Course
Thursday, November 13, 2025 from 1:30-2:30 PM Eastern
When your firm’s biggest challenge is not a lack of work opportunities but a lack of people to do the work, a marketer may need to go beyond winning projects and start winning talent. But with limited time to spend on recruiting, where should marketers focus their efforts to attract jobseekers and support their firm’s hiring goals?
Drawing on their experience building an HR-Marketing partnership at Freese and Nichols, veteran AEC recruiter Jim Riney and experienced AEC marketer Crista Reed, CPSM, pair up in this session to share proven strategies that have helped their firm grow by 30% over the past three years. Whether your marketing and talent acquisition teams are large or limited, this presentation will offer practical, hiring-manager-approved ways these teams can work together to market your firm as a workplace, create a robust hiring funnel, and ultimately support the overall success of your organization.
During this class, you’ll learn best practices to:
- Build partnerships between your firm’s marketing and talent acquisition teams • Determine and communicate your employer brand differentiators
- Leverage digital channels to promote your company and individual job openings to jobseekers
- Equip your technical staff to support their own hiring efforts
- Identify workplace awards and other hiring-focused tactics that marketing can support
About the Speakers:
Crista Reed, CPSM, is a PR/Communications Strategist at Freese and Nichols where she helps deliver a variety of external and internal communications to support our business and talent growth. Joining the AEC industry 12 years ago as an English-major-turned-marketer, Crista takes a thoughtful and strategic approach to her responsibilities from BD, to content, to hiring support. Crista has held several volunteer positions in SMPS, including Director of Communications, where she led the San Antonio chapter’s winning submission to the national 2014 Striving for Excellence Award.
Jim Riney is the Talent Acquisition Manager at Freese and Nichols, joining the firm in 2021 to build the first Talent Acquisition team in the firm’s 130-year history. Jim has partnered with the firm’s marketing and communications teams to support his goals in hiring – and has already helped the firm grow by 30%. While in a previous firm, he helped design and implement tools, programs and strategies to help attract global talent. Through his partnership with marketing, he helped grow a LinkedIn audience of more than one million followers and receiving global awards for brand recognition.