The Power of Communication: Enhancing the Hiring Process at Ford Motor Company

[00:00:10] Hey, this is William Tinkup and Ryan Leary. You are listening and watching the Practitioner Podcast.

[00:00:17] We have Melissa Thompson on today. Ryan, how are you doing? I'm doing fantastic. Good. Other than

[00:00:25] the fact that we have two Dallas fans on this call. You need more Cowboy fans in your life.

[00:00:32] That's what you need. That's all right. Yeah, not sure that's the case. Not sure that's the

[00:00:37] case. Our coach doesn't have a contract, our quarterback doesn't have a contract. What could

[00:00:42] possibly go wrong this season? This season? I think they're my, I'm gonna lay the odds right now.

[00:00:49] I think we're they're both going to have career seasons. I think Dak is going to have a crazy

[00:00:54] season and I think Mike McCartney is going to have a crazy season as well

[00:01:00] because that's what happens in a contract year. This just shows that you're a long-time Cowboys

[00:01:05] fan because this is what Cowboys fans always think. It's gonna be great. This year, this year.

[00:01:11] Isn't it like your 30th year without playoffs or something? Oh 100%. No we make it to the

[00:01:16] playoffs. We make it to the playoffs. I was talking by September 7th. You guys will be irrelevant.

[00:01:22] No that's not how that works. We actually make it to January most years. It's in January

[00:01:28] that the cheers start rolling down the right side of the eye. We'll say out of the two times

[00:01:34] we play you guys this year, I'm not feeling super confident. Something about this year,

[00:01:39] I'm not feeling confident although everybody in Philadelphia thinks we've already won the

[00:01:45] Super Bowl. So we'll just go with that. We'll check back in with you. Well the problem is

[00:01:50] we thought that too. It just hasn't materialized for 30 years. So Melissa would you do us a favor

[00:01:57] and the audience a favor and introduce yourself. Absolutely. Melissa Thompson. I

[00:02:05] grew up and still live in Dallas although I've lived all over the U.S. but I'm back and

[00:02:11] badder than ever. I am currently the head of global TA at Ford Motor Company. So I do

[00:02:19] regular laps to Detroit. I've been at Ford for about three years and I've been in talent

[00:02:25] acquisition for more than 20 years. It's really it's my happy place. I love what I do.

[00:02:32] I love this and we're gonna get into your story. So the what did you do before Ford?

[00:02:39] Right before Ford, I was at Nielsen. I was at Nielsen for about two years.

[00:02:44] It was my pandemic job. Yeah. Yeah. Prior to Nielsen, I was at McGraw Hill

[00:02:51] and prior to McGraw Hill, I was at Citrix for about seven years. So if you look at

[00:02:56] my mid career. You moved industries. Yeah. All big companies. I was much more into the technical

[00:03:05] digital recruiting and just wandered away after my time at Citrix. So well that's fascinating.

[00:03:12] We're gonna dig into that. Go ahead Ryan. How did you go from technical to automotive?

[00:03:18] Yeah. Which is quite technical today. I mean, let's be honest.

[00:03:22] It is. Are you a lot of engineers? Yeah. Yeah. So when I left Citrix, I actually took six months

[00:03:28] off and visited many beaches around the world and really had a reset. I ran my own consulting

[00:03:36] company for about six months and got an offer from my first client which was the CHRO at

[00:03:44] McGraw Hill to help them design their talent acquisition organization. And about a year in,

[00:03:51] I went into the CHRO's office and I said, you're using a really big hammer for a really small

[00:03:56] nail because we had shrunk the size of the TA team. It was less than 20 people globally.

[00:04:02] And I was like, you don't need me, but I will give you a plan for how to go forward.

[00:04:07] And so at that point, I jumped out and went to Nielsen, which is very, very technical, right?

[00:04:15] It's very data science oriented. It's very how do you manage metrics and numbers? And they

[00:04:23] really understood recruiting but not how they could more speedily find the talent they needed.

[00:04:30] And they needed both this technical talent and this massive customer service talent. So how do you

[00:04:37] do the niche recruiting and the high volume recruiting at the same time? I was like, well,

[00:04:41] first of all, you don't have the same person doing both of those things. That's correct.

[00:04:45] Yes. So I did that for just about two years, as I said, and a recruiter called me and said,

[00:04:51] hey, Ford is trying to figure out how they shift their mindset to get technical talent,

[00:05:00] understand that the cars of the future are actually just computers on wheels.

