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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
This is Jennifer Pozzuolo, Human Resources Manager at Garmin International, and I'm on the next RecTech podcast.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to RecTech, the podcast where recruiting and technology intersect. Each month, you'll hear from vendors shaping the recruiting world, along with recruiters who'll tell you how they use technology to hire talent. Now, here's your host, the mad scientist of online recruiting Chris Russell.
Chris Russell:
Welcome to the only podcast that helps employers and recruiters connect with more candidates through technology inspired conversations. If you want to know about the latest tools and tactics online, this is your show. This episode is a recruiter edition. This show is sponsored in part by our friends at Adzuna, the quality obsessed job search engine that's taking the market by storm. Adzuna wants to get America hiring by allowing businesses to zero in on the right candidates. Cut your cost per application, and engage with high quality candidates with Adzuna. Visit adzuna.com/hire to get started today.
Chris Russell:
And by Emissary, the tech platform built to make a candidate engagement and recruiting automation easy. Their AI recruiting software empowers recruiting teams, HR departments, and staffing firms with efficient tools that work in harmony with your ATS, HRS, or other recruiting sites. Using artificial intelligence and text to recruit is easy. Head over to emissary.ai and book a demo today.
Chris Russell:
All right, my next guest has spent nearly 14 years in various HR roles for Kansas based Garmin International, maker of all things GPS, where she helps to support recruitment and associate relations for the company. This is her second appearance on the RecTech podcast, so let's give her a warm welcome back to the show. Hey Jennifer, how's it going?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Great. Thank you for having me back.
Chris Russell:
Awesome. It's great to have you again. It's good to hear a familiar friend's voice. We met a couple of years ago at Phenom's events, but those are days gone by, right? It seems like that was years ago.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
It has. It has flown by, and now we're in this crazy time.
Chris Russell:
I know. We'll talk about that and how it relates to recruiting. I was on your LinkedIn profile today. I like your little tagline on there. It says, "You almost need a GPS to find a new position. Let Garmin guide you into a new career."
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
That is true. That, I think, in this day and age, is true in more ways than one.
Chris Russell:
Yes.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We were just talking about how the recruiting market space is changing so much. Your days of posting a job and having people apply, it's not the same case any longer.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. The job searching is really a chore sometimes, and it's not the quickest, efficient process that's out there, but I like that analogy overall. All right, so what's life been like recruiting and hiring in 2020? Give me your high-level thoughts here on recruiting during COVID and all this.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Sure. I would say, the first couple of months of the year, we were very upswing and hiring and just crazy, and then March hit about that timeframe. Then, the lockdown occurred, and ever since then, it's been a whole new avenue. We're definitely, I would say, navigating this new COVID pandemic. I would be lying if I said it wasn't challenging. We have, I think, adapted very well. We've conducted a lot more video interviews. What's interesting for us is when we hit our university recruitment season in the fall of this year the virtual space, I would say that schools have some challenges at first, but able to turn things around much faster. Less cost with not having to do travel. We still have been doing onsite interviews. I think that's been this whole new challenge.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Our culture at Garmin is very welcoming. We're very much not a 100% work from home area, and we have a lot of people working from home, which is a totally different area to navigate. But I think probably for me, the biggest challenge is, how do you meet somebody and you're not handshaking with them? Making sure you have your mask on, and you're sitting six feet apart. We've been trying some new things. We've had some great success with some chat rooms, where we've been able to chat back and forth and then actually take, I would say, the interview process offline. We have done interviews totally virtual. This week, I know we are.... We had, last week, I think it was the SHPE, The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and this week, we have the SWE, The Society of Women Engineers, that we're involved with, all virtual.
Chris Russell:
Oh yeah?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We have, from a social media platform, we've increased our followers greatly on LinkedIn. We're averaging about over 4,500 new followers a month, which is huge for us. But I would say lots of new engagement online, which has been a twist, a lot more heavily. People are spending a lot more time online and at home, and our brand channels have seen some very large increases. I think we grew over 15% on those, and then we've increased our following on our Garmin sites by I think it was over 26.3%. Our company Garmin as a whole, we've been so fortunate, that a lot of people are doing stuff at home, so it's hitting a lot of our segments, like boating, fishing, running, cycling, exercising. We just had some really great third quarter results, which were fabulous for us because I think in March thinking, hopefully, companies are surviving right now. We've been just very, very blessed that we've had that success.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. They say that exercise equipment is really flying off the shelves out there, so I would assume that's made its way down to the Garmin products, it sounds like.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yeah, definitely. I think, even within our own department... I'm laughing because I forgot to put my puppy in timeout, so hopefully she doesn't talk, but I was looking here at my Garmin dog unit because a lot of people, especially even in our own department, have gotten new puppies over this time too. Even our dog products and stuff has been very popular.
