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Fern Nordskog
Senior Engineering - Technical Talent Acquisition Specialist - Unicorn Herder (See MY ENDORSEMENTS here on LinkedIn)
Professional Background
Fern (Randi) Nordskog is a highly skilled Senior Talent Acquisition professional, renowned for her energetic approach and vast experience in recruitment, talent sourcing, and strategic methodology for company resource development. With a dynamic career spanning several industries, including IT, engineering, aerospace, healthcare, and more, Fern has established herself as a formidable leader in the realm of corporate recruiting and strategic staffing.
With an extensive understanding of the full life cycle of candidate management, Fern has successfully identified issues, analyzed options, and designed effective strategies that have consistently led to successful placements across various technical fields. Her exceptional analytical skills and strategic mindset enable her to not only understand the needs of organizations but also to match them with the right talent, ensuring mutual growth and success.
Education and Achievements
Fern studied at Los Angeles Pierce College, where she gained foundational knowledge that has supported her throughout her impressive career. Although her educational background is not limited to formal degrees, her extensive professional experience and hands-on learning keep her at the forefront of the talent acquisition landscape.
Throughout her career, Fern has held various notable positions that highlight her capabilities. Currently, she serves as a Senior Technical Engineering Sourcer and Recruitment Consultant at Executek Search. In this role, she collaborates with companies to identify their unique hiring needs and develop effective sourcing strategies.
Prior to her current role, Fern worked as a Principal Talent Acquisition partner with PRO Unlimited at iRobot, where she focused on R&D Robotics Engineering. She was responsible for sourcing top-tier talent for groundbreaking projects in robotics and autonomous systems.
Fern's previous roles also include significant contributions as the Principal Recruiter for Engineering, Operations, and Advanced Technologies at AeroVironment. Here, she played a crucial part in defining and implementing recruitment strategies tailored for the UAV and robotics sectors.
Additionally, Fern has held leadership positions as the Senior Manager of Talent and People Leader at VideoAmp, and as the Head of Talent Acquisition at Arrivo – The Arrival Company, specializing in Hyperloop and autonomous vehicle initiatives. Her ability to lead teams and motivate others in fast-paced environments has garnered her respect and admiration in the industry.
Specialties and Expertise
Fern specializes in several key areas, bringing expertise in IT, engineering, aerospace, transportation, medical devices, healthcare, sales, product, and executive search. Proficient in various recruitment strategies including, but not limited to, LinkedIn Recruiter, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, social media platforms, blogs, and events, she effectively utilizes advanced sourcing techniques to recruit talent in complex fields.
Her deep knowledge of technologies extends to domains such as robotics, autonomy, cloud computing, software engineering, and even virtual reality. Fern's command over programming languages and development tools, including .NET, PHP, JavaScript, Python, and AI technologies, positions her uniquely to understand the needs of the technical roles she seeks to fill.
She has successfully sourced talent for diverse professional positions, demonstrating her expertise in resource management and recruitment methodologies. With a particular focus on sectors involving defense, healthcare information systems, and advanced technology, Fern has established a robust network of connections, allowing her both to identify and attract the best candidates in the market.
Achievements
Over the years, Fern has successfully contributed to countless organizations' growth and success through her strategic recruitment initiatives. Some of her notable achievements include:
- Streamlining the recruitment processes for major aerospace and defense projects, resulting in expedited hiring timelines and reduced operational costs.
- Leading and executing talent acquisition strategies that attracted high-caliber engineers and tech professionals to key projects in autonomous technology and robotics.
- Successfully managing recruitment campaigns for companies associated with cutting-edge technologies, including Hyperloop solutions and advanced autonomous vehicles, which are crucial to the transportation sector's future.
- Developing long-term relationships with educational institutions and professional organizations to create pipelines of top-level talent for the ever-evolving tech landscape.
As a result of her dedication and expert knowledge, Fern has enhanced the recruitment processes of organizations like SAP Concur, Parsons Corporation, Rubicon Project, and Axium Entertainment among others, illustrating her versatility and in-depth industry knowledge.
Conclusion
Fern (Randi) Nordskog is a dedicated and highly accomplished Senior Talent Acquisition professional whose passion for connecting people with purpose through strategic recruitment has set her apart in the industry. With an extensive background in a variety of technical fields and an agile approach to finding talent in niche roles, she continues to make a profound impact on organizations seeking to nurture and grow their human resources. Her commitment to ensuring companies find the right fit for their unique needs highlights her as a leader in talent acquisition, making her a valuable asset to any organization looking to thrive in today's fast-paced and ever-evolving job market.
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Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.