[00:05:05] And so they need to attract more technical talent. And so they really want a TA leader

[00:05:10] that understands that it's not so important that you understand the automotive space, but how we

[00:05:18] reposition Ford for tech talent is what we need to do right now. And that's how I ended up where

[00:05:22] I am today. That is a fantastic way for the recruiter to present that to you,

[00:05:29] knowing your background, not just saying, hey, we need a new head of talent. It was

[00:05:33] we need to transform and understand how to bring in more technical talent.

[00:05:40] Kudos to them on that. Yeah. There's also another example of that outside of Ford. I

[00:05:47] think it was Whirlpool maybe a couple of years back. They started I could be I think it was Whirlpool.

[00:05:53] They started to run commercials around engineering in their dishwashers and things like that.

[00:05:59] And I never actually thought about that until the I think we're going to silver ball commercial.

[00:06:04] I was kind of like, the thing you're thinking about is when GE made that shift

[00:06:09] and they did the show with the guy who was trying to explain to his family and his friends.

[00:06:15] He does. Yeah, yes. I guess I knew it. But I never thought of it that way. Like every time

[00:06:25] I look at my dishwasher now, I'm like, oh, yeah, because there's a lot of tech in there.

[00:06:31] You get into a groove and you can think of Ford as an automotive company. And okay, yes,

[00:06:36] the outputs are automotive. Got it. But everything leading up to that is it's not blue collar.

[00:06:44] Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a whole lot of white collar jobs and a whole lot of technology.

[00:06:51] Yeah, I actually don't do the hourly recruiting. The hourly recruiting is done in the plant. And so

[00:06:57] through the recruiting process, I asked the question, am I going to need to go

[00:07:01] and recruit for hourly? They're like, No, no, you're fine. We salaried all that.

[00:07:06] I was on board for three weeks when a leader found me and said, I need your help.

[00:07:13] And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He said, hey, pre pandemic, we would just run an ad and

[00:07:21] we would get hundreds and hundreds of applicants. He said, now we barely get 10. He said, I need

[00:07:27] you to help me figure out how do I energize my applicant pool? I'm like that I can do.

[00:07:33] Let's get some billboards going. Yeah, let's put some things on gas station. Oh, yeah.

[00:07:39] Oh, yeah. We need more applicants. We can get more applicants. But if you don't have to do the

[00:07:46] interviews and all the other stuff, I'm game. Yeah. Yeah. Top of the funnel. I'm there for

[00:07:52] that. Oh, yeah. 100%. When you when you talk about it, when we talk about hourly and

[00:07:58] salary, let's just say, do you think those are two different tech stacks? Like is the technology

[00:08:04] that's so much different? I think they should be two different tech stacks because the way hourly

[00:08:12] come into the funnel is so different, right? They may not have an email address. They may

[00:08:19] not have something that can get to the QR code. So what is the lightweight way that the hourly

[00:08:27] comes into the ATS versus someone that's coming in through a through a LinkedIn or an indeed or

[00:08:33] right, you know, recruiter or sorcerer reached out. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I actually have had this

[00:08:39] interesting idea that we should do different ATS by region. Right. Interesting. Put Europe on

[00:08:48] their own ATS. Yep. Right. They feed into then you got all that crazy GDPR, yada, yada

[00:08:56] in its own and then you don't have to worry everyone else doesn't have to do the thing

[00:09:01] because we're all leaning towards Europe. Yeah. Well, what I like about soap boxes. No,

[00:09:07] no, no. What I like about that is because people would they would initially say, well,

[00:09:12] why do we need seven different ATS for these different regions? They're not going to talk

[00:09:16] to each other. Well, you don't need them to talk to each other until their employees.

[00:09:21] Exactly. And so once they're onboarded as an employee, then they're going to go into

[00:09:25] a centralized data, whatever, whatever you have is your HRS, payroll system, etc. So

[00:09:30] they can be, they can live in a different ATS. I love that actually get the best of breed in

[00:09:36] that region. I like that a lot. Brian, I could see you having trouble with that.

[00:09:43] A little, a little. I'm on both sides. I've never thought, I was never a huge proponent

[00:09:49] of let's have one overarching. Yes. Across the enterprise. That's just bad. But the

[00:09:55] argument is always going to be made. No, let's bring in one. So everything is in one,

[00:10:02] but maybe let's unpack that a little bit. How, so if, if, if you're looking at

[00:10:06] an ATS per region and maybe the fine region, we're talking like west coast, east coast, central,

[00:10:12] or are we talking about global? We're talking global. Okay.

