A Personal Story from the Founder of Trove Talent’s Recruitment Agency 

One night while out to dinner with some acquaintances, a woman was telling a story about a new customer she was signing up for one of her products.  Her husband walked into the room while she was verifying the lady’s information.  He heard his wife say, ‘so let me confirm the spelling of your name… a m i r a c  l e… A’miracle.’  Her husband gave her a look like, really?  The first thought that popped into my mind was that this lady must have trouble getting a job interview.

As someone who has worked in many fields, I’m comfortable with unique names and different ethnicities so I never thought about how personal attributes could affect hiring practices—until it happened to me. A few years ago, I left a wonderful job in a large city for a more simplistic life in a rural area to focus on raising my daughters. I now lived in a small town whose downtown could be mistaken for a highway rest stop.

When I decided to re-enter the workforce, I received some interest in my skills, but many hiring managers had the same feedback: I lived so far away, how would I get to the office? I thought, how do they know I can’t be in the office, maybe I’ll relocate. No one even asked me. So I took my address off my resume and changed my zip code on job boards to a metropolitan area, and the interviews started pouring in.

This really got me thinking about biases in the hiring practices of companies and the hiring of individuals.

And that’s when I decided to launch Trove Talent, the 24/7 personal recruitment agency designed to help remove common biases from job searching.