Recorded live at SHRM24 in Chicago, Kahina Ouerdane, Chief People Officer for Montreal based Workleap. Kahina has been mastering the art of managing people for more than a decade, previously at PwC as a consultant, and now at Workleap.
Kahina and I covered a range of topics around her role, the employee experience and onboarding.
RecTech Media travel sponsored by our friends at Jobcase.com
AI Transcript
Alright, podcasting live from the GP booth at SHRM 24 in Chicago. Today I've got Yutaka Takagi, principal product evangelist from the HCM platform isolved.
Hey Chris, nice to meet you. Really enjoying our presence here this year. It'ss always great to connect. We call our customers and HR users, people heroes, right? It's always great to connect with people, heroes, the people who are making really the magic of connecting employees with their employers. Employee needs, with employer needs every day, just loving hearing the stories.
Nice. So I don't think I've had, I saw my show before, so just tell the audience what you guys do first.
Yeah, so we're a comprehensive human capital management solution provider, but we go beyond your typical hire to retire solutions. One aspect that's a little different from us is that we don't necessarily require that you get our core HR or payroll up and running. You can kind of modularly pick what parts of the solution suite you want. So if you want recruiting, you want talent management or you want that core HR and the workforce management aspects, we can kind of pick and choose. The other aspect of it is that we offer a whole suite of services as well. So HR augmentation services help really strategize on what's going on with supporting things like as I'll say, as sort of fundamental as policies, handbooks to more strategic thinking around how do we design our job boards and our job descriptions, how do we design our performance processes? So we offer a whole suite of services, HR services, benefit services, et cetera, to support our customers as well. And again, that can be somewhat modular. You don't necessarily have to have our people cloud suite to leverage some of our services and really aim to serve our small midsize organizations generally here in the United Sates.
That's definitely our sweet spot is I'll say between 50 and 500 employees tends to be our sweet spot across really, but across really all industries across the United States and certainly all 50 states.
Nice. Now, is employee experience your core, would you say, as a product or…?
Yeah, I think that's really what we really focus on in terms of how do we find value in an HCM, really that connection between what does the employee want and need out of work in their lives and what does the employer need out of that employee at that time? Is it a certain set of skills? There's certainly the conversation around skills-based talent management skills-based hiring, certainly one of the things that trends that we see, or is it a set of credentials or whatever the case might be, really aligning what the employee wants and needs out of work with, what does the employer need out of them Now as part of that is getting the right person hired, advertising the right jobs. I mean, these are some of the talent acquisitions that certainly is your area of expertise, but also then getting them paid correctly, making sure they're scheduled correctly, making sure we measure that talent. And then in those spaces between work, how do we ensure that we're engaging those employees through things like employee resource groups and other communities that they can have so that employees feel more connected with the work and the workplace. Okay.
How's the company? How many employees? Give me some background.
Sure. The organization has been actually around since the mid eighties. We started right after the COBRA Act, consolidated omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 was passed. And so that really was the genesis of our organization, started as an organization called infinisource, providing employer services around COBRA and benefit continuation. Then we've kind of continued on from there and built up to this full suite HCM technology platform along with the set of services that I mentioned earlier. We have about 2,500 or so employees and we serve over 170,000 organizations, over 7 million employees tracked and managed through our human capital management system.
Very cool. Very cool. How would you define the employee experience? Can you talk about that?
Yeah, it's everything about what the employee finds in their connection to the employer. So every single touch point there around when they first start to look for a job at your organization, whether that's in an active outreach program or they're coming to your website, so all the perception that they gather about that. Now, certainly when we think about employee, if I put that in air quotes there, it begins at the point of hire when they get hired and start onboarding and really start acclimating to the culture of the organization. I think one of the things that we see in some of the data points around employee expectations and where some things are maybe falling off a little bit or there's a little gap today, some of the things we see are things like employees don't necessarily know what workplace norms are. I think we see some of that in some of the data because I think there's definitely a bit of a generational gap.
