At Spotter Staffing, we work tirelessly to partner with industry experts who help elevate every member of our “herd.” To share their knowledge, experience and wonderful personalities within our community, we decided to interview every internal staff member on our team. We hope you enjoy getting to know them, and learning more about the members of Spotter Staffing’s herd.

Meet Pavithri!

Pavithri is Spotter’s HR Specialist. She has some great insights to share, and some fun facts you’ll want to hear (her favorite meal is pretty universally loved!). Watch the video below to learn more about our HR Specialist, Pavithri.

Transcription:

• Mackenzie: Thanks for joining us again, we have a different kind of episode today where it’s meet your HR specialist. So, we have Pavithri Kilgore here with us, Pavithri, thanks for joining me.
• Pavithri: Absolutely, thanks for having me.
• Mackenzie: So we wanted to introduce everybody to you and you to everybody so that they can get a little bit better of an idea of what your role is here at Spotter. So if you would start just by kind of explaining what you do for Spotter Staffing, that would be great.
• Pavithri: Yeah, absolutely. So I am an external consultant that provides all of HR full cycle HR services for Spotter Staffing and that includes all of the Spotter internal employees as well. As school staff and clients, so everything from hire to retire.
• Mackenzie: I like that, that’s a great way to put it. So how should our school staff and schools expect to interact with you? Do they hear from you a lot? Do you typically talk to them on a weekly or monthly basis? How does that work?
• Pavithri: So, a lot of times this I really don’t have a lot of interactions with the school staff. I think the best thing I can tell you is that I interact more with our recruiters and they become the conduit where I either connect with the school staff, the client or both because at the end of the day, the recruiters are the ones that are going to be interacting with the staff and our clients than I am and that’s where the comfort zone is so they’re going to always go there. I have zero issues with that by the way. Still, your staff like our Spotter staff is really good about engaging me and saying, “hey I got this, who do you want me to connect with?” and then kind of gets me into the conversation.
• Mackenzie: Perfect, well that kind of leads me into my next question which was, if school staff are working in a school, they have an HR question or they have some questions about HR. should they be bringing that directly to the school or since they work for Spotter, should they be bringing that right to you?
• Pavithri: I’m glad you asked that, because there’s a quite a bit of confusion that comes up when you work for a staffing agency at a client right. So bottom line, all our school staff are employees of Spotter Staffing, which means the school HR can’t help them with any of their HR questions as it relates to their employment because their employment is with Spotter. So for both our clients and for our school staffing, if there is an HR-related question, they can reach out to me directly or again reach out to their point of contact at Spotter who can then direct it to the right person for the answers. Because a lot of times it’s a simple question that most of our staff have the answer to. And if they don’t, they usually get me engaged.
• Mackenzie: Perfect. Well, that makes a lot of sense. So are there any just last kind of HR or general workplace pearls of wisdom you want to pass on to school staff or to school professionals?
• Pavithri: I don’t know that this is just for school staff, but a good rule of thumb in any employment place is if you’re questioning it, if it’s the right or the wrong thing to do, just don’t do it.
• Mackenzie: Yeah. That is pretty universal, I think. That’s a good rule of thumb.
• Pavithri: About 15 years ago, I can tell you, when I was in my corporate world, there was a young lady who was wearing a very inappropriate outfit at work. And we’re like, hey, you’re completely out of dress code. We need you to go change. And she goes, yeah, I wasn’t sure about it. So I have a backup outfit in the car. And I’m like, anytime you’re questioning-yeah, just the backup, yeah, exactly. That’s been my mantra since then.
• Mackenzie: I like that. Well, thank you. That’s super helpful. Really good sage advice to share. And then I had a couple more questions just so that we can share a little bit more about you and I can learn a little bit more about you, too. So these are a little bit less HR related, but just a little bit more Pavithri focused questions. OK. My first question is, if you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?
• Pavithri: Breakfast.
• Mackenzie: Breakfast. OK. Any specific like pancakes, eggs?
• Pavithri: Savory. Yeah. Anything savory breakfast. I mean, in this house, we eat breakfast for dinner quite a bit.
• Mackenzie: That’s good. Brinner.
• Pavithri: Yeah. That’s like my favorite thing to eat.
• Mackenzie: Good to know. I’m going to remember that for some future event. OK. The second one is, if you were planning a dream vacation, what would your dream vacation look like?
• Pavithri: Well. I’m an island girl stuck in a landlocked state. Anywhere there is a beach and by a beach, I mean with an ocean where I can smell the salt and I can unplug. I’ll take it.
• Mackenzie: Yeah. That sounds nice with winter coming up pretty quickly here. Right. Sounds like a nice escape.
• Pavithri: I love exploring new places with my husband. So we try to make something happen every year. So, yeah. Good.
• Mackenzie: We’ll keep that open for future. If we’re trying to contact you and we can’t get to you, I’ll just assume you’re on an ocean somewhere.
• Pavithri: Next summer, I’m actually going to Europe with him for a few weeks. So, yeah. I’ll be excited. I’ll still be working. So you guys can still find me.
• Mackenzie: Oh, good. OK. Well, I have one last question for you, and then I’ll let you get back to work because I know you’ve got a lot going on. But what is your biggest accomplishment? What are you most proud of?
• Pavithri: Honestly, I think this, the company, right? My dad’s been telling me for years I should start my own thing. And the idea of just getting away from a regular paycheck is scary. And this was a huge leap of faith that I took. And I took it right. When the world was coming to a screeching halt and all of that madness was happening. So, you know, timing could have been better. But I am definitely proud of the fact that even through all of that, we’ve managed to kind of keep the company going double our business year over year. And we’re like a couple of months away from celebrating a five-year anniversary.
• Mackenzie: Oh, congratulations. That’s awesome.
• Pavithri: So, yeah, I would say that’s my most proud of.
• Mackenzie: Well, we’re glad you started it, too, because I know you’re super helpful for us and all of our schools and our school staff. So thank you for letting us get to know you a little bit better and share you with everybody because I know you’re a great resource for them and you’re a great resource for us. So thanks for being on this, Pavithri, and thanks for watching to everyone at home. We’ll see you on our next episode.

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