Episode 3 - Maisha Cannon

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Hire Her Podcast by Talent Collective, presenting conversations with inspiring women in talent. And get ready ladies, because this is the last time you're going to hear a man's voice on this show.

[00:00:12] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hire Her, where we come together with inspiring women in talent to hear their stories. We welcome you today and we have a very, very special guest. Her name is Maisha Cannon.

[00:00:30] And Maisha has been a true partner to ours over the last year, has done some really great speaking engagements for Talent Collective.

[00:00:40] And we just so appreciate all of her contributions and all the value that she's brought to the table and to Talent Collective.

[00:00:48] So I welcome Maisha. She is founder and chief learner of the Collab Lab.

[00:00:55] So Maisha, welcome. Please take a minute and introduce yourself. We'd love to hear a little bit about your background and what you're doing nowadays.

[00:01:05] Yes. Thank you, ladies. So excited to be here with you on this fantastic podcast.

[00:01:10] So I am Maisha, as Krista mentioned. My name means life in Swahili.

[00:01:15] And I like to say I've been recruiting since the 1900s.

[00:01:19] Nineteen ninety four BG. That's before Google, if you can remember such a time.

[00:01:25] So have evolved from the days of faxed resumes and paper cuts from opening physical envelopes with resumes in them to the days of one click apply and AI.

[00:01:35] So it's been a really great journey to wear multiple hats from recruiting coordinator to full cycle recruiter and eventually sourcing manager.

[00:01:44] And so I recently pivoted from leading sourcing teams into training recruiting and sourcing teams.

[00:01:50] So that's how the Collab Lab was born in late 2022.

[00:01:54] And it's really been great because I've been able to connect with one of my first loves, which was teaching.

[00:01:59] So now merging the TA world with the teaching world.

[00:02:03] So that's what I've been up to lately.

[00:02:06] Love it. And we've been able to experience a little bit of it through our community.

[00:02:10] You've done some workshops and sessions, even some mixers with us that were super fun.

[00:02:15] Can you expand a little bit on the offerings of your company and maybe the future of the business?

[00:02:22] Because I'm sure there's other people that can benefit.

[00:02:24] Yes. Thanks so much for that question, Natalie.

[00:02:26] And I've been thinking a lot about the future of the Collab Lab.

[00:02:29] So in our current iteration, it's really all about training, recruiting teams at the intersection of technology and TA.

[00:02:38] Right. So it's those soft skills that you don't get that you kind of learn on the job as a recruiter.

[00:02:43] I remember my first days as a recruiter at E! Entertainment back in the day.

[00:02:48] I was given a broom size, a broom closet sized office.

[00:02:53] Right. A stack of resumes about a foot high on the desk, a computer and a phone until start interviewing.

[00:03:00] Right. So no job descriptions, no relationships with hiring managers just kind of thrown into it.

[00:03:05] And I found that over the years, that's how most of us are trained.

[00:03:08] So the Collab Lab is really here to be a much more intentional way of not only training new recruiters, but retraining some of our industry vets.

[00:03:17] Right. Who have been doing it a long way, but really never had a playbook for best practices.

[00:03:21] So that's really what I'm focused on in this current state is the live facilitated virtual learning.

[00:03:27] But I hope to eventually build the Collab Lab out to eventually being something more scalable with a product, maybe a tech product, in addition to the live learning.

[00:03:37] So still in the lab on that one with my assistant GP Tisha.

[00:03:41] So I'll get back to you on that.

[00:03:44] No pun intended.

[00:03:46] Oh, that's so great.

[00:03:47] The glory days of recruiting.

[00:03:50] We've been reflecting on that a lot.

[00:03:51] The days of paper before we all went digital, right?

[00:03:57] Amazing.

[00:03:58] Well, thank you for that.

[00:03:59] Thanks for sharing more about your offering.

[00:04:03] And like Natalie said, we've had the blessing of being able to experience some of that.

[00:04:08] So thank you.

[00:04:09] Thank you so much.

[00:04:10] And talk to us a little bit about, you know, in your recruiting career and your L&D career, who or what is one person or thing that has really helped elevate you?

[00:04:22] You know, maybe it's a really specific person.

[00:04:25] Could be a woman or a man that has empowered you.