When you look at some of the Gen Z workforce in particular, they entered the workforce just as the pandemic was getting started, working from home was what they got hired into perhaps or very early on into their careers, and now maybe there's a return to office or hybrid arrangements and employees don't really know what's what those expectations are. And so I think that's one of the things we see in the employee experience are how do we establish those norms? What does it mean to be back in the office? What does hybrid work mean? We saw this actually in the Harris poll, did published a thing a couple of weeks ago around, they call it quiet vacationing, right? This idea that a lot of folks are taking vacations or PTO without filing PTO, right? They're just kind of going somewhere else and working. So I think one of those things is around that. What are those expectations? What does taking time off look like and what should that mean when you take time off? I think those are some of the fundamental things around employee experience that are a part of, I think some of the gaps that we're seeing.
So what are some of the use cases for isolved when it comes to the employees brand? Give me a couple of specific examples of how you work with an employee and with your touch points there. Sure.
I think from an onboarding perspective, again, that's kind of really where we want to begin, right? Again, certainly through the talent acquisition process, setting expectations appropriately, but once they accept that offer, I think the table stakes around onboarding or let's getting the paperwork part of it out of the way. But again, establishing those communication points, establishing learning early on, we know that that's one of the key parts of value that employees see and the really expectations that they have of the employer that you're going to provide learning opportunities for them. And so really inserting learning right upfront and throughout the employee life cycle, that's certainly a key component of what we call learning grow in the iSolve suite. Another part of that is an engagement management part of iSolved, which is really provides a space for employees to communicate with one another in a very sort of modern social platform. They can earn reward points for participating in conversations, giving kudos to each other, et cetera. And those rewards points could be turned into maybe company swag or gift cards, things like that. Again, just as a part of the rewards and recognition component of what some of our customers are trying to do. So those are some of the things that we see being effective for our customers in helping to create that culture, help create communication transparency and establish those norms for those employees.
So you haven't mentioned the word AI yet. Is that coming from myself or talk to me about how you think AI is going to affect the future of the employee experience maybe?
Yeah, the joke I always give is that this is the year 2024, and so I'm contractually obligated to talk about ai, but what absolutely, there's AI throughout the suite, right? So again, in the town acquisition end, certainly things I'm sure you're familiar with, job description, creation, candidate matching against their profiles as they submit a resume, some of those things that just help reduce the administrative burden on recruiters as they field dozens, hundreds of resumes. That's part of the suite today. Conversational assistance, we released a plug into Microsoft Teams last year that allows conversational feed feedback to happen. So employees can say, just in teams, start querying the isol bot, if you will, and ask about, Hey, what does my time off look like? What are my pay statements look like? But now we're expanding that this year, taking it out of teams, the teams part's going to stay, but also building it into the isop platform.
So right directly in that employee self-service experience, employees will be able to ask those questions and then take it to the next level, which is what we call always on hr, where we'll be able to upload policies, handbooks, any sort of documentation. Generative AI engine will read and understand what those policies state, so that when employees come in with those questions anytime of day through the isol, they'll be able to ask, we just found out we're pregnant, what are my parental leave rights? And then the gen AI engine through the conversational assistant will give them that answer right back. So those are some of the things we're working on.
So you're a product evangelist, I want to talk about that a bit. What's your biggest challenge in that role right now?
I think it's always trying to keep up with what there's, I'll say the three components are what's happening in the business world and then the economy at large. The macro picture of it, what's happening from a technology perspective is the second part, right? AI is definitely one of those things that it's hard to keep up with. There's a lot of moving pieces, whether you're talking about recommendation engines or generative AI or there's so many layers to the technology that we have. And the third is really, if I'm quite honest, the communication part of it is something that I'm personally always working on is how do I articulate what we do around those issues that our customers are facing every day? And so that's my job is to figure that out and to help articulate that to the market. How often do you
Talk to your customers personally?
