Dawn Hendricks: Helping Organizations with Business and Workforce Solutions

Meet Dawn Hendricks, the President and CEO of FM Talent, a certified minority and woman-owned enterprise providing business and workforce solutions to help organizations around the country solve business challenges. FM Talent’s clients include federal, state, and local government agencies, Fortune 500™ companies, and non-profit organizations.

Dawn herself is a third-generation entrepreneur and a leader who inspires action. She pursued her graduation from Hofstra University with a Bachelor of Business Administration. She also holds a Master of Science in Human Resource Management from American University and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Dawn started her professional career in recruiting- working her way up from a recruiting assistant to a recruiting manager at Hofstra, a Fortune 500 organization. “Having an entrepreneurial spirit – I have always looked for ways to meet needs in the marketplace, either through a completely new solution or finding a different approach to an existing service or solution,”– she remembers. “That’s exactly the spark that birthed FM Talent – Omari Franklin (co-founder) and I – saw an opportunity, based on our experiences working with other recruiting and consulting providers, to create a business model to support our customers in the way we wanted to be supported by our suppliers – high touch, consultative, and results-driven approach.”

Dawn and Omari sought to enhance the prospects of their candidates by providing them with training and feedback that would enable them to obtain their desired roles, particularly for minority individuals unfamiliar with the work world.

The People Business

Under Dawn’s leadership, FM Talent provides management solutions across industries. FM Talent has a solid project management process and approach to performing its services. This is the foundation for how the company operates and manages its teams. Also, being an ISO 9001-certified firm, FM Talent has established several internal processes for every function that are quarterly reviewed and updated as needed, thus ensuring compliance and continuous improvement. Additionally, having the right people leveraging its tools, methodologies, and approaches also helps to a great extent.

“We have 10 fundamentals that serve as a guidepost for how we do business – the expectation is that regardless of who you encounter in the organization – you have the same quality and level of excellence and are met with kindness and care,“- Dawn explains. “A lot of organizations do good work – and like us. Focus on results; we also focus on how we accomplish those results and have ritualized the cultural behaviors within our organization.”

Thriving in the Competitive Industry

Dawn believes the dynamic nature of the business ensures that they are not stagnant in their thinking and how they approach their clients. So, they need to look for more efficient ways to support customers constantly.

“We hire great people, teach them our internal methodologies, and use technology and processes to support our operations. Then we measure the outcomes and make continuous adjustments as needed,“- she says. “One thing that I have never feared is making a wrong decision. We make the best decision based on the information available to us – we measure and then make the next best decision.”

Significance of Team Work

To Dawn, culture and teamwork are everything. FM Talent has always had a strong excellence culture built on unwavering ethics and accomplishments. Dawn and her team recently introduced the 10 FM Talents Fundamentals, which they feel are essential to the organization’s Identity and have helped to set it apart from competitors.

Synchronizing with the Domain’s Latest Advancements

Dawn and her team are constantly seeking ways to do their work quickly and efficiently through automation and technology. FM Talent’s team continuously monitors industry best practices to stay on top of them. They are also looking into AI solutions in their service area through affinity groups and professional associations while keeping an eye on this space as the data quality improves.

Looking at the Future

Dawn aims to increase FM Talent’s size by more than 5x over the next couple of years, the goal is to impact more companies by helping them carry out their mission; She want to empower individuals to achieve their personal and professional objectives, and support the development of the next generation of leaders.

“FM Talent is working to become a preeminent recruiting and consulting firm. We have a substantial growth goal that will allow us to have a greater impact on our industry and the people we serve and support. My advice for any and everyone is Never stop learning; Dream big and never give up!!”– concludes Dawn.