[00:04:28] Or there might be some like tools and resources, something like that, that has really helped elevate you in your career.

[00:04:35] That's a great question.

[00:04:36] I think one of my earliest inspirations that has stuck with me even to this day as I kind of continue to re-evolve or rediscover myself as a TA professional is a woman named Jalisa Hazard.

[00:04:51] And she was the director of the internship program that I started in high school that first exposed me to the world of human resources.

[00:04:58] And back then it wasn't even TA.

[00:04:59] We were called personnel back then, right?

[00:05:03] But it was her guidance as the director of that program that gave teenagers from the inner city of South Central Los Angeles, where I was from, an opportunity to get bussed across town to the entertainment industry in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica and work in entertainment corporate positions.

[00:05:19] So I was able to work in HR, you know, that first summer as a floater, as an 11th grade student and was exposed to so much that, you know, I didn't know was possible.

[00:05:29] My mom and grandmother and people before me had never worked in corporate spaces.

[00:05:33] So I think that opportunity through Jalisa's organization just really planted a seed for a possibility that I've always gone back to over the years when I kind of, you know, as we all do, hit a brick wall or get burnt out or try to reinvent ourselves.

[00:05:48] So, yeah, thanks to Jalisa for all that she poured into me in those early days.

[00:05:54] We always, you know, are curious about anyone that you find empowering in the industry.

[00:06:01] But I want to flip this one, actually, because you are in a teaching capacity these days.

[00:06:08] Like, do you have any success story of somebody that's gone through your training or that you had managed in the past that you're like, you know what, I actually saw a significant difference in this person from the time that I started with them to, you know, maybe when your relationship parted ways or whatnot.

[00:06:23] But some story of how you empowered some other woman in recruiting.

[00:06:27] Yeah, that's such a good question.

[00:06:31] You know, it's funny, the example that's coming to mind is of a male student that I had in one of my Maven courses last year.

[00:06:41] But he had a really great story.

[00:06:43] He was transitioning to medical recruiting and was having trouble with his response rates.

[00:06:50] So we took a course that I had a very small cohort on Maven, two women, two men, actually.

[00:06:56] And we were able to get his response rates during that cohort of two weeks up from, I guess it was maybe about 10 percent to like 40 or 50 percent.

[00:07:05] And he was so energized to know, like, wow, I can do this just from my messaging.

[00:07:09] So he continues to be a phenomenal sourcer and actually has now grown into a role as a he just took the test for the PHR, right?

[00:07:16] The, you know, the designation.

[00:07:18] Yes, I was really inspired, even though it wasn't a woman per se.

[00:07:22] But, you know, he was an impactful, you know, adult student for the Collab Lab in our early days for sure.

[00:07:29] So shout out to Daniel because he's phenomenal.

[00:07:32] You were the inspiring, empowering one.

[00:07:35] Yeah, we flipped the script on that one.

[00:07:36] Yeah.

[00:07:38] I love it.

[00:07:39] I love it.

[00:07:40] Well, that's awesome.

[00:07:41] I love hearing those stories.

[00:07:42] And, you know, I think we all have those memories from whether it's recruiting or, you know, your current offering the learning and development and training resources that you have that really are just special and stand out to you.

[00:07:57] So thanks for sharing that one.

[00:07:59] And last but not least, we have a question that's going to go a little deeper here.

[00:08:04] Sure.

[00:08:05] So we're all human and, you know, we all have personal lives and professional lives.

[00:08:11] And I think it's really special when we're able to learn a bit more about each other from the challenges that we've had in our lives.

[00:08:20] I think it can really make us feel more connected when people are vulnerable and share different challenges and maybe how you overcame it.

[00:08:29] So can you tell us a little bit about, you know, maybe a serious challenge that you had to overcome in either your career or your personal life?

[00:08:36] And then what did you learn from that experience?

[00:08:41] Wow.

[00:08:41] Thanks for this question.

[00:08:42] I haven't thought about this one in a while.

[00:08:45] And I'm sure my learnings have changed.

[00:08:47] But what's most pivotal in my memory is the Great Recession of 2009 after having grown my recruiting and sourcing career, as I mentioned, from a high schooler, right?

[00:08:57] By 2009, I had been in recruiting at least a decade and thought I was on an upward trajectory.

