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Jeffrey K. Cordes, Partner

Talent Optimization Solutions

Jeff is an accomplished Talent Management leader and pioneer; Jeff has worked with a wide range of companies and industries from start-up organizations to Fortune 500 companies in many areas of Talent Acquisition engagements, including Talent Acquisition Outsourcing, Talent Acquisition Consulting, and Talent Management Optimization.

Some of Jeff’s most recent clients include; AFN, Maven Wave Partners, Sears Holdings Inc. (Sears/Kmart), Home Depot, Panera Bread, Jimmy John’s, CVS/Caremark, Resorts International, Barton Industries, EDS, Notre Dame Federal Credit Union, Boyd’s Inc., New Horizons, ShopLocal.com, Ameren Services, Duke Energy, Exel Transportation, and Ryder Integrated Systems.

Prior to launching talentRISE LLC, Jeff was the President of Human Capital Results, a full service recruitment outsourcing and recruitment consultancy and he was the Managing Director for CareerBuilder.com’s recruitment & human capital consulting division which he founded and launched. Jeff has held senior human resource and recruiting executive management positions with IBM Corporation, IBM Consulting Group, Xpedior Inc., Apropos Technology Inc. and NCI. During his corporate and consulting career, Jeff has had responsibility for all aspects of strategic talent acquisition and talent outsourcing.

Jeff’s recruiting career has spanned almost two decades. As a Partner for James Martin Inc., he led the worldwide Enterprise Transformation practice, a recruiting practice focused on recruiting, human resources, and organizational effectiveness. At IBM Consulting, Jeff’s projects included talent acquisition strategy, human resources and organizational development and recruitment outsourcing with a wide variety of clients from several different industries.

In February of 2006, Jeff was elected to the Board of Directors for Character Education Partnership; In July of 2006, CEP appointed Jeff to the Executive Committee and he accepted the Chair of the Personnel Committee. Jeff is former board alum for Tech People Leaders in Chicago and was the Chair of the Technology Committee and Board Alum with Health Services for Children with Special Needs. As the current Chairman of Talent Exchange in Chicago, Jeff works to bring talent acquisition leaders together to share best practices in the profession.

Jeff is a featured international speaker on Talent Acquisition Best Practices, Talent Optimization, Recruitment outsourcing. talentBRANDING ™ and talent development. Jeff is also an adjunct faculty member in the MBA program at Benedictine University where he teaches Strategic Human Resource Management, Leadership and Ethics. He has also taught in the Masters of Human Resource program at DePaul University. At the Keller Graduate School of Management Jeff was a professor in Management. Jeff also taught and chaired the Quality program at the Wharton School of business. He is a member of the Illinois Staffing Association (ISA), Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), Human Resource Association (HRA) and Human Resource Management of Chicago (HRMAC).

Jeff has written numerous articles on talent optimization and is completing his first book. Jeff is a Doctoral candidate in talent management and optimization and has an MBA in Organizational Leadership and a BA in Economics.