Yeah, we do actually a road show here at isolved…We call it People Heroes Tour, where we invite our customers, so not industry analysts, not consultants, but our customers. We go out to where they are. Quite honestly, so far in my relatively short time here at the organization, I've done six or seven of those places just outside of Philadelphia, new Haven, Connecticut, Dubuque, Iowa. So we're not asking them to come to the city center necessarily, right? We want to go to where they are and we invite them to spend a morning with us. We share some of our research, we ask them to chat with one another to network. We feed 'em a little bit of lunch and we get feedback there. So we do that about once every other week or so, and we do that throughout the year. So this year I think we're doing about 30 of those throughout the country. Nice.
Yeah. Your customers almost give you a lot of feedback about the product. What's one thing they told you to do that you actually implemented?
Yeah, I think one of the big things is the user experience. One of the things that we did four or five years ago is we rebranded our organization. If you come to our website, you'll see the pink color everywhere. So that was a big effort, big lift. And so as part of that rebrand, obviously that changes a little bit of the user experience and the user interface of the solution. Key thing that we did as a part of that was releasing a mobile app. And so that was definitely sort of the, I'll say low hanging fruit that we hadn't done that We implemented, I think 2022 or 2 23 to put an actual app rather than just a web app out there so that we have a one place that our customers can tell their employees, go download the app, get access to all the things that they do in isof. And so that was one of the things that we did was around that user experience and user interface part of it to provide some value to our customers.
Cool. You guys hiring at all?
Absolutely. We're always hiring. So isolvedhcm.com is our website. You'll find a whole host of roles, particularly we're always hiring in our customer facing roles, so whether that's the sales side or our customer support, customer account management, those tend to be areas that we're always hiring in.
Awesome. Well, great to meet you and thanks for your time today. Thanks.
Sedonna Lyons, Quick Supply Company
Today, I've got an HR generalist with me, our first practitioner on the show this week. Her name is Edna Lyon. She's from Quick Supply Company based in Iowa, and they are in mining and construction, I think, right? She said. So we're going to talk to her a bit about what she's up to. She's also an isolved customer. So we'll talk about that. But how's the show going so far? Is it your first SHRM or no?
It is my first SHRM, and I'm actually sponsored by isolved because I'm part of their people hero community. Oh,
Great. Okay. So let's start there. What modules do you use and how long you been with them? You have some details. So
I've been with the company since 2022. We are a mining and construction, so we hire for blasters, CDL drivers warehouse, some inside some outside sales, but it's mainly going to be those blasters Just
In Iowa or elsewhere?
No, we are in 15 states. So we are from North Carolina, and then we have some construction side of the business that are all the way over in Oregon and Utah. So we are kind of coast to coast.
Okay. Do you yourself do any recruiting at all, or
I do not, and I prefer not to if I'm a hundred percent honest.
What do your recruiters tell you about hiring outlets? What are the biggest challenges? They say
The biggest challenge is finding those niche positions. So blasters, they have to be licensed, so there's a lot of competition. So it's just trying to take from others, but be the better option. So it's like a fine line balance, but there's not a whole lot of blasters out there. So within the company, we are looking to kind of grow our own so that way we can help them become licensed so that way they can kind of have a career
Path. Do you have in-house training for them?
Yes. We have a whole safety team that devotes towards training for CDL drivers for blasters, and then they also are that main team for any safety deeds.
Other than iSolved, what's your HR tech stack in terms of other software do you use?
So we mainly use iSolved for our system. So we use iSolved for applicant tracking for the recruiting side. We do have one in-house recruiter who manages that. And then we use the onboarding module, which will give the employees a better user experience. We went from DocuSign and now we're using the onboarding module. And it's nice for me because it actually builds them into our HRIS system for payroll, and it kind of takes that burden off of me. But then we use payroll and we're constantly looking at other items that we might be needing. So when I started in 2022, we had paper time sheets, so we added that as well. So we have the timekeeping piece, but we're constantly growing, so our needs are constantly growing as well. So every year we're kind of looking at our roadmap, seeing what we need, what our employees need, and kind of figuring out what's going to be the best solution for them,
Get a favorite feature?
