Talent Trailblazers: Our Team, Your Recruiter
Meet Our Team
Welcome to "Talent Trailblazers: Our Team, Your Recruiter," an engaging series designed to provide you with an inside look into the world of recruitment, spotlighting the skilled individuals of White Ash Group. Our team, comprised of seasoned professionals with an unwavering passion for connecting talent with opportunity, invites you on a journey through the intricate landscape of cannabis industry careers. Get ready to meet the faces behind the scenes, uncovering their expertise, quirks, and the unique blend of skills they bring to the table. From sourcing top-tier candidates to forging lasting partnerships, our recruiters are dedicated to ensuring your success in the burgeoning cannabis sector.
Join us as we introduce our talented team of personable, knowledgeable and passionate recruitment staff, ready to guide you towards your next fulfilling role in cannabis.
Introducing
Tynan Phelan
National Director, US Operations
Q: Tell us more about yourself. What is your role within the White Ash Group team?
I juggle my time between business development and account/relationship management (primarily in US Markets) and candidate sourcing, though I like the think of myself as a candidate-first guy. It’s cliché, but I genuinely enjoy talking to people, finding out what is important to them, and getting them into new roles that can hopefully change their life. I always tell my candidates, if this job doesn’t excite you, whether that be financially or due to the scope of the job or the hiring company’s vision, then either I haven’t done my job, or the role is not for you. Hiring and getting hired is a tough, tense and stressful process. Ultimately, it’s my job to ensure candidates and clients have an amazing, or at least, less stressful, experience.
Q: What do you enjoy most about working in the cannabis space?
The fact that I’m even working in cannabis is the craziest thing to me. I’m old enough that I’ve gone from smoking joints and dodging police to living through the “legalize it” movement in Canada to now the current recreationally legal landscape. Cannabis was a huge part of my experience growing up during my formative years, and it’s an absolute dream to be so fully immersed in it. It’s been a roller coaster for sure, but dealing with passionate and brilliant people all day more than makes up for any headaches.
Q: Can you share a bit about your professional background and experience?
For the majority of my professional life, I was a stonemason. I graduated from Algonquin College’s Heritage Stonemasonry program and worked primarily on large-scale heritage restoration projects (Museum of Nature and the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa for instance). From there I started my own business and worked for a couple of years on smaller-scale residential projects before a series of back injuries forced me to consider a new career path. Graydon, who is a long-time friend and the Co-Founder of White Ash Group, proposed to me to come on board the fledgling company (and fledgling industry) and I dove in head first. The rest is history! I feel blessed to have had two separate careers now that I was, and am, genuinely passionate about.
Q: What did you want to grow up to be when you were a kid?
I always wanted to be a fireman, I even went as far as screening for the pre-service firefighter course, but I am pretty severely colorblind and couldn’t pass the basic color vision test, so it was not meant to be.
Q: What upcoming projects or goals are you most excited about?
In broad strokes, I am super excited about our company’s growth over the last few years. We have consistently produced amazing work, weathered a lot of storms and outlasted a lot of competition and we are starting to see the fruits of our labour now. More specifically, the dominoes falling in the US, as far as state-by-state legalization or decriminalization, is incredibly exciting to be a part of, particularly in the NE (NY/NJ/MA, etc.) There is an incredible opportunity for these markets to learn from the mistakes made elsewhere and truly create a successful ecosystem for growers, processors, retailers and service providers.
Q: What challenges have you faced in your role, and how have you overcome them?
Personally, launching a new career was the biggest challenge for me. To go from a job in the trades to a job talking to c-suite executives at multi-million or even billion-dollar companies was a trip. Learning how to deal with dozens of diverse people daily, replying to emails correctly, following up, communicating effectively on the phone or video calls, etc. etc. It was all new to me and took a while to get fully comfortable with. On a day-to-day basis, the challenges are never-ending in a job where you are constantly negotiating, pushing and pulling and relying on your performance to put food on your table. People are people and people can be tough to deal with, but the challenge is what makes the job great.
Q: What advice would you give to someone just starting in your field?
Give yourself time to be successful, the biggest mistake you can make is giving up right before you’re about to figure it out. Most importantly, slumps don’t last, but neither do hot streaks, so don’t ever get too high or too low and work as hard as you can to control any mitigating factors. Study what you were doing when you were hot, if you stay consistent with your effort, the slumps will be less frequent and won’t last as long.
Q: Tell us something we don’t know.
Something interesting about me that many people don’t know is that I collect vintage cameras and enjoy taking pictures with them. I have over 200 vintage cameras ranging from the late 1800s to the 1970s. I also develop my own film which is a fun and creative process for me!