[00:10:18] Europe and Middle East Africa is on one. With its China,

[00:10:23] Japan, we need special things. India, right to left. They're on the third one. Right? So you just,

[00:10:29] it's not, I don't need one for every single country, but if you do it sort of in those big

[00:10:35] region buckets. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. No, I like it a lot. Let me be clear. People can

[00:10:44] for sure argue that. Oh yeah. No, no. Well, because they, they want it to be,

[00:10:48] want it to be, if you're an Oracle shop, right. If you're a workday shop or if you're

[00:10:54] an SAP shop, they want it to all be in that one thing. Problem is, is whenever you,

[00:11:01] whenever like with Ryan said, whenever you get one system for a salary and hourly,

[00:11:07] someone's going to suffer. Yes. Either it's, it's hardwired for high volume. And so the

[00:11:13] hourly people are great. The recruiters that hiring managers over there. And it's not great

[00:11:17] for the salary people or data disconnects because what you're collecting in data up here

[00:11:23] is going to be different than what you're collecting over here or what you're collecting

[00:11:27] in this region is different than what you collect in this region. Like just think about

[00:11:31] zip codes. Yeah. And the zip codes in China and the zip codes in Australia are so different

[00:11:39] than the way we format our zip codes, right? In the Americans. Yeah. It's little things and

[00:11:45] things too. I've, I've, I don't know. I've struggled with this with, with people as well

[00:11:52] with just like having one ATS be that they want to make it the system of record. It's like

[00:11:58] payroll systems, the system of record. You don't need the ATS. You need the ATS to work

[00:12:03] well for hiring managers, for the candidates and for the recruiters. Maybe even the executives,

[00:12:08] if you want to do reporting, but other than that, it's got to work for those people

[00:12:12] period. Um, right. And I've talked a lot about response rates in the hourly market. Like

[00:12:18] you're in the seconds and minutes before you lose that moment of attention. They've already

[00:12:22] moved on to some of something else. Are you seeing if you're seeing that in hourly,

[00:12:27] are you seeing some of that bleed over into salary? You know, this is the first company

[00:12:32] that I've ever worked for where people so want to work for Ford that the volume of applicants

[00:12:39] is straight up crazy. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I mean, so I used to work with a company called Conexa

[00:12:49] therapy company and which was now, but for it was one of our larger clients.

[00:12:54] And so when she says like we're talking 50,000 on it, like just there. And it's like,

[00:13:01] what do you do with that? That's a whole different model. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So get

[00:13:06] top of the funnel, middle bottom. Like it's just your funnel. These are qualified people.

[00:13:11] I don't know. Okay. Okay. Okay. So you've got to, yeah. So you've got to do a bunch,

[00:13:21] a lot more of screening and assessments and other types of things just to get it down to

[00:13:27] a manageable number. Yeah. So Ryan, just because you brought up the history lesson,

[00:13:32] I will say they were still on brass ring when I got here three years ago.

[00:13:35] Oh, that's so bad.

[00:13:38] Just saying the transformation has been fun.

[00:13:42] Well, brass ring people. Oh yeah. But I hope you got rid of that.

[00:13:49] But their time. Yeah. Well, they were in the midst of an Oracle recruiting cloud

[00:13:53] implementation when I got here. So we have implemented gone live and just recently put

[00:13:58] eightfold on top of it to help manage that top of the funnel piece. Right?

[00:14:03] Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Well, so your team uses the Oracle recruiting product.

[00:14:11] We've podcasted with them. We've met the people, the product managers

[00:14:14] that run Oracle recruiting and they're fantastic. They're really, really nice

[00:14:19] people. They're trying to build more of an ecosystem around the recruiting product.

[00:14:24] So you can easily select assessments and background screening and all the stuff

[00:14:28] you need around that. It's never easy. They've been really good partners over the

[00:14:33] past two years in terms of helping us get to a place where we're stabilized

[00:14:40] and getting us to land so that we could bring in the eightfold on the front end

[00:14:45] and really have the two systems map up to each other and talk to each other. So yeah,

[00:14:50] that's been an interesting journey. All right. We got to go back.

[00:14:53] Brian, how far are we going back?

[00:14:57] Middle school?

[00:14:58] 7th grade?

[00:14:59] No.

[00:15:01] 7th grade.