Oh, workflows. So when I started, we didn't have workflows initiated, but it's kind of been nice to get those up and running. So that means the employee can actually update their address in the system and it notifies us, and then we can approve or deny. Typically we approve, but we call them to make sure like, Hey, are you the one actually doing this change? We do like that safety feature, therefore they approve or deny. They can also update their taxes within the systems, so that's super nice. And then they can update their own beneficiaries, dependents, things like that.
Are you a power user of isolved?
What do you mean by power user?
Well, are you always in it every day?
I am in all the isolved platforms. I'm in the ATS system, I'm in the payroll system, even though I'm not the recruiter, I do help the recruiter with the onboarding piece. So I am in there weekly to kind of figure out who's in the pipeline, and then I have a whiteboard that I just kind of jot those names down and kind of keep track on them. And then once they're through onto the onboarding piece, I'm the one that connects with them to say, Hey, you're missing something. I can see it looks like you didn't complete your taxes. Are you having any issues? Kind of help troubleshoot. I'm also the main point of contact for all the employees if they're having any issues with login, things like that. So I'm kind of the one person that can assist with that for the
How's the support for my Sims? I mean, isolved. Do you get good support on that end?
Yep, good support. We do have a touch base, I believe every three months with our,
Can you call them or do you use it all? Yep,
You can call them. They actually updated their phone system so you can get the specific department you're looking for now. So that's very helpful. So if I want to talk to somebody about taxes, I can just call them and say, Hey, something's going on with the taxes. Can you help me out? If I want something, some assistance on the timekeeping piece, like, Hey, we're adding this new code, but it's not GL mapping correctly, can you assist with that? They can do stuff on the backend that we can't see, and that kind of helps us out.
Any advice for a potential isolved customer about using the platform? Since you're a power user,
Learn the system in and out. So they're going to give you the system, they're going to give you some training, but really, really know the system that's really going to be your best. They do have university that gives you documents for training, so you don't always have to ask, you can look it up and find it yourself, but really knowing the ins and outs of the system is going to be their best.
Conversational Transcript
Alright, broadcasting live from the GP booth at SHRM 24 in the fishbowl, as they call it Now, I guess today I've got Adam Posner, founder of managing director of NHP Talent Group, a boutique NYC based staffing agency with expertise in marketing, media and advertising. He's also the host of the Pozcast where he interviews top experts, entrepreneurs and thought leaders from the world of entrepreneurship, TA and personal growth and other world-class, amazing humans on their insights into their own career journey. So Adam, great to meet you man.
Chris, thank you so much for having me on. I mean, I feel like I'm in a glass case of emotion. I feel like we have a captive room here and we are the fish in the fishbowl. And thank you to GP for having us here and thanks for having me
On. Definitely, man. Got a chance to meet you last night at the House of Blues there. Did you guys go after that or what'd you guys do?
We did. We went to go to another party, but the Uber delays caused us to get there late. So we got to the party when everything was over and Chris, we were hangry, we were hungry, we needed to eat. And my dude chat over there with the great people of Fountain who brought me out to this event had earmarked one of the best burger places in Chicago and it did not discipline. I'm still thinking, I'm actually go back there today if my flight gets canceled.
Let's talk about recruiting and podcasting, all that stuff. But had you come a recruiter, first of all,
I think that there's very few natural born recruiters that come out of school or whatever and say, when I grow up, I want to be a recruiter. That's really not the way it works. People fall into this profession, they fall into one way or another. And my story make a long story, long born and raised in New Yorker, spent the first 15 years of my career working in marketing, media and advertising. I was an account guy, strategy guy. I worked at internal, at ad agencies. I worked at different brands like American Express at SiriusXM. And about nine years ago I found myself working at VaynerMedia for the great Gary V, for anybody out there who's familiar with him and pretty much a household name. And I ended up losing my job. I thought it was my forever job, Chris, and it wasn't, the grass was not greener on the other side. And that happens. Your expectations are one thing, but reality isn't. And it wasn't the right fit. It wasn't the right place. The company wasn't mature as far as an organizational standpoint. And I'll be honest with you. Were
You were recruiting there?
