About the Author: Kyle is the HR Analyst at Software Advice and the Editor at TalentCulture. By day, he blogs about HR trends, technology, and best practices. By night, he’s the Relations Chair for Austin-based independent theater company, Paper Chairs.

Every day, my inbox and Twitter stream are flooded with articles and blog updates, etc. I’m a blogger, and I need to keep in touch with the goings-on in my industry. On occasion, an article catches my eye. One such piece – published by Fistful of Talent – posed a very large question: “Is Tim Sackett the Most Powerful Man in HR?” The answer (a firm “Yes.”) was news to me. And for all the entertainment value this tongue-in-cheek article offered, I was left with another, more pressing question: Who is this guy?

Last week, I scheduled a Q&A with Sackett with the intention of answering this question and more. I can offer one certainty: Sackett is an HR veteran with enough personality for two men. When I asked him how he got into HR, Sackett said that, like a lot of college kids, “You just fall into something. You either like it and do well, or you don’t and you start looking for something else.” He studied elementary education in his undergrad, but he’s not teaching eight-year-olds how to recruit passive candidates.

His mother – the CEO at HRU Technical services – offered him a sourcing position as a research assistant fresh out of college. He then launched into a 10-year career in corporate HR before returning to take the reins at HRU. Now the Executive VP, Sackett seems to have found his place in the HR world and, thankfully, was willing to share his lessons learned.

Q: How can rank-and-file HR pros bring their HR department up to speed with limited resources?

Sackett: If you have limited resources, the only thing that is going to help you become more efficient is technology. The only way you are going to do more with less is to utilize the technology that you have available to you, and to educate yourself.

Everyone should be using Google Reader. There are organizations out there that drive a community of HR professionals that share resources and information, and all you have to do is subscribe to them to get their updates in your inbox. I also use Twitter, and at any minute I could go out there and say, “I’m looking for a total comp statement to use.” I have roughly 3,500 Twitter followers, and within five minutes I will have five people send me a link or an email of a total comp statement that they put together.

At that point, I’m not just one single HR professional in northern Wisconsin working on my own. I have all these people who are saying, “Let’s use this community to really go out and drive better HR in our organizations individually.” But you’ve go to plug in first.

Q: Beyond your phone, email, and the interwebs, what’s one piece of technology every HR professional should have?

Sackett: There’s some basic automation in HR that you need to be effective. For me, an applicant tracking system is invaluable. You have to find a way not only to process incoming talent, but also to go back and find that talent that has found you already. When I first started at HRU as a research assistant, I worked with file cabinets full of resumes. A recruiter would say, “I need a Process Engineer.” That’s file 63, and the file would literally be five inches thick of resumes. You would start calling and looking at notes people wrote on them six months ago. Really from that experience, I can tell you that an applicant tracking system is worth its weight in gold. You’re always going to get your return on investment from that standpoint.

Q: Ongoing training and learning is a popular strategy for retention. But which is more effective: talent learning programs or the actual opportunity for growth?

Sackett: Without a question, it’s the opportunity for growth. Companies will spend billions of dollars on talent development programs this year. The main reason they do that is either to try and placate employees they don’t have growth opportunities for, or to keep someone in place until he or she is ready to grow.

For the most part, if you can keep people satisfied and let them know there’s a growth plan for them, they’ll stay around. But that’s where a lot of companies fail in their development. They say, “We need you to get better at this.” But why do I need to get better at that? Where’s it going to lead me? They’ll say, “If you want to be promoted, you have to have better soft skills,” but what’s that promotion and when is it going to happen?

It’s tough. There’s a very small part of our population that can take a look at a talent development program and feel like, “This is the right thing for me now.” Our tendency is to say, “Let me go do it right now.” It’s hard to find those individuals that will say, “You’re right, Tim. I need to do this for three more years.”

When I was 28 years old, I thought I could run the company. But I couldn’t. I know that now, but you couldn’t tell me any different back then. Back then, I thought, “I know everything there is to know about recruiting. I could run this company. Do you have any idea who I am? I’m the forerunner for ‘The Most Powerful Man in HR.’”

To read the this Q&A in full, check it out on Kyle’s blog: blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/who-is-tim-sackett-a-qa-with-the-most-powerful-man-in-hr-090811/