Aaron R. | Leland

Aaron Rodriguez

5.0

(17)

Studied at Duke's Fuqua School of Business

Hiring Manager at RVO Health

Successful clients at

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About Aaron

I feel extremely lucky everyday for the way that my life turned out. I'm married to an amazing woman that I met on my first day of work after school, my daughter was born a few weeks ago and is happy and healthy, we bought a beautiful home in North Carolina that we're excited to move to, and I make more money than I ever dreamed of. I never thought in a million years that my life would turn out this way. I never had any help. As a kid, I started working when I was 12 and worked multiple jobs throughout high school just to afford going to the movies or buying dinner after practice. The concept of positioning myself for college applications was foreign to me and, perhaps more importantly, also foreign to my parents and even my guidance counselors. Shooting for the stars is not what people did where I grew up. I figured it out; I went 7/7 in my undergraduate applications to all top 25 schools, receiving full scholarships to four of them. In college, I built an entire tutoring and writing coaching business - working 20-30 hours per week helping my fellow students survive. I had internships after sophomore and junior years, traveled to Europe on my own dime three times, and was accepted into my three top choices for graduate school. In my masters, again I was lost. But I graduated with good grades, joined an amazing company in a field that I'm still in eight years later - just making 4x as much money. I never had that support. I had emotional support and a warm, loving family - but guidance was always something I sought after. In 2023, I realized that I was in the unique position of being able to give back and started coaching. In the last two years, I've had over 60 clients across MBA applications, job searching, analytics coaching, and general career guidance - all through a horrible, mixed up economy that is forcing people to give up on their dreams. My goal is to help people achieve their goals: go to the schools they want, end up in careers they love, and making the money to enable a fulfilling, joyous life.

Why do I coach?

I've always loved teaching - I tutored four different classes in high school, TA'd and tutored all throughout college and graduate school. Honestly, I take more joy from helping others achieve their goals and watching their successes than me doing it myself. I'm in the world of People Analytics, which studies employees at work. Definitionally, if you are in that field, you care about people and their wellbeing. But for two years in my career, I was essentially tasked with leading layoffs at one of my former employers. It drained the life out of me, so much so that after doing if for the fourth time, I put myself on the cut list. Four days after my last day, I booked myself a trip to India for two weeks because I needed to reset. My best friend and I went into a remote village in the Himalayas and stayed up all night talking about our hopes and our dreams. As much as I love my career, and I really do love it, what I yearned for was the ability to see my impact on individuals, rather than the collective. I missed the feeling of seeing my clients getting good grades on their essays or tests - the way their eyes would light up and their confidence would grow. I wanted that feeling again, so I started coaching in what I know best: how to make people think you are competent and valuable. Through the nature of my job, I've done significant research into two questions: 1) what makes people think their direct reports are good and 2) what makes people hire people. Perceptions of performance are distinctly different from objective performance criteria. I used that knowledge, plus my own success in my academic and professional career, to start on this journey. My clients are happy. My job search clients median time to an offer is under 60 days and their average increase in salary is $27,192. My graduate school application clients, while much fewer in quantity, are similarly successful: my first client got into Harvard Business School and Booth School of Business. I love helping people. It's never been about the money, I make more than enough in my day job. It's about helping people achieve things they didn't think were possible.

Work Experience

Director - People Analytics, Compensation and HRIS

RVO Health

February 2025 - Present

Hiring Manager

Director of Total Rewards and HR Technology

Capitol Bridge LLC

July 2024 - February 2025

Hiring Manager

Total Rewards Strategies and Benchmarking

Co Founder

DataSkillUp LLC

January 2024 - Present

Founder, Coach

ARHR Consulting LLC

February 2023 - Present

End-to-end job search coaching, including Resume and LinkedIn review, behavioral and technical interview coaching, and compensation negotiation. Clients, on average, received offers within 8.5 weeks and had an average increase in salary of $35,400.