No, I was a strategist. I was an account lead and I got let go and I was 35 at the time and I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I knew I didn't want to keep doing what I was doing. And on my way out, Gary said to me, stop focusing on the things that you suck at and double down on your strengths. And while I'm there on the day I was getting fired in my kind of debriefing exit interview, we talked about my strengths, what I'm good at, what I'm not so good at. And I talked about him. I'm a good communicator, I actually do know this industry well. And he said, what else do you ever think about doing anything else? And I was like, you know what? My buddy does recruiting and finance. And before I could even finish my sentence, Gary, he goes, you would be a great recruiter.
And I went off on my journey of first saying, wait a minute, I'm really going to change careers at 35. I've been doing this for 15 years. And I thought about the money and I thought about, hey, we just moved to a house, expenses kids and all that kind of fun stuff. And I ate a big piece of humble pie and I said, all right, I'm going to do this. And I didn't just jump into recruiting, I reached out to every recruiter I ever worked with before, some I didn't know, and I asked them for their time, tell me about the industry, tell 'em what I'm getting into. And I went through the process and luckily for me, I got interviewed by a great agency called Onward Search. I didn't want to smile and dial and I got taught by a great mentor, the art and science of recruiting. And here we are nine years later.
Remember your first hire?
I do remember my first hire, but it's actually my first hire was the first fire. This is a good one. Everyone knows in recruiting, especially agency recruiting is guaranteed periods, right? It's a period of a probation period where candy has to stay in and if they get let go, the fee is returned or replacement. So 88 days into a 90 day guarantee, I get a call from the client, they say, listen, unfortunately we're going to have to call him John Doe, let him go. And I say, why is it his performance? They go, no, we suspect he's using drugs in the workplace. So what do you think? My first question was
Which drugs?
Exactly we're in the ad industry. Everyone's smoking weed. It's a creative industry, so they wouldn't tell me that. So I thought it was kind of a BS excuse, but what I did learn is an early lesson, the hard way that these deals are not done until the guarantee period's over and the money clears and it's at the bank. And I'm glad I got that first lesson right? I'm glad I got that first punch in the face early because that set me up to manage expectations with the client, with the candidate and myself moving forward for future deals.
Let's go on to the podcast for a second. How long have you been doing that?
Five and a half years. I think we've recorded almost close to 400 episodes. We get into that 400 point new episode every Friday, having missed a week something I really, you know how it's with podcast man, you have milestones and goals and things. For me, that's the biggest one. It's not the number of downloads because I think that's relative on your industry. And listen, we're not the Kelsey Brothers, we're not the Kardashians, we're not Barstool Sports. That's not our show. But for me, my metric is audience engagement. Yes, downloads to a certain point, but within my niche. But for me it's consistency. The fact that I have not missed a new episode every Friday since November 19th, 2017 is like, it's kind like my, alright, good job me. And that's only important to me.
How do you think podcasting has helped you become be a recruiter in that aspect?
Well, I think that because we're recruiters, we're natural conversational. This is what we do all day long. And I think you take that any good recruiter, their number one characteristic is curiosity. And that applies to podcasting as well. I'm curious in what you're going to say next. I'm curious about learning your story. I'm curious about hearing your why and your mission and my job as a recruiter and a podcast is to pull that out and then frame it up to the right audience. Am I framing it up to the hiring manager and I framing that up to my audiences listening on a podcast?
So you recruiting media, advertising, marketing and NYC, what's that right now? How's the market there?