Chris Russell:
Yes. What is the dog product?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
I have the one where it has some controls, and we're working on barking right now. It has a beep vibration and tone, and so I've been using the tone. She's been pretty responsive to it. We just like to get a little excited when the delivery man comes in the neighborhood. We've gotten to not jumping on people.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. What kind of puppy?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
I have a lab. Yeah, I say a puppy, she's over a year, but she's giving me a good run for my money. She likes it when I work from home. Let's just say that.
Chris Russell:
All right. Awesome. You mentioned that you are doing some in-person interviews. What do those look like? Can you describe that scene for the listeners?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yeah. Our manufacturing and distribution center has been open this entire time during the COVID pandemic. A lot of those individuals may be, whereas our software engineers are maybe more tech savvy. A lot of those have come onsite to interview, and so it's just trying to have that welcome greeting, making sure, prior to the individuals coming on site, we're doing COVID questions, depending on where they've traveled at the time, making sure they're healthy before they come in. In addition, just because that building, we remained open, we've been on what I would say, a lockdown, and trying to keep everyone super healthy there and not bringing any outside risk of infection into the building. Practicing the social distancing, making sure we're over six feet apart.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We don't have a lot of big conference meetings. We try to do that as virtual as possible, but some of the folks that are going to be in those buildings, we want them to be able to see a little bit of the work environment. Just even navigating that tour and just making sure are we six feet apart with our masks on. We did institute a mask policy, so we have had that. We have been very fortunate with... We have over 4,000 people at our facility in Olathe, and so it's, I would tell you, a very safe environment, which is great. But it's still that awkwardness of, "Hi, welcome," and you're used to shaking someone's hands and not doing that and so just making sure that individual feels welcomed and bringing in part of our culture because that's really big to us.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We're very collaborative, and I think, for me, that's been a challenge just because we're so used to that team environment and seeing people. I think in some of these positions, it's been challenging just on navigating that piece of it because you aren't as social as you were. It's a little bit of a different social, you're over video or you're over conference calls. Especially from my team's perspective, we're all pretty outgoing being in HR and recruiting, and that sort of thing. Really just checking in on your employees and making sure, are they doing okay? My team, we always have video meetings and we make sure everybody turns on their video so we get to see each other. It's just fun trying to try to maintain that connection, but it's definitely navigating that area.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
It has helped having... We have, in the beginning of COVID, I would say we had a meeting almost every day, just to keep everyone connected. My team right now, we meet a couple times of week, but it's interesting. Last week, we had a little blitz where we had some snow and the weather turned a little bit and people still are struggling with this a little bit. Some of our teams have been working from home since March, which is not, like I said, our culture. We don't have a lot of working from home. There's been some people that have really struggled with that. We're doing everything from, some team builders online. One of the teams, I think, the other week they did some online games. We've sent care packages to people. We have a great associate assistance plan, and I know we've had a lot of people taking advantage of that just for some extra resources and help.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Just really making sure everybody's staying connected, and we're checking in on everybody, just because some days are just challenging. It's just maneuvering a different market. Those of us that have children or different things such as that, it's another challenge, because you have your kids going back to school, or maybe not the school in session, or it's been virtual or it's been canceled, or you get a notification that there's a positive case at one of your schools. It just seems to be a lot of pressure right now, not even just the work, but even outside. Obviously, the election has been a big thing too that, I think, just adds into it.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. In terms of the anxiety, I think most people are feeling some form of that, whether it's COVID related or election related or work related, but it's definitely not easy out there. It sounds like you guys are doing some good things there to keep your employees engaged and to check in on them, which is important.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Absolutely. Yeah, we were joking, it was funny because, we have a COVID case management team that follows up on any COVID case with anything that we need to. We were laughing because, as the months have gone on, people tend to talk on the phone with you a lot longer, or the people that didn't do video are now doing videos. It's just been nice and you can see how people are adapting. I think, for our company, just because we are very connected and very team-orientated, you're definitely seeing people are missing that, trying to find new ways to keep the teams connected.
Chris Russell:
Definitely. I'm curious, Jennifer, in terms of... I've heard some companies out there that are just seeing a huge influx of applications. Is Garmin getting that influx as well, in terms of more applications to your job listings during COVID?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
I don't know if we'd say more applications, so maybe twofold. I think it depends upon the position. We have had, I would say, some challenges just because, from an industry perspective, like our warehouse, for example, we have a lot of distribution centers within our area and they are also very busy because they were still shipping a lot of things to different places. As a country, even though some of the places were shut down. In that respect, we probably saw less applications. People have been a little bit more apprehensive to maybe relocate to our locations.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
For our software engineers, we relocate a lot of those. However, we have some new product lines and sometimes people knew somebody here or they had connections that were already in Kansas City and they were easy moves. It's just, I wouldn't say, a one size fits all right now, but at times we've had some peaks. We post a position and we get a lot of applications, and then other times, the warehouse, for instance, normally we would get a lot of applications and didn't get as many as we used to. Definitely, I'm doing a lot of sourcing for sure on our recruiting teams for a lot of positions.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. Has it affected turnover at all, in terms of are people staying longer at Garmin throughout this crisis?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Our turnover, we're under 10% every year, and this year it's actually lower. It's even lower than 5% in some areas, which is amazing for us, which is great. I don't know if that's saying, like I was saying where, sometimes people were a little apprehensive to move during these times. Maybe that's the case, but yeah, we've always maintained a pretty low turnover, which is great.