[00:15:03] It was an awkward period. Let's just be honest.

[00:15:07] No.

[00:15:07] Okay. Let's say I don't do college. So you're in college, you're graduating,

[00:15:12] you're coming out of college. What was the aspirations? Where did you want to

[00:15:17] go? Where did you want to be? Assuming it wasn't a global head of talent.

[00:15:22] Ballet.

[00:15:23] I had no idea that such a thing existed. So first, I went to Austin College, which is in the

[00:15:29] booming city of Sherman, Texas. Small private college, 2,000 people when I was there. Really

[00:15:37] super fantastic experience.

[00:15:39] It's a very, very good school, Ryan. Ryan, you would like it because it's near Lake Texoma,

[00:15:44] which is one of the largest lakes in Texas.

[00:15:46] I like the word lake.

[00:15:47] And it's deep. It's like ocean deep. It's crazy because it's between Oklahoma and Texas.

[00:15:56] So it's on the Red River, and it is a really pretty lake. Anyhow, Sherman

[00:16:00] and Austin College, greatness.

[00:16:03] Yeah. I can literally recall the day of my graduation. I had a glass of wine in my hand

[00:16:09] and I was walking down the street where my parents live. And I was like, what am I going

[00:16:13] to do with myself? So the answer is I graduated from college without a plan.

[00:16:21] I went into retail. Initially, I was on the floor at Saks Fifth Avenue. And then I was

[00:16:30] the assistant manager for men's furnishings. I could pick out the matching tie and all the

[00:16:38] things. My parents were not feeling that.

[00:16:44] My dad was a doctor and my mom was a supervisor at Texas Employment Commission. So very educated,

[00:17:01] very smart, very driven. They were like, yeah, this retail thing isn't working for us.

[00:17:06] How about you go get an MBA? How about that? How about TikTok? So I went back and got,

[00:17:14] I only worked for about a year and a half. And I went back and got my MBA at UT in Austin.

[00:17:21] Super, super interesting experience. One of my first classes was organizational behavior.

[00:17:27] And it was like someone pulled a light bulb and I was like, this is the space I want to be in.

[00:17:33] I really quite enjoyed marketing. And my marketing teacher said to me,

[00:17:38] you've got to be in marketing. You just have the mindset for it. You would be so good at it.

[00:17:43] I was like, I kind of like this other thing over here. But think if you go fast forward

[00:17:48] and you look back, like, look how much marketing there is in talent acquisition today.

[00:17:53] No one knew that then when we were calling it personnel. Right? But back in the day. So I

[00:18:02] graduated from B school and I went back to Saks Fifth Avenue. I actually opened the Tyson's

[00:18:10] Corner Saks Fifth Avenue in Washington, D.C. as the personnel assistant. So like I see I

[00:18:17] connected those things back together. I was like, you see how this is working for me, mom and

[00:18:21] dad? Opening a store is hard because you've got to recruit everybody. That is not an easy

[00:18:31] job. I've had to open a bunch of stores and recruit for a bunch of stores. Yeah, not easy.

[00:18:37] It was fun for me because you might not have caught this about me yet, but I'm kind of a

[00:18:44] driver driver. And so opening the store, we've got this much time to get this many people.

[00:18:51] I'm like, we're renting it out here and we're going to do this and here's how we're going

[00:18:53] to do the interviews and here's how we're going to get the floaters pulled together.

[00:18:56] We opened the store on time with all the resources that we needed and I suddenly realized

[00:19:03] that maybe making eight dollars and fifty cents an hour wasn't going to work for me in the

[00:19:08] D.C. area. That maybe, oh yeah, possibly I needed to think about taking more advantage

[00:19:16] of this MBA education that I had. And so I was only there maybe not even eight months.

[00:19:23] And I went to work for a local company called Atlas Systems. Well, actually I went to work

[00:19:29] for West Group first. Really great experience. Those of us that look back on those times when

[00:19:37] affirmative action plans were literally done by hand. Oh yeah.

[00:19:43] That was an amazing experience. You really understand the guts of how this stuff worked.

[00:19:52] Pin to paper. The bottom dropped out of the real estate market. I went to work for this company

[00:20:00] Atlas Systems and really, really paid it. Were you still in D.C.? Or did you come back to?

[00:20:05] I was still in D.C. So in total I was in D.C. for about five years. Yeah.