Well, it's been interesting. It's been a crazy couple of years. We saw early in the beginning of the pandemic, there's a lot of companies that had a huge influx of government funding and they binge hired, that's what they did. It's great for their numbers. There's business coming in and then the economy kind of recalibrated, right? Loans started to become due, interest rates went up. All these economic conditions caused last in first out, and a lot of people got let go. A lot of people got let go. And the first people to let go in any organization during a downturn are recruiters. So if a company doesn't need internal recruiters, they don't need external recruiters. But there is a little bit of a silver lining there that happens on these cycles where companies let go of their internal recruiters and they're not ready to make a full-time hire. And that's as an opportunity for an external recruiter to come in on a contract basis. And that's where we're seeing a lot of these opportunities now where it's a lower risk, it's a lower commitment, and they could bring in an external recruiter for a lower overhead.
You got any sourcing stories over the years?
Yeah, I mean there's always kind of interesting ones there and I think it comes down to sourcing and being creative with your sourcing. I loved tapping into my network. It's so funny. My wife says all the time, she's like, I could tell you four things I need from the grocery store. Two minutes before you're going and you won't remember any of them by the time you get to the grocery store. But in your crazy recruiter brain of yours, you could remember somebody that you met six years ago at a conference who said, you should meet somebody and then you go find that candidate one way or another. You figure out who that person was and you're a crazy investigator. So I think that's a skillset that you have. But as far as stories, I think that it's kind of those boomerang moments where I spoke to a candidate six or seven years ago and somehow they come up in your memory, they come up on your LinkedIn and you see them and you think about it. I think Chris would be great for that job. And it's just because you made that relationship and that connection and you remembered it, you have the ability to kind of go back. I mean, I met a candidate came up to me once at a Mets game and he goes, do you remember you placed me, I had a candidate.
I remember my first thank you, like a written thank you letter for a candidate. And that kind of made me feel kind of, that was cool. She sent me a thank you card. That's why we do what we do in recruiting. Yes, there's money on the table to be made, but we wouldn't be in this business. We didn't care about people.
How about the most creative subject line you ever used to reach out to somebody that's with that do?
I mean, I have a 15 year experience in marketing and media. I literally ran email marketing for SiriusXM and I AB test subject lines a bit. And I think you have to be careful too, depending on the role, depending on the title which you're going for. Sometimes I will try a money motivator in there. Sometimes I'll try an opportunity motivator and I always personalize. That's kind of it. But from a creative subject, my partner Kevin, who I work with a lot, he's kind of the king of the creative one. So I pick up some fun things from him. I don't know him off the top of my head, but he's got some creative ones there that are, it's the hook, it's get your attention. You just want to get their attention to open the email. Same thing with the interview process. The resume's job is to get you the interview, the email subject line's job is to get you to open the email, to click on the job description to reach out to me. And once you start to think about that from a process standpoint and focus on the desired action of each step in the process, you'll become a better recruiter. That's a good question.
Do you use any tools for sourcing beyond LinkedIn or the usuals or any particular
Yeah, yeah. I use, so we'll talk about tools two different ways. A CRM tool, I use a platform called Inters Celler. It's fantastic. How is that? I've heard of it. Yeah. Inters Seller is great. They're owned by Greenhouse. I got acquired by Greenhouse. They're our sponsor. They're our core sponsor. And I'm not just saying that because I used them first before they were a sponsor
For my recruiting practice. I use them for my recruiting practice and they're an email scraping tool. They script the email from the LinkedIn, they pull it into a CRM and then I have a multi-stage drip campaigns, which I use for the outreach. It's a fantastic tool. On the other side of the house, I use chat GPTA lot in a few different ways. I've used this from a sourcing perspective where I take a client's job description and I use it to synthesize talking points when I'm talking to a candidate. And I'll also use it for bullying searches.
Explain that more.
Yeah, absolutely. So I have a few prompts that I use that I've worked on and honed and I keep them in a save draft or I'll take a job description that comes in. And generally speaking, the prompts are either from this job description, what are 10 questions I should ask a candidate on a screening call. I will also ask Chad GBT to take that job description and synthesize it down to a one paragraph add and use a certain tone of who I'm looking for. And I'll customize it a bit with different characteristics and tone and definitions within the chat. GPT prompt. There's a lot you could do, and I urge every recruiter out there to experiment because this tool is here. It's fantastic. And if you don't at least embrace it a little bit, you're going to get left behind.