Chris Russell:
You mentioned you're doing a lot more video interviews. Do you use a certain platform? Are you just using Zoom or Skype? How are you handling that?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We actually utilize Teams. That's what we're utilizing right now. We do have a couple specialty items that we utilize for software engineering, for coding and some specific ones. Teams has been our go-to so far. With some of the universities, we've had some specific ones that they've had.
Chris Russell:
Gotcha. You also mentioned college recruiting. Did that slow down at all or is it just moved to entirely virtual at this point? What challenges do you see with attracting the college grad right now?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yeah, like I said, we had a really successful fall as our biggest recruiting for the engineering side of our house. We actually are up in offer acceptances this year, which is great. Yeah, that was totally virtual for us, which was the first time we haven't traveled. We still aren't traveling except in some emergency situations company-wide. That was completely virtual, which was interesting because you're meeting different candidates and stuff, but like I said, the chat rooms and stuff that was very successful for us. We have a pretty large internship program, so we were just able to move a little bit more quickly. We did have some kids that wanted to come onsite. I call them kids, but it was some of the candidates from the university side, but they could come on site. Some were completely virtual, but like I said, very successful for us.
Chris Russell:
Very cool. You mentioned LinkedIn, you're getting something like 4,500 new followers a month. Do you yourself post on LinkedIn or how do you handle social media as far as recruiting goes?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yes, we have a couple of things. Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and we share quite a bit of information. It's great, because we have so much fun stuff about our products and different things that have been coming out. We do have Sarah on our team, and Darby, they handle a lot of our social media for the recruitment side. We have stuff handled from a corporate perspective as well in our social media. Yeah, we share quite a bit out there at all times. Yeah, I think I just shared... We just had a new Marine product come out today, so I think I just posted that out there, but yeah, it's a great connection.
Chris Russell:
Do you have any formal advocacy program within your recruiting team, or employees to spread the word about on social?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We do. Yeah, we actually do a lot of lunch and learns, and then most of our recruiting teams are pretty active on LinkedIn. We have, of course, recruiter seats and different things that we're sourcing off of there too. We have a lot of, just the nature of our business, people are pretty involved in the social media, so we do a lot of the lunch and learns for people to share information out in their different posting avenues.
Chris Russell:
How has your onboarding process changed during COVID? Anything to note there?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yeah, I would say, interestingly enough, we are still doing onboarding in person as much as possible. We really dived in on our culture. We want people to be able to get their equipment, really feel welcomed their first day. Of course, you know that our auditorium, it's pretty large. We've social distanced, spread people out. Obviously, if somebody is working at an offsite location and it's not a large offsite location, sometimes they'll join virtually, but we actually handle the onboarding at the larger locations off site. We'll do that in person there too. We, I would say, still are limited and we haven't brought everybody 100% back into the office, but definitely seen a few more people rotating in a few times a week. Like I said, our distribution and manufacturing facility has still remained open the entire time.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
The onboarding piece, I would say, varies per position, but how do we do the training where you're not in the same room with somebody, and making sure they're connected and get connected to all of our devices and teams meetings, but still get to meet the people that they're going to be working with. I think that's probably, for me, the most challenging part. The individuals that have worked here and they go to work at home, they know who to contact. Making sure that we have that connection with the new hire and that they get the feel for the team and the company. Even my team, I said, it's just been challenging, just making sure everybody's okay, let alone if you have a new hire. Checking in with the managers, "How are your people doing?" from that perspective, that they're getting enough face time and video time with them.
Chris Russell:
Gotcha. I know you use the Phenom platform there at Garmin. How's that going? I think you've had in place for maybe a year now or so?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yeah. We actually launched in April. We had over, I think, 30,000 members in our CRM and now we're over 80,000. We have been launching a lot of programs and different things that have been out on that, but yeah, very successful for us. It's fabulous to have all of that information that's out there. We're definitely starting to utilize it more and it was instrumental for us for our university recruiting room. We ran a lot of campaigns out of that too to contact those individuals. We're getting ready to do a couple of different campaigns to launch this week. Definitely diving into it, but yeah, it seems to be working out really well. For us, it's a great search engine, it just really enhanced our job searching capability when somebody comes to our site.