[00:20:11] I was on the phone with my mom one day and I was super upset because I'd done a presentation

[00:20:16] and just gotten the snot beat out of me. And she said, she said, you don't have to stay there,

[00:20:23] you know? You can move home at any time. And I was like, I walked into my boss's office that

[00:20:28] afternoon and I was like, you know what? Peace out for me. He was like, no wait, what?

[00:20:36] Presentation wasn't that bad. Yeah. And as we talk about my career, this might be a theme.

[00:20:42] Like if you don't support me and I feel like I'm not being paid appropriately,

[00:20:47] deuces. That's the way it should be. So I was going to ask you about intent.

[00:20:54] Were you moving with intent from job to job? I feel like you were, but I also feel like you

[00:21:00] were kind of like, I'm done with you and I move on. At this stage, my only intent was run away.

[00:21:09] This is not the right job for you. You are not in your happy place.

[00:21:13] Especially if you weren't being supported. Like again, we've, we talk about this with other folks

[00:21:18] all the time. If you're not going to be supported, leave because it's not, they're

[00:21:22] already sending you the signal. They've sent you the signal in that presentation. They sent

[00:21:27] you the signal because they could have easily said, okay, hey, Melissa, some good stuff here.

[00:21:33] Okay. Some things that we need to work on next time. Like they could have coached you up

[00:21:36] and they could have spent a little bit of time doing that. They chose not to.

[00:21:40] Yeah. Quiet as it's kept, my boss actually had narcolepsy, like literally had narcolepsy. So the

[00:21:46] CEO is beating the shit out of me in this meeting and my boss is asleep.

[00:21:53] But anybody else, anybody else in the room could have said something.

[00:21:56] Yeah. And they didn't. Again, those are choices. Those are choices that people make.

[00:22:03] So did you get back to Dallas? What'd you do when you get back?

[00:22:06] Went to work for a company called Republic Money Orders.

[00:22:08] Okay. And at this point I was doing HR, general estate. I wasn't in just recruiting.

[00:22:15] And Republic Money Orders was owned by a company called Travelers Express.

[00:22:21] And the head of travelers and the CHRO from travelers came down and said,

[00:22:28] we are absorbing all of the Republic Money Orders offices into HQ. So you have a choice. You

[00:22:37] can move to Minneapolis, Minnesota, or you can take a package and go find a new job.

[00:22:43] And I was like, what is what is happening right now?

[00:22:47] I moved to Minneapolis. Whoa. Oh, man. Okay.

[00:22:51] Bless you. You go see Prince. Like that's the only thing in Minneapolis that's worth it.

[00:22:58] Well, Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam are also there. So. Oh, fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:23:06] It was a super interesting experience for me. I will tell you, because I had met the CEO in person,

[00:23:14] I actually had a really great relationship with him and he would do these all hands meetings.

[00:23:21] And there was an all hands meeting where he stopped and he said, does anyone have any

[00:23:26] questions? And there you could have heard a pin drop. Yeah. And he said, guys, this is

[00:23:33] important stuff. You need to understand how the business works. You need to understand

[00:23:36] how we're making money. You need to understand what challenges we're dealing with.

[00:23:40] And I raised my hand and I asked a question after the meeting. He was like,

[00:23:44] every time I want you to do that every time. What I learned was, look,

[00:23:51] you can choose to be the quiet person in the back of the room and not ask a question,

[00:23:56] or you can have the gumption to say, you know, this thing I was taking notes and this thing

[00:24:04] I have a question about. And he was just so happy that I had asked a question that I was like.

[00:24:09] And again, those are Melissa, those are choices that executives make. Like you look at the CEO

[00:24:14] previously where they took the opportunity to just tear you down when they could have easily

[00:24:19] taught you up. And here's a CEO that basically said, you know what? I need more of you.

[00:24:25] Any more of that. Again, that's what those are choices. Those are absolute choices that people

[00:24:32] make. Yeah. So I grew up in Dallas. I moved to Dallas when I was three. So I am a warm

[00:24:37] weather gal. Yeah. So this Minneapolis thing was really quite a mess. Way too cold.

[00:24:43] I went into the CHRO and I said, look, Travel Express is owned by the Dial Corporation,

[00:24:49] which is based in Phoenix, Arizona. I could do that. What do I have to do to get

[00:24:56] an opportunity to move? It's a dry heat. It's a dry heat, but I can do that.

[00:25:04] She gave me a literal plan. You have to do these things. And then if an opportunity comes

[00:25:09] up, I will support you to go and interview for it. And if you get it, I'll let you go.