Do you worry about AI taking away recruiter jobs? What's your stance on that?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes down to using AI as a tool and not a crutch. And I think there's going to be a lot of functions that AI is certainly going to take over from our day-to-day job. So the trick is either if you're working within an organization, how do you make yourself invaluable where you are the one that's pushing AI forward to make your job faster, more efficient, and the processes that can be automated so you have more time to focus on the human part, whether it be with the candidates, whether it be with the hiring managers, for example. There are some great video tools out there and audio recording tools where you're able to record a candidate screening call, isolate those key points and either put it into text or clip it up. So that goes to the hiring manager and now you're not playing the telephone game. Now you're hearing directly what Chris said to Adam on that call, and here's what my notes are on top of that, or example Chris said this, this is spot on what we're looking for. You gave me a great example here and here's why I think he'd be great for it. And then the hiring manager could listen to that clip directly
Got any advice for somebody who wants to be a new recruiter?
Yeah, and I say don't. It's a rough industry and I think there's two sides of it. One, embrace the tech, know how to use it, understand that this is a rollercoaster of an industry and mind your mental health. This is one of the toughest positions because if you're an agency recruiter like I am, we are selling on all fronts. I'm selling the candidate, I'm selling the client, I'm selling the company I'm selling all the time. And with sales comes rejections. And if you can't handle rejections, you're in the wrong industry.
Ttell us where to go Learn more, man.
Yes, you can check out the recruiting practice at NHP Talent Group and you can also check out our Web3 practice, probably nothing talent. I have a new job board up there on NHP Talent Group. Check out thepozcast.com
There you go, folks.
That's how we do it.
Jocelyn King, SHRM-SCP is the CEO and Founder of VirgilHR, a SaaS solution that empowers HR professionals to make smart, compliant employment and labor law decisions in real-time. We discussed a lot around compliance particularly as it pertains to recruiting.
HR has been the passion and focus of Jocelyn’s entire career as she’s supported high-growth technology start-ups and public companies throughout her tenure. She defines herself as a true HR generalist and has touched on all aspects of HR in her more senior roles. Jocelyn has strong expertise in creating and executing HR strategy, managing employee relations for multi-state and global organizations, developing a diverse and high-performing work culture, owning organization development and change management, and crafting the total reward, talent development, and talent acquisition strategies.
In addition to HR, what has also remained consistent in her career has been technology. Jocelyn has worked for technology companies most of her career and, as an HR executive, has had the privilege of supporting executives and departments in all functions across the organizations. In her role as CEO for VirgilHR, she’s displayed proven success in building a venture-backed technology company from the ground up. She has held previous roles as the Vice President of People, North America for Ocado Group, as well as Vice President of People for Cybrary, a Series-C start up. She’s spent a majority of her career working with a range of tech companies from Pre-Seed to Post-IPO.
Laura Maffucci is G-P’s Head of HR, and she leads the company’s global workforce, talent, and employee experience. She operates from a people-first mindset and strongly believes that diversity of thought is paramount for a healthy workspace. We chatted about AI in HR and their new AI powered onboarding tool.
Laura previously held leadership positions in the Global Total Rewards team at G-P, from Sr. Director to VP. Before this, she led Total Rewards & HRIS at Progress, a tech company focused on products to develop, deploy and manage high-impact applications. Prior to Progress, she held roles of increasing responsibility with Ocean Spray Cranberries, where she was awarded HR Award for Innovation and Creativity (2016). Her tenure at Ocean Spray Cranberries was preceded by roles with an emphasis on compensation and HR practices.
In her 20+ year career in HR, Laura has spoken on global and national platforms about compensation, employee well-being and mental health. She’s a staunch advocate for the employee experience and creating a culture of inclusivity. Laura is passionate about the future of work, normalizing the value of work everywhere, and enabling employees across the globe to be their best selves and add value wherever they go and whatever they do.
