Fresh off the IAMPHENOM conference I had the opportunity to hang out with and interview Phenom's Keca Ward, Sr Director of Talent Experience. She runs the team that keeps the hires coming at the HR tech vendor now simply known as Phenom. If you missed my recap, click here. (15 min listen)
TRANSCRIPT
Keca Ward:
Hi, Chris. Thanks. And it's been great so far. The amount of people that came out to IAMPHENOM year after year, it just gets better and better. We've had some great speakers on the main stage. The breakout sessions this afternoon were great. Lot of content around candidate experience, employee experience, manager experience, and then finally, the recruiter experience. So, the buzz is pretty good. It's really been a great day so far, so.
Chris Russell:
Nice. Well, describe your role a little bit at Phenom. You're a team of, I think, three or four. We talked about the other day, but tell me more about kind of your day-to-day and what you're doing there.
Keca Ward:
Sure. So, as a senior director of talent experience, I'm really responsible for the talent acquisition, the talent marketing side of the house. And I get myself a little bit involved in the employee experience from a culture perspective. But my team primarily is responsible for bringing in the talent into Phenom in the United States. And over the last two years, we've hired about 200 people. So, we're in a hyper growth mode at Phenom. We're based in Ambler, as you know. And the positions that we really are responsible for under my umbrella are all customer-facing. So, that'd be customer success, implementation, client services, and a lot of the sales positions, which are housed out of the headquarters. So, that's primarily what I oversee within the organization.
Chris Russell:
What do you look for in those types of roles as far as the candidate goes, in terms of just skill sets and attitude and things like that.
Keca Ward:
We hire a lot on culture at Phenom. We have a very, very not normal culture. That's one of our hashtags. And so…
Chris Russell:
Not normal?
Keca Ward:
Not normal.
Chris Russell:
I've seen the hashtag, I didn't know what it meant.
Keca Ward:
Yeah, yeah. So, not normal is one of the hashtags that we've branded since the beginning of Phenom and what it-
Chris Russell:
It's not your everyday corporate hashtag.
Keca Ward:
No, it's not. It's not. And we instill that in the very beginning, in the candidate experience. My recruiters are asking the basic questions in a typical recruiter screen, but they also go a little bit deeper. I encourage them to be very curious and ask a little bit more about the candidate. So, we ask them things like, "What's your favorite song? Do you have any pets at home?" And things that are really not normal about the individual, so we get to learn a little bit more about them, right in that recruiter screening phase. So, it's really exciting. The other types of folks that we look for really are based on our core values. So, we have five core values that the organization stands behind. Curiosity, responsibility, intensity, self-confidence, and positive thinking.
Chris Russell:
Gosh, you got them all.
Keca Ward:
I got them all. And during our initial HR screen with the candidates, we really try to pull out some of those core values, because it's so important to us as an organization from the top down to have those core values within each individual person. So, we do a fun little thing during the interview stage. We ask each of the candidates to send in a video of the core value that resonates with them. And so, each of the candidates-
Chris Russell:
The candidate does this?
Keca Ward:
The candidate does this. Yeah, it's interesting. So, we get all different types of video clips, and we preface it by saying, "Look, this isn't an Academy Award presentation. This is just, grab your iPhone, pick a core value that resonates with you." We give them some context behind it. "Make it short, two or three minutes," and then the recruiters get to see a little bit face-to-face kind of interaction, what really resonates.
Chris Russell:
What stage is the candidate at this point?
Keca Ward:
This is interview phase. Yeah, not at the initial stage, but we've already engaged with the candidate multiple times. They're probably coming in for a face-to-face interview at this point. And so, the nice part about that now is, it's so embedded in our culture that our hiring managers now wait for the video to come and say, "Let me see what core value candidate X presented to us." So, it's really great. That's a very important skill set, multiple skill sets. But it's really part of hiring towards culture that's exciting, so.
Chris Russell:
Very cool. Very cool. We talked the other day about, most of your IT team is based in India, so you don't have a huge worry there as far as finding technical talent here in the U.S. I mean, just talk about that briefly in terms of, it must be just a huge relief off of your recruiting team.
Keca Ward:
It does. And it really... We have a few technical positions in-house, in Philadelphia, but my background certainly has been about 20 years prior hiring for technical roles in Philadelphia. And so, not having that heavy lift of trying to find technical talent in Philadelphia has been really... It has been, certainly, a relief not to have to find tech talent. Now, we do have some roles within Philadelphia that have a technical piece to them-
Chris Russell:
Like product managers here and things like this.
Keca Ward:
Yes, product management is one. And then we have technical solution engineers also. That again-
Chris Russell:
Foreign integrations because that's a big piece of your-
Keca Ward:
Correct, that is right.
Chris Russell:
Your onboarding for clients.
Keca Ward:
That's right. So, yeah.
Chris Russell:
How many employees right now?
Keca Ward:
We're about 650 globally.
Chris Russell:
650 globally, okay. And how many you're going to hire this year?
Keca Ward:
Yeah, my projected numbers for 2020 are probably going to be, in the United States, 150. We'll probably do the same in India and Europe. And then, we've recently opened offices in the Netherlands, in Rotterdam. That office will continue to grow very rapidly. A lot of customer-facing roles there as well. So, yeah, it's-
Chris Russell:
How much of Phenom's business is global or overseas for its customers?