[00:25:15] 18 months after that, I was in Phoenix. I can clearly remember I moved in February. So I'm

[00:25:22] in all the layers on my way to Phoenix. They had a short set in my bag. I went into the

[00:25:28] bathroom in Phoenix and changed into a short set. I was like, all right. I knew you.

[00:25:33] Never look back. Never look back. So you see the shift, Ryan, to the more intentional.

[00:25:40] Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we'll have to talk about this now, but I don't want to forget about

[00:25:46] it. A couple of things. One, the way you were treated in the beginning versus how you treat

[00:25:54] people now. How does that play into it? But second, when you were in the room and the CEO

[00:26:02] said, ask questions, and nobody raised their hand. There's a lot of people that listen to

[00:26:09] that say, I have a lot to say, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid to ask how do they raise their hand

[00:26:17] and not be afraid to feel wrong or feel like they're not important?

[00:26:23] Okay. So my question was a thoughtful question about the business. He had laid out these

[00:26:28] things about the business strategy. Did everyone notice that I was taking notes?

[00:26:33] And so when he said someone asked a question, I looked back at my notes and I was like,

[00:26:36] you said this about where we're going with the strategy. What are the things we need to do to be

[00:26:42] able to do X, Y, Z? So don't just ask some random question. It's not about I asked a question,

[00:26:50] ask a question that shows I'm thinking, I'm understanding what you told me, but I really

[00:26:56] have this question about what about this other thing. And by the way, I tell my team this same

[00:27:01] thing, because when we do HR all hands, I often am the first person or the second person to ask a

[00:27:09] question because I'm taking notes as people are talking. And when that silence hits where no one's

[00:27:15] asking question, I'm the one saying, yeah. And I said, and that gives you a visibility

[00:27:22] that you can't get if you're in the back of the room with your arms crossed, not taking

[00:27:27] notes, not actually listening. Right. And also as a curious person, it answers your question.

[00:27:33] So some of it is it scratches that itch for you intellectually. You're trying to actually,

[00:27:39] you're trying to understand something. I love that. Brian asked about treatment. I think it's

[00:27:46] a really important question now, not just versus then because you've probably always been

[00:27:52] the same person, but how do you kind of get your team to treat people at a way that you want to be

[00:27:59] treated, that they should be treated, et cetera? Because not everybody grew up the same way.

[00:28:06] First I will say when I came into this job, most of the people that were in leadership and TA

[00:28:13] could spell TA. But they didn't have like the depth of experience, right? They might

[00:28:20] an HR person that will shift it into a TA role and they're like, and here I am. I'm in my happy

[00:28:26] place. I'm like, yeah, okay. So I actually brought people that had worked for me at

[00:28:33] different places in the past here. Right. And so there were people that understood how I work

[00:28:41] and that enjoyed working for me enough in the past that they would come and work for me again.

[00:28:47] So that helped me to layer into the organization. This is how we work. These are the things that

[00:28:55] we do. These are the things that are important. Unacceptable behavior. Data has to be at the core.

[00:29:01] You can't just come in to Melissa and say, well, I think this and this and this are happening.

[00:29:07] And what data do you have that tells you that these things are happening?

[00:29:11] So people know you can't just come with some, I pulled this out of the air kind of a thing.

[00:29:18] Or if you do, Melissa is going to ask you questions and she's going to dig

[00:29:22] to try and understand like, how did you come to that conclusion? And so don't come

[00:29:28] all willy nilly. Come with, I understand. I need to tell a story.

[00:29:33] I worked for a guy, Melissa, I worked for a guy back in the 90s who you could not set a meeting

[00:29:39] with unless there was an agenda with items on the agenda and the decision maker in the room.

[00:29:47] There was a problem. We're going to discuss the solution and someone in the room is going

[00:29:52] to have a decision to make for whatever. But he would not put a calendar thing on his

[00:30:00] unless all that stuff was done.

[00:30:03] I worked for a boss at Bank of America who said five pages is the max of a PowerPoint.

[00:30:10] If you have a 10 page PowerPoint, maybe you get to come back next week. But at page five,

[00:30:15] you're done. So that made people really think about, and he said in 12 point font on a

[00:30:22] PowerPoint is not a thing. So it's not that you're going to make the word smaller.

[00:30:25] No, no, no. You're 35 and 40.

[00:30:28] Margins go to increase the margins.

