About Erica Rivera

The Career Positioning
Strategist.

I have been on the other side of every hiring decision. Now I build career infrastructure for the professionals those decisions are about.

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23+

Years in Workforce

1,000+

Professionals Coached

30+

Countries Served

SSIP™

Framework Creator

$Erica Rivera \u2014 Career Strategist$

My Story

From Recruiting Insider to
Career Strategist

I spent years on the other side of the hiring table. Reviewing resumes. Screening candidates. Sitting in the rooms where companies decided who got the job, who got promoted, and who got passed over.

I saw the same patterns over and over. Brilliant, experienced professionals losing out — not because they lacked talent, but because their career infrastructure was not built. Their resume did not tell the right story. Their LinkedIn was a ghost town. Their positioning was invisible.

As an ex-Google recruiter, I crossed over. I took everything I knew about how companies evaluate talent and started building the systems that make professionals undeniable. That is where HatStack and the SSIP™ framework were born.

The Insider Edge

What My Recruiting Background Gives You

🔍

I Know How Systems Filter You Out

I understand how ATS systems work and what they look for. I know how to position your experience to pass through before a human ever sees your resume.

📋

I Know What Recruiters Actually Read

I know what a recruiter reads in the 6 seconds they spend on your profile. Which details catch attention and which ones get skipped. I built my career finding that signal.

📩

I Know Why Applications Go Nowhere

80 percent of applications never get a response. It is rarely about qualifications. It is about clarity, positioning, and speaking the language hiring managers are listening for.

💬

I Know the Language That Works

I know the language that makes a hiring manager stop scrolling and pick up the phone. I used to be the one listening for it. Now I teach others how to speak it.

Results

Track Record

1,000+

Professionals Helped

30+

Countries Served

23+

Years in the Workforce

Years Inside Recruiting

As Seen In

The Real Story

Nothing I Teach Is Theoretical

My career path was not linear. I started in the hospitality industry, learned the hard way how things work, and eventually reverse-engineered my way into recruiting — landing at Indeed and then Google. I did not know what my thing was for a long time. I just kept figuring it out.

Then I got laid off at Google. And I was hit with the question every high-performer dreads: what is next? My entire identity had been tied to the achievement of reaching Google. Without it, I had to rebuild. Not just my career. My sense of who I was and what I was actually building toward.

That pivot led me to coaching, to building HatStack, and to finally doing the thing I had dreamed about for 30+ years but never believed was possible: moving abroad. I relocated myself, my husband, my kids, my father-in-law, and our 4 dogs from Chicago to Spain. A dream that felt impossible became real in 14 months.

That is why I do this work. Not because I read about career transitions in a book. Because I have lived every version of it. The pivots. The layoffs. The promotions that never came. The reinvention. The relocation. I help people see what is possible and make their own career move a reality.

Book a Strategy Call →

Ready to Build Your Career Infrastructure?

The first step is understanding where you are and what your real market value looks like. I can help with that.