In this edition of Bright Lights, we introduce another key PeopleFluent team member: Solutions Consultant Mark Rini. When he’s not at work, Mark keeps himself busy enjoying the outdoors and training for half marathons. Let’s get to know him better!

Hi Mark! Tell us about your role at PeopleFluent.

I’ve worn a lot of different hats at PeopleFluent. I’m a solutions consultant, so I work with prospective and current customers to capture their requirements. By that I mean I work with the clients to really understand their concerns and then come up with potential solutions for them.

PeopleFluent Recruitment and PeopleFluent Talent Mobility are my focus areas for clients, but I do work with all the different products we offer. We’re building our product integration strategy and how the software all works together, so I’ve worked with clients on all of the products in some capacity.

I communicate our clients’ wants and needs to the sales team, and we work together to ensure that we’re offering solutions to our clients that will be a really good fit for them. Sometimes that involves customizing software and presenting it to the clients. There’s a lot of back and forth that goes on to develop a deep understanding of—and relationship with—our clients to give them the best possible experience.

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Before PeopleFluent, what were you doing?

In my early career out of college, I tried a lot of different things. I was an insurance adjuster for a while—I hated that! I did some freelance web design work and was in IT consulting for a while. Then I went through a few different software sales jobs, and that’s what initially led me to PeopleFluent.

What skills are needed to be a successful solutions consultant?

Definitely being a good listener! It’s something to continually work on in order to be able to ask your clients the right questions and really be able to understand their business requirements.

The other side of that is knowing when to offer clients advice and recommendations. I think of it as a translation dynamic because I need to know when to listen, when to speak up, and how to relay what the client says back to the sales team.

The goal is always to get the desired outcome for our clients, so I’d say communication skills are crucial.

How would you describe your team dynamic?

We’re a tiny team, and we have to really be on the ball and in constant communication with each other. Everyone is always very available, though. That's good because we have some products that are really complex.

We're in these specialized roles where sometimes only one or two people have an answer, so having a good working relationship with everyone on the team is really important. I think that’s something we do pretty well.

There’s a lot of open and honest communication among us. We’re able to come to our leadership with different ideas, and it leads to awesome new things, like "The People Show."

WATCH THE WEBINAR | See the Latest Episode of "The People Show"​

Tell us a little bit more about that.

Sure! So "The People Show" is our new webinar series. It came from this idea of getting more passionate about our products. We want to show a more personal side of the software and why we believe it can make things better for people.

The idea is we're going to have different subject matter experts come on and discuss different topics each month. Our pilot episode was about mitigating recruiting challenges.

That’s really interesting! So what’s your favorite aspect of your role?

Definitely helping solve customer problems. I take a client concern that doesn't even sound necessarily like a software problem. This could be something like “Our people don't feel recognized,” or “We're not getting quality candidates for this type of role,” and I get to really dig into the weeds with them to find a solution. I like trying to find that highest level pain point or problem and then just show them the simplest solution possible.

Are there any skills you want to develop in the future?

I've been trying to understand more about APIs and databases, just trying to “level up” a bit. The goal is to be able to build new ideas myself and take them to the product team and actually show them some concepts. Right now, I’m just bringing them ideas, and they take the lead. I want to be able to do that, too.

What are you doing when you’re not at your desk?

At the moment, a lot of wedding planning! I’m getting married this November, so that takes up a fair amount of time. My fiancee and I like to be outdoors a lot, too. We hike, run, bike—we’re very active. We’ve done half marathons together. When we’re not doing something like that, we like to tour breweries and find new places to grab some pizza.

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