[00:30:31] Yeah. I don't force people to do five pages, but I do say, think about how do you tell

[00:30:38] the story? And in particular in TA, what's your one pager? How do you tell a story to

[00:30:45] a hiring manager or a business leader in one page? And don't just throw a whole bunch of

[00:30:51] data salad on the page and be like, what's your insight? What does it tell you? What

[00:30:57] question do you want answered when you show this to someone? So as you can tell, I'm

[00:31:03] kind of a teacher. I like for people to, I want people to ask questions because

[00:31:09] I know people say there are no stupid questions and they're really aren't.

[00:31:14] The stupid question is the one you didn't ask because you just go and try and do

[00:31:19] something without really understanding how the things connect. I try to have a rhythm

[00:31:25] of, so for my direct reports, I meet with them one-on-one every other week and we

[00:31:30] meet as a team on the off weeks. We do a standup meeting every single Monday.

[00:31:37] What's going on with you? What's up? What did you do over the weekend? Just like

[00:31:41] the connector. But then I do with my team is called TAL, TA Leadership. I do TAL plus one

[00:31:50] once a month. So that lets that next level down have visibility to the TA leaders and

[00:31:57] they take turns presenting. We take turns. And then once a month, the whole team, everyone

[00:32:03] and changing topics every month, sometimes doing things where we do a big massive

[00:32:10] row board and people split up into smaller groups and they work through some problem

[00:32:15] and then they come back and they present. So I try to make it as interactive as I can

[00:32:21] so that I consistently have engagement down through the team, but also they're able to

[00:32:28] see me and they're able to understand that I see you too. Yeah, that interaction is

[00:32:35] so important in organizations. Let me ask you this around that. So how are you,

[00:32:44] how do you or are you leveraging those meetings to not just understand and engage with the

[00:32:51] employees, but who's the next leader or who's stepping up next in the organization? Are you

[00:32:57] able to kind of get that feel from that? So here's what's interesting. Two months ago,

[00:33:02] had someone on my team that left and it was someone that had worked for me for a long time.

[00:33:07] One of those boomerangs from another company. She just wanted to, she ended up wanting to be

[00:33:12] closer to home and she actually wants to be in an office all the time. I'm like, okay.

[00:33:21] So I promoted someone from that TAL plus one team onto my direct report team to take that

[00:33:27] job. Oh, cool. And I went to TAL plus one and I said, it's possible that you saw this as a move

[00:33:35] that I made without interviewing and maybe it was a succession planning decision that I have.

[00:33:41] If you felt like you might have been really good for that job and you didn't get that

[00:33:46] opportunity, I want you to put a one-on-one on my calendar and let's talk about what is

[00:33:51] your experience? What is your background? Why did you feel like that job was for you, but

[00:33:54] I didn't see you or I didn't know. And I had two people on that next level down team

[00:34:00] that came to me and said, yeah. So that's, I mean, you just have to, you have to give

[00:34:05] people the opportunity to step up. I said, but I'm not always going to just post a job and

[00:34:11] say anybody apply. Sometimes I'm going to say this was a succession planning decision and

[00:34:16] this person has this other experience from outside that makes that person good to move on.

[00:34:22] And why didn't I see you? Yeah. And I think that's really neat how it's obvious. I mean,

[00:34:29] obviously it was a succession planning, right? It's in there, but how you presented to them.

[00:34:35] Why haven't I seen you? And giving them the opportunity to have that conversation,

[00:34:39] I think is critical. Yeah.

[00:34:41] All right. So how have you fixed hiring managers?

[00:34:47] We know this job would be so much easier if we could just have the hiring managers

[00:34:51] just step back and let us decide who's going to be in the job. Finally, someone said it.

[00:34:58] We've all thought it. Someone finally said it. Okay, good.

[00:35:03] You're just going to record it, right? I'm aware. It's all good. And

[00:35:07] I've heard you say it before. Here's what I do. I do two things. One is I have a recruiting

[00:35:13] process model that I think is uber simple. It's crisp, clarify, review, interview,

[00:35:20] it's just a super easy way of thinking about the process. And underlying that model is here's what

[00:35:26] the hiring manager is responsible for doing. Here's what the recruiter is responsible for

[00:35:31] doing. And here are the SLAs aligned to both of them, right? So there's that.

[00:35:36] Then there's this training that I call winning talent. And it's really,

[00:35:41] it's kind of the Jerry Maguire. It's help me help you. This is not about you open the

[00:35:47] and you throw the ball over to the recruiter. You're like, Hey, call me when you got candidates.