Keca Ward:
We have a big chunk of our clients are overseas. We decided on Rotterdam as the hub. We have a few clients in the Netherlands, so that was a great point for them, a hub for them. They can get to Europe and England, train ride away or short flight. So, between the UK and Netherlands, we have a lot of clients, so.
Chris Russell:
Nice.
Keca Ward:
Yeah.
Chris Russell:
By the way, I saw that you were switching to Phenom.com as the URL for the company. Does that mean the name is changing?
Keca Ward:
So... good eye. Yeah, we've rebranded as Phenom because I think the Google search that everyone does anyways is Phenom. So, we're dropping the people. Our logo will stay the same. It's just removing that people, but the little P with the little icon will stay the same. But yeah, you'll be able to find us now as just Phenom.com.
Chris Russell:
Nice. Well, it's a great domain by the way too, so that's good. So, let's see here. You use Phenom today as your own ATS and you eat your own dog food, as they say. Tell me, what are some of your favorite pieces of that chatbot texting? Give me some examples of what you like about the product.
Keca Ward:
We do use Phenom 100% and we do not have an ATS. We use it as our ATS. And the recruiters' favorite part about the platform is really the texting at this point. They do use the bot and things like that. They're now involved with the interview scheduling piece as well. But the texting has been a game-changer for them, really. After the initial point of contact, they go right to text, through every communication. They get instant results from-
Chris Russell:
Has it sped up their job as far as how much they can do in one day?
Keca Ward:
Absolutely. Our average time to fill is about 30 days now. So, by using the texting, it's really just been a game-changer for them. They text when they're coming in for an interview, they text directions. They drop pins on the location of our office, confirmation when a manager changes the time, or when someone on the interview panel changes or has to reschedule. They're texting the candidate back. We're also using it in India as well. They're using the WhatsApp so it's really great there as well. So, that pretty much, if I could think of all the features, and there's many. The personalization on the career site is our claim to fame, but behind the scenes, the CRM, what the recruiters are really using is that texting, and it's really changed the way we recruit at Phenom.
Chris Russell:
Nice. What are you looking to possibly add to the mix as far as any kind of other career technology out there, video technology, onboarding? You're looking to some new tools this year?
Keca Ward:
We are. As I said, we are growing at rapid pace and so, we use as a goal-setting organizational system, OKRza, I'm sure you've heard of it, Chris, and we're looking to move towards more of that continuous feedback model. So, we have already begun our search for a new type of engagement platform where we can implement the continuous feedback model throughout the organization. Hopefully, it can find one that integrates both the OKRs and then more of a one-on-one platform. So, tools like Lattice, Culture Amp, these are all the tools we're looking at that have both, currently today, we use namely as our HRS system.
Keca Ward:
I think we'll also look in the future to add to our LMS, and add some other things around the learning and development space. Because as we know and as we continue to grow at this pace, we're hiring and we're also promoting individuals just as fast as we're hiring. When we move our employees, our internal Phenoms into new positions, they're usually, this is a first-time management position, so we know we have to give them the tools to be successful within the organization. So, giving them that microlearning opportunities. I think we heard a little bit about that in the conference this morning, but just giving them those tools to be able to learn at their own pace is things that we're looking at for 2020 to implement.
Chris Russell:
Nice. Okay. Just a couple more questions. What's your pitch to potential candidates to come work for Phenom? What's the kind of EVP there?
Keca Ward:
Yeah. So, I think I shared with you in the beginning that it's definitely we're not normal organization. We are certainly fast-paced growing. Every day that you walk in, it's a different day and a different challenge. We started the organization, it really got to fruition around 2011 but we've changed every single moment of every single day. And candidates need to have that agility to be able to shift gears at all times. Not to say it's all... It's not all puppies and rainbows. We have a fun culture. We certainly work hard, play hard. But with that fast growth, you don't have a lot of processes in place. And sometimes, days get long and things of that nature.
Keca Ward:
But when you have leadership that certainly instills the mission of the organization, and we believe no matter what we're on, the mission is to find a billion people the right job. As long as each individual knows that they're part of that mission, and to help that success, they'll do well within the organization. So, that's really a mission-driven company with a strong purpose of focus. And so, we instill that in every single candidate, every single employee. It's my job really, to really begin that journey with the employee experience and instill that along the whole entire employee lifecycle.
Chris Russell:
Thinking back over your about three years now at Phenom, what's one thing, think about one candidate you remember that kind of really impressed you guys, and what was it about them that kind of set them apart from just maybe it was in the interview or something they did to impress you in a video or something like that? Something that come to mind?
Keca Ward:
Yeah. So, one of our customer success managers who we recently hired, she's phenomenal. I hate to use that, but she really was. We met her through a career fair that we were doing at a local university right around the corner in Philadelphia. So, she was a... I believe she was another vendor and my SDRs had met her on-site. And she reached out...
Chris Russell:
Another HR tech vendor?
Keca Ward:
Yeah. She reached out just blindly and sent me a LinkedIn message and kind of said, "I'm interested. The folks I've met at the college fair were phenomenal. They were so fun. I love your product..." So, she reached out to me, we got talking, I said, "I think you would be great at customer success." And I said, "I think we have an opening. It's coming up." The video was great. She sent it over and within 30 days, I think, we made an offer to her. So, she really impressed me. Her just reaching out, doing something not normal. It was a career fair. She was there as a vendor and it was just next door to my SDRs. And lo and behold, she's one of our great employees. She actually presented with me the other day, so.