Chris Russell:
Yep. What's your favorite feature of Phenom, would you say?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
I would say, for us, I like... The reason I really pushed for this, I brought it back from a conference, was just what I like as the shopping cart feature. It remembers you. I like to shop online, so I like it that, when you go to look at a job, it's still there the next time for the candidate. I think the chat bot has been really successful because people really enjoy that. I'm sure there's going to be more stuff that I like out of it, but it's just an easy feature for the user.
Chris Russell:
How does the chat bot work? What's that experience like for the seeker?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
I'm sorry, can you repeat that one?
Chris Russell:
What's the experience like for the job seeker with the chat bot? What does it do for them?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yeah, it can tell them a lot more about Kansas City. That's probably one of the bigger questions. Kansas City is just a hidden gem. Finding out what's around. I don't think people realize how large we are, and so really understanding Garmin and what a great company that we have to work for. We get a lot of those questions like, "Oh, where's Olathe? What do you do in Kansas city?" That sort of thing.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. By the way, I see your Chiefs won the Super Bowl this year. Congratulations.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
That is very exciting. Yeah, they're having a pretty good year this year. We're pretty excited that we can brag on that a little bit. Before, you didn't want to talk too much about our football team. Yeah, we've got World Series and Chiefs victories in the past few years, so that's fun.
Chris Russell:
Very nice. As we go into 2021, Jen, what are you looking to implement as far as any new technology or just employer brand strategies going into next year?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Yeah, I would say we're definitely looking at some new avenues. I think we're really thinking over our social media strategy and thinking what's relevant to the candidates. You had asked me about LinkedIn. I think a lot of the candidates are wanting to know what's your culture like? How are you handling COVID? It's not the days I had alluded to where you don't just post a job and hope that people apply to it. Definitely looking at some different avenues and, what I would say, thinking outside the box. We have still a very low unemployment rate here in the Kansas City area, and we've had a ton of distribution centers come in because it's great to have them, it's centrally located in the United States, but it's also saturated a few of our markets, like warehouse competition and different things.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We continually still struggle, like most companies do, to find software engineer talent and/or to get them relocated to the Kansas City area. Definitely, we're always looking at new strategies and new ways of, how do we find that individual? A lot of our technologies and platforms and stuff I think are definitely taking a different spin in the past few years. It's so different than posting a job and getting the hundreds of thousands of applications.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. You really have to, I think, as a company, tell your story, right?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Russell:
It's more than just a job posting, it's definitely about the culture and how you treat people and the perks and benefits of all that stuff.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Absolutely.
Chris Russell:
Very cool. Tell people where to go to learn more about careers at Garmin.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Absolutely. If they just go to garmin.com, you can go down to our career section at the bottom of the page, and then it'll take you into our Phenom link. We'd love to have you apply. We've got tons of positions open. We're always looking for new talent. We're growing in these times, which is wonderful.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. Any openings in recruiting at all?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
We do have a staffing specialist right now. We have added to our university team. That's the only one. I told you, my dog's going to bark at the delivery guy here.
Chris Russell:
I hear him. Is it a he or a she?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
She, and I'm sorry, if you want the full link, it's the careers link at the bottom of the garmin.com page. That's the easiest way to find it.
Chris Russell:
We certainly appreciate your time today, Jennifer. Any last words of advice for the listeners out there? What would you say to your fellow recruiters right now?
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
I would just say, definitely, even though it's COVID, you can definitely maneuver and find ways to be creative and really share your story and your vision. That's been successful for us right now, even with the pandemic going on. We've been able to find great talent and find people and really still be able to highlight our culture, and keep that close to us. I look forward to all these people once we get back in the office, bringing them here officially. I think you can make it work even in a pandemic time.
Chris Russell:
Yep. You're still on my list of places to go visit, so I definitely want a tour as soon as this is all over.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
I'd love it. For sure. When you're out, we would love to give you that. We've got to get through the pandemic, I'm not giving any tours right now.
Chris Russell:
Yeah. All right Jennifer, thanks for your time today and I appreciate you coming on the show.
Jennifer Pozzuolo:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Chris Russell:
That will do it for this episode of The RecTech Podcast. Be sure to follow us on the socials, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, via the @rectechmedia handle. Thank you to my sponsors, Emissary and Adzuna. Be sure to check them out for tech recruiting and job advertising. Thanks for listening everyone, and remember, always be recruiting.
Speaker 2:
Another episode of RecTech is in the books. Follow Chris on twitter@chrisrussell, or visit rectechmedia.com, where you can find the audio and links for this show on our blog. RecTech Media helps keep employers and recruiters up to date through our podcasts, webinars, and articles, so be sure to check out our other sites, recruiting headlines and HR podcasters to stay on top of recruiting industry trends. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon on the next episode of RecTech, the recruiting technology podcast.
