, if you follow the pattern, the outcome is inevitable. You cannot mess it up because it’s just calculated moves that are in writing.”
One of the things I love to do if the opportunity presents itself as coach people, because I feel like that is the most, wow, fun, enriching thing that you can do for people. Because what happens is I believe that people behave for reasons, and you got to figure out what’s the root cause. So if someone reacts in a certain way, whether it’s anger, emotion, or whatever, there’s a reason why they’re reacting that way. And so I don’t think that people really want to react that way. They want to be their best self.
“I didn’t go into business from a business school background, and so I discounted a lot of my intuition and what I thought was right and what I should be doing and took other people’s advice sort of over my own thinking and eventually I always would wind up back to sort of what felt right to me was very different from the advice that I had been given in the business community.”
“The experience of going through the legal process is supposed to be about seeking justice. More often than not, people go through it and they’re just as scared and almost re-traumatized as they were when the injustice happened.”
“The difference between traditional talk therapy and EMDR is that traditional talk therapy is kind of what I was talking about—the superficial level of learning skills to manage the symptom—whereas EMDR gets rid of the symptoms.”
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