Tim Sackett

Running HRU Technical Resources

Tim Sackett is president of HRU Technical Resources, which his own site describes as a roughly $40 million IT and engineering contract staffing and recruitment process outsourcing firm. The company is headquartered in Lansing, Michigan, where he lives. Titles vary by source and date: a 2012 industry article called him executive vice president, speaker biographies carry both president and CEO, and a 2026 SHRM session page lists him as CEO of HRUTech.com.^[1][2][4][5]

Experience in HR and talent acquisition

Sackett says he has about 20 years in HR and recruiting and holds a master's degree in human resources and the SPHR certification. His SHRM conference biography describes roughly 20 years of combined executive HR and talent acquisition work at Fortune 500 companies in healthcare, retail, dining and technology, and adds the SCP credential.^[1][2]

He therefore combines years inside large employers with leadership of a staffing firm that focuses on information technology and engineering talent, a hard-to-hire corner of the market.^[1][3]

Writer: The Tim Sackett Project and Fistful of Talent

Sackett writes frequently. He publishes the blog The Tim Sackett Project and contributes to the group blog Fistful of Talent, where a 2012 profile described his tone as irreverent. In an episode of the Imperfect Action podcast he is described as writing daily, and he discussed the long, realistic road to success as a writer and speaker, the value of being authentic and his doubts about the advice to follow your passion.^[1][3][4]

Author of The Talent Fix

His first book, The Talent Fix: A Leader's Guide to Recruiting Great Talent, was released in partnership with SHRM. It sets out a practical, scalable recruiting model for talent acquisition leaders, aimed at building and sustaining a strong in-house function. He also points readers on his own site to The Talent Fix and The Recruitment Fix.^[1][7]

In a June 2022 episode of the Pages of HR podcast, he discussed finding a winning recruitment approach, owning mistakes, marketing and hourly recruiting technologies.^[7]

Speaking and recognition

Sackett's own list of past talks includes The Future of HR and Technology, The Headhunter Inside Me, How Would Steve Jobs Have Designed HR, and The Corporate Recruiting Revolution. A 2018 podcast page says Workforce Magazine named him a Top 10 Global HR Influencer that year, and describes him as president-elect of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals at the time. The SHRM conference bio calls him a Top 10 Global HR Tech Influencer.^[1][2][3]

His keynote at HR Tech Festival Asia in Singapore in May 2023 argued that organizations spend heavily on technology and workspaces while overlooking people, and that HR leaders should plan around where technology, work environments and humans meet. More recently, SHRM presented him as the keynote speaker of its Smart Workplaces virtual retreat, in a session on moving past AI hype toward practical, human-centered technology choices, including avoiding shiny-object syndrome and building a resilient tech stack.^[5][6]

Point of view

A consistent idea in his writing is that the most important thing an organization can do is increase its core talent base, and that HR directly controls that lever. In 2012 he argued that delivering superior talent gets noticed and adds value.^[1][4]

Why he matters

Sackett is unusual in the staffing and HR world because he is both an operator and a public commentator. He runs a real recruiting business, publishes opinions regularly and speaks on the major stages of the HR conference circuit, which gives his views on hiring, HR technology and artificial intelligence a practitioner's footing. For corporate recruiters and HR leaders deciding how to evaluate new tools, he is one of the most widely read voices in that conversation.^[1][2][5]

On The Executive List

Tim Sackett is ranked No. 89 on The Executive List (October 2026) in the Chief Human Resources Officers discipline. The ranking reflects The Executive Review's own editorial Trending Score; it is not an outside award, and placement on the list is never sold. View the October 2026 edition.