[00:35:52] No, this is teamwork. And so through the thread through winning talent is feedback

[00:35:59] is not optional. If you don't give specific feedback on why you liked or didn't like

[00:36:06] those resumes at the top of the funnel, 90 days later, your job's still not filled.

[00:36:11] And you know why? Because you didn't give specific feedback because you didn't help

[00:36:15] the recruiter narrow down to here's what I'm really looking for. So

[00:36:21] that might be another one of my soap boxes. Really know hiring manager as understand how

[00:36:27] they have to be engaged if they want to get their rec built as a part of that.

[00:36:30] Do you teach them how to interview? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because and just imagine in

[00:36:39] a 120 year old company, people that have been here for however many 25 3035 years,

[00:36:45] they're like, I know how to interview. Okay, all right. How would you interview someone that

[00:36:54] is currently at Facebook and makes more money than you can pay them? How would you both

[00:37:02] interview them and sell them on this job? Humana, humana, humana. So then let's talk

[00:37:08] about different ways to actually interview and sell as part of your interview process.

[00:37:15] If all you do is just like punch somebody with your questions, and then you're like,

[00:37:20] okay, I'm done with my interview. I'm out. That's an interrogation.

[00:37:24] Yeah. Are you still getting a lot of hiring managers? And maybe we could separate this

[00:37:32] but are you still seeing hiring managers all over interviewing by intuition and gut and not

[00:37:40] relying on tech or intelligence to kind of tie it all together? Is it okay if I go?

[00:37:48] 100% I mean, yes. 100% everywhere. Yeah, because that's that's the now I'm asking for

[00:37:56] feedback on the interview and their answer is no. And I'm like, well, no, because for why?

[00:38:03] Well, I just didn't like them. Let's get deeper on this. What questions did you ask?

[00:38:09] What were the specific things that you didn't like about their responses? And

[00:38:13] and just so you know, I don't know who's gonna watch this podcast. But let me just say,

[00:38:19] my pals in HR also need to learn this particular thing. You cannot just tell me,

[00:38:26] I didn't like that person. That's not enough. Did you not like what was it about them? Because

[00:38:31] I don't want to send you another candidate that we're going to take all the way through

[00:38:34] this interview process and then you're gonna say, no, I'd like to get you job filled.

[00:38:39] And we're creating ill will with candidates when we do that. So like, we're turning them off

[00:38:44] because we didn't get feedback. And it's I do the same thing in art. It's like, if you

[00:38:49] don't like a piece of art, that's cool. Yeah, but you got to tell me what you didn't like

[00:38:53] about the piece of art. Yeah, you've got to actually, you got to use your words.

[00:38:57] What you liked, what resonated? What was the thing that resonated in there?

[00:39:00] Right. Like just really, yeah.

[00:39:03] What once I have that, I can I can understand what you need next.

[00:39:07] And I think that's one of the things that recruiters, they sometimes feel subservient

[00:39:12] to hiring managers is like they they'll accept those poor behavior.

[00:39:17] Okay, you didn't give me any feedback. Well, let me let me just go out there

[00:39:20] let me see if this works. It's like, right.

[00:39:23] That it might work. Chances are it won't. They they're waiting to see if they can figure

[00:39:29] it out on the fly. Like I'll go, I really like this person, which leads to all kinds

[00:39:33] of biases get brought into the into the system because they're doing like me bias

[00:39:39] or latency by they're doing all kinds of stuff. It's like, no, no, no, no.

[00:39:44] I love that you're teaching people how to interview both HR and hiring managers.

[00:39:50] Right. I'm good. Which you have a last question?

[00:39:53] No, no last questions here. I just I appreciate you mentioned personnel department, Melissa.

[00:40:01] We still have a JCPenney's of one of like five stores in this entire mall, which is massive.

[00:40:09] And JCPenney is still there. And as you make your way down into the bathroom area,

[00:40:14] there's a door. Yeah, it says personnel.

[00:40:17] I'm going to take a picture and send it to you because it is still there.

[00:40:21] And there are still people there. And it's just it cracks me up every time I go through it.

[00:40:26] So I appreciate that. That's funny. That's funny. Melissa, thank you so much for your

[00:40:32] time. We appreciate you. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your experience. We just

[00:40:37] love it. Fun conversation. Really appreciate it. Awesome. Safe trip back. And thanks to

[00:40:42] the audience for listening. Until next time.