[00:09:04] But in came the Great Recession.

[00:09:06] And so I was laid off in 2009 and not only lost the two jobs that I had because I was working two jobs remotely during those days.

[00:09:15] And that's funny.

[00:09:16] That was ahead of the time before pandemic.

[00:09:18] You sure were.

[00:09:20] Like a part time when, you know, sourcing for like a boutique and in the full time role.

[00:09:24] But lost those jobs and lost my home.

[00:09:28] Right.

[00:09:28] So foreclosed on my home, like many people in Southern California and Riverside County had to do at that time.

[00:09:35] And so that was a really tough period, feeling like everything I had worked for from a high schooler, you know, being ambitious to then had kind of been stunted.

[00:09:44] So I actually I couldn't find work in the U.S.

[00:09:47] And so I dropped everything.

[00:09:49] I actually moved to South Korea to teach English for a year and a half.

[00:09:53] And I certainly thought my career was over.

[00:09:56] Like I thought everything in recruiting was done.

[00:09:58] I was trying to figure out, like, what do I do when I go back?

[00:10:01] But as life would have it.

[00:10:03] Right.

[00:10:04] It's never as bad as you think.

[00:10:06] And when I came back, I actually kind of started this new era of my career where I was working for my bucket list companies.

[00:10:12] I got hired at Google as a source.

[00:10:14] I ended up working for LinkedIn, which is one of my dream companies.

[00:10:17] And so it's always amazing to me how like life after that, like very low moment of being unemployed, having to walk away from a career and even really getting reestablished.

[00:10:30] How I thought there was no future, but how the future was brighter on the other side.

[00:10:35] And those experiences led to me speaking at SourceCon and all those experiences led to me even being here.

[00:10:41] Right. And being active in the community and doing what I can to share what I've learned.

[00:10:46] So, yeah, really interesting series of events.

[00:10:50] And I think what I learned is that, you know, failure is never final.

[00:10:56] Right. You can always take a break, you know, recharge, reset, seek advice from those in your circle and then pick it up and continue on.

[00:11:07] Right. Even with a little bit of strength. Right.

[00:11:09] The job search can be so strenuous. Right.

[00:11:13] But that experience of being a recruiter, you know, now on the other side of the interview desk.

[00:11:19] Right. It really, I think, sharpened some empathy in me for job seekers that I tapped into a lot more on the other side of that experience.

[00:11:25] So, yeah, good. I can talk about it now without crying.

[00:11:29] But there was a period. Right. You catch me in the 2011 era where it was just too fresh to even talk about.

[00:11:36] Yeah. But, yeah, that that was a really hard time to lose everything and then have to rebuild.

[00:11:41] But yeah.

[00:11:41] Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for sharing.

[00:11:45] Of course. Of course.

[00:11:46] Amazing. Vulnerable story.

[00:11:48] I'm sure someone out there is going through something similar right now.

[00:11:51] Well, Myesha, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure to spend with you.

[00:11:57] How can people find you, of course, on LinkedIn?

[00:12:00] But I'm sure many people are going to want to know about your courses.

[00:12:04] We'll link it in the show notes.

[00:12:07] But where can they best find you, connect with you?

[00:12:10] Yeah, that would be so great.

[00:12:11] Of course, you can connect on LinkedIn and it's Myesha Cannon.

[00:12:15] Or you can go to Try Collab Lab.

[00:12:17] If you want to try one of our sessions, you're welcome.

[00:12:19] We have an upcoming session in September.

[00:12:22] So I would love to see any of the Talent Collective friends in that one.

[00:12:27] And then, of course, you can reach out to me directly on, I think, actually, I think those two are the best.

[00:12:34] I realized that I just killed one of my social networks the other day.

[00:12:38] Yeah.

[00:12:39] So I'm only on LinkedIn and the website professionally.

[00:12:43] Yes.

[00:12:43] And we have an IG, too.

[00:12:44] So I'll drop that in the show notes so you'll have it.

[00:12:46] Okay. Sounds good.

[00:12:47] Well, thank you so much for being here.

[00:12:50] Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to our latest episode of Hire Her.

[00:12:55] And stay tuned for our next guest.

[00:12:58] We'll see you next week.