Even though John Bernatovicz graduated from college in 1996, being a Golden Flash continues to drive him in his professional life. 

In 2018, Bernatovicz stood in front of an audience of over 100 business-concentrated students and faculty at the university. The pressure of an engaging presentation was before him, but as the presenter, it sparked a new idea for him in the form of a book: “HR Like a Boss.” 

Pressure was nothing new to Bernatovicz. During high school, he played golf and flourished in it, and he was seen by the recruitment offers from multiple schools. 

Ultimately, he ended up picking Kent State after going on a recruitment trip with his father to campus, he said. 

Bernatovicz said, “After spending the day [at Kent State], I said, ‘I’m absolutely going to Kent.’”

During the recruitment process, he was able to meet the golf team, specifically the coaching staff at the time and grew an instant gratification toward the university, he said.  

“It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life,” Bernatovicz said.

Bernatovicz graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – the discipline of human resources that he wanted to explore further. 

Bernatovicz said his book’s main purpose is to change the way people look at the workplace through the power of human resources, since he worked in human resources for many years.

“The book’s tagline is your guide to amazingly awesome HR,” he said. “So I’ve been serving and supporting and working with HR professionals for my entire career, even when I graduated from college at Kent.” 

The experiences and intelligence he gained from his college courses and early professional career gave him confidence to pursue his book, Bernatovicz said. 

“So I’ve been around HR professionals my whole career and I’ve seen a wide array of delivery of HR from really fantastic to horribly bad,” he said.

Bernatovicz said his perspective of human resources and what he had seen in the workplace helped shape the content in his book.

“The book is really my perspective of how to effectively bring meaningful work to your employees so they can be engaged and enjoy what they do,” Bernatovicz said. 

He said the book recognizes the desired business results for a company to strive toward. 

“If you do those things really well, you can make a difference in the community, you can attack societal issues and be socially responsible,” Bernatovicz said. “So the book is really about empowering and serving the HR professional so they can then, as a result, deliver great HR to their employees and to their company.”

Those principles and the information his book has to offer sparked from the presentation he gave in 2018, he said.

 “… I had been working on a presentation called HR like a boss that I was actually supposed to do,” Bernatovicz said. “And I thought to myself, this would be the perfect forum for me to test out the content.”

Bernatovicz said an additional time that made him even more excited to publish his book was a conversation with a close friend.

“I was talking to a friend of mine who published a couple of other HR books through [Society for Human Resource Management],” Bernatovicz said. “My friend published his book through there and I reached out to him to get some advice about writing and how he published it.”

From that point, Bernatovicz’s friend set him up with a publisher to discuss further into the idea of a book. It was a surreal moment for him, he said. 

“So I was sitting there thinking to myself, I was just calling some guy to get some advice about how to write a book and the next thing I know I have the largest HR Association interested in partnering and being the publisher,” Bernatovicz said.

Bernatovicz, who had experience in sales, noted how much this opportunity meant to him.

“I’ll never forget that moment,” he said. “A big smile on my face because I’ve been in sales my whole life, and I’ve been trying to sell people on services. 

Bernatovicz will be at the university’s bookstore on Oct. 24 from noon to 2 p.m. to talk more about his book and meet readers.

Lex Ogilvie is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].