Recorded live from the G-P booth in Chicago at SHRM24.
RecTech Media Travel Sponsored by Jobcase
Hackajob, the reverse tech hiring platform recently launched a new on demand hiring solution for tech workers…joining me now to talk about it is their Head of Growth, Luke Coleman.
TOPICS DISCUSSED
1. What motivated hackajob to launch the on-demand contract-based hiring solution?
2. Can you walk us through how the on-demand works?
3. In a recent announcement, you mentioned that 60% of your global tech talent pool is interested in temporary opportunities. How did you gather this data, and what does it say about the changing preferences of tech professionals?
4. What are the key benefits for employers using hackajob on-demand compared to traditional hiring methods or other freelance platforms?
5. How does hackajob ensure the quality and reliability of the freelancers and contract talent in your marketplace?
6. Can you share some examples or success stories of companies that have already started using hackajob on-demand?
7. How do you see the future of tech hiring evolving?
Welcome to a new monthly series on the podcast. I am teaming up with the team at Qualifi, a hiring platform that helps recruiters screen, score, schedule, and interview talent before they go cold.
Each month they pick a recruiter of the month and for June that recruiter is… Kathleen Armbruster Currently serving as the Director of Talent Acquisition at consulting firm called Studio Science, Kathleen has significantly contributed to the evolution of recruiting practices within the company. Her innovative recruitment strategies have notably included the integration of all functional groups to foster a culture of accountability and efficiency, which has significantly sped up the hiring process.
Read More on Qualifi.hr about Kathleen.
TOPICS DISCUSSED
What's been your career path into recruiting?
Set the stage: what types of roles do you currently recruit for, how big is the company, how many hires per year?
What recruitment strategies have you been implementing to speed up hiring but also to make sure its fair and equitable?
Lets talk tech: what kind of HR tech stack do you have in place?
What’s one thing you see other companies doing wrong when it comes to recruiting and what advice would you give them?
Are you hiring on your team at all?
Do you know great talent acquisition pro? Nominate them here.
Madeline Laurano founder of Aptitude Research recently partnered with HireRoad (a people analytics platform) for the latest insights on the state of people analytics and what it means for your business…she joins me now on the show to discuss…
TOPICS
What prompted this study between Aptitude Research and HireRoad?
What was the knowledge gap in the industry that you wanted to uncover?
Talk me through your survey process — format, audiences surveyed, titles, and number of respondents.
What, in your opinion, were the biggest takeaways from this study?
What surprised you the most in terms of respondent feedback?
The study revealed that only 1 in 3 companies are using people data in their recruitment process. What’s their reasoning?
What are the consequences of not using people data in recruitment?
Of those companies that are leveraging people analytics in their hiring process, how exactly are they using it?
What’s the ROI for companies using people analytics in recruitment, versus those who aren’t?
How is HireRoad making it easier for hiring teams to leverage people analytics?
The survey revealed that many companies think people analytics are only for enterprise-level companies with big teams and big budgets. How is HireRoad making this data feasible for smaller companies?
What’s your advice to companies not yet leaning into people analytics as part of their recruitment process?
Sam Fitzroy is the CEO and co-founder of Dalia, a candidate conversion platform that activates hidden talent pools and proactively builds interest through personalized touchpoints, automatically. He joins me on today’s podcast to discuss their latest platform release.
TOPICS
Just remind the audience what you guys do first
What’s new at Dalia?
Why should recruiting teams care about conversions?
Are you seeing an increase in applications across your clients generally?
How easy is it for recruiting teams to measure conversion rates that matter?
What’s the impact of improving conversion rates?
Can you share how a customer or job seeker has benefited from Dalia?
Biggest challenge for youguys right now?
Today’s Job search experience
I roamed the show floor at Unleash America to chat with some vendors with something to say.
ORDER of APPEARANCE
Blue Saturn
Hiring Branch
Sense
BrightMine
Flockity
Nexxt
Nestor