The Talent Ecologist - Building Vitality

Speak easy, unstoppable. — Hey everybody, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about a few things of what I'm actually doing right now in my company because of all the things that Dr. Molly was talking about. We're all seeing some shifts in how we work and we're all trying to figure out how do we implement this technology that's either been given to us or sometimes for being honest forced upon us, right? And so that's what I'm going to talk about today and I'll give you live examples of just what I'm going through. So happy to share. So while we're moving past our standard TA operations metrics, transactional recruiting, all the things that we've been looking towards, I thought about it from an ecologist perspective. I am not an ecologist. Some of you may know me. I'm definitely not an ecologist. But if you think about what they do, they look at an ecosystem. And if we look at the ecosystem of talent inside of our organizations, we can actually flex some of our recruiting muscles and partner with some folks that we may or may not partnered with in the past. And so ecologist from an ecosystem of talent, that's where we're moving, right? And so um Let me check a movement mouse here. So if you think about the comparison here, we have a talent machine on one side and ecosystem on the other. Now, if you want to drop in chat, tell me the differences right off the bat that you can think of just from the visuals. But I'll show you what I think, right? So if you think about from a machine perspective, you have interchangeable parts. It's highly efficient, right? But it's very hierarchical when you think about it from a talent machine perspective. And it's more like resource management than it is for growing people, right? And as many of you know, our business about people not machines. And so, now there's nothing wrong with the talent machine, right? In the right operation, in the right company, you need that. But I think in today's market, thinking about it as this adaptive ecosystem that's cross-functional and it's about workforce planning, I think it might be a little more insightful for you. But um so the old way from the talent machine, again, it's very rigid. Those interchangeable part kind of mindset where the new way or the way that I'm working in today is just adaptive, right? And it deals with the companies the companies burdens or the companies problems, the things we got to solve for, right? And so, I thought about it from this way, machines can break, right? But ecosystems adapt. And so, hopefully that's where we're moving towards especially as we evolve with some more technology. So, um ecologists also have something called signals, right? So, you think about signals within the ecosystem that tell you something's happening. And so, these are the three that I'm going to talk to you about today. And then we're going to do some actual show and tell, a little bit about what I'm doing. And so, we'll go from left to right. We're talking about the labor market, right? I mean, we just heard about all the headwinds trends that are happening within specifically the United States, but it's all an interconnected world, right? So, if you've heard of the big stay, give me a thumbs up or a little firework in the chat because every time I look into my daily news reading, they're talking about the impacts from the great resignation which leads to the big stay as it's all connected, right? And so, um and we're feeling that, right? Because I just heard someone talk about a time to fill metric and I was like, "Huh, well that's interesting. " Because if everybody's tracking that, they're going the wrong way, right? So, it's not exactly a good measurement in my opinion right now. But, from what from the last presentation, this is where I was sweating too. The numbers match up from 2022 till now, almost a 50% drop in job creation, right? This labor market cooling that we're seeing, when people had the great resignation, they left for on the average for pay increases. And so, with the cooling of the labor market now, why would you move? Why would you move if you've got the pay that you want? You see the geopolitical things going on. There's some uncertainty with making a move, right? Cuz you've got a great place and you have the salary, cuz why move, right? And that doesn't even count for labor participation rate falling as well. Um which I have some questions for Dr. Maali for. The low hire low low fire piece, I I'm now celebrating about a year and change here at this company because I was part of a reduction in force. We had over hired and I think I was on a on the phone with a mentor of mine right as I got a part of a riff. They didn't do workforce planning. They didn't think ahead through the curve of

the spike of jobs from recovering from the pandemic. How do you manage that? Well, it wasn't managed. It's just reduction in force. I get it, it's business. But again, now we're kind of getting to this I don't want to say homeostasis, but that's the only word that comes to mind of where we're at from a labor perspective. And so, and then that leads to the candidate immobility, right? And so, the numbers here sourced from uh SHRM and then also the BLS JOLTS reports, things like that. So, let's shift a little bit. Now, I'll talk about our tech evolution. So, I would argue, sorry, I would submit to you that we are in the middle of the fifth industrial revolution. So, an industrial revolution means that the things you're doing have been greatly enhanced and it changes the way you do business. produce products. It basically changes how you operate, right? Um so I'd say we're in the the fifth uh industrial revolution. Um if you've not had AI hit your TA tech stack in the past a year, give me a thumbs up. Be very impressed if anybody does. Um if you think about um our tech stack evolution, whether you've bought something or whether you've um been given something new or whether you're just keeping the same stuff you've had, they've all adopted AI or AI-ish type things into your tech stack. So you're either um uh you're either being uh given AI capability or you're being uh told to adopt AI capability. Um I think that number is conservative. So I balance that those two numbers uh I balanced a few numbers to get to the 70. I would think that's very conservative. And I didn't see any thumbs go up either, so that sounds like everybody who's on this call has AI in their tech stack in some way, shape, or form. Uh and then we're talking about what to automate um and where AI workload balancing can happen, right? Cuz everyone's given us these tools. Like, okay, well great, we'll go do it. Go do what, right? What are we going to automate? How's it going to affect the candidate experience? my workflow? Um there's a bunch of questions as we grapple with how we're going to um really utilize and make it effective um within our TA practices, right? Um just because we're AI enabled or we're using the cutting edge tech doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be better, especially when you're grappling with some of the geopolitical situations going on uh and the candidate market that it is today. Okay. Um I want to talk about talent intelligence. We've seen the rise of talent intelligence um the past three to four years. In my previous role, I was doing a little of talent intelligence as a researcher uh on an executive recruiting team and then using some of those skills with normal recruiting in tech. We'll show you in a little bit, but talent intelligence will help us figure out indicators and show you an example of that in a moment. But if you're in a sourcing position now, give me a thumbs up in the chat if you're titled a sourcer. I would bet I would bet that you're you're doing talent intelligence type work. You're no longer at the super high end of the funnel, you're bringing insights to the table. And we watched this slowly move into the role of a sourcer if you're still there and a sourcing role. We've watched this intelligence requirement from the business creep into this the scope shift of a sourcer over the past I would even say five years, right? Bringing data to the meeting, recruiter watching trends in the market, but taking it one step further to see around corners I think is where a healthy recruiting department is going to need to bring intelligence to the table so that we can help the business see around corners because of the lag time now for candidate mobility, right? Um and I laugh because I in the past couple of years I've heard a bunch of it's all about skills-based hiring now. And recruiters go, "What do you mean? We've always been doing it this way, right? We've always been looking for skills, we just never documented or we never talked about it in a specific focused arena of how we're going to recruit, right? We've always been skills-based. " Um but when you talk about skills-based hiring as you select as you source select sustain, right? For this talent ecological presentation, skills go throughout, right? Skills should be not just from the sourcing, the selection, but it also goes to performance management. And I'll give you an example of that here in a second as well. Uh and I think recruitment marketing is going to get a big bump into talent intelligence um, because you're using the skills and a com- a combined uh, a good talent intelligence um, dossier for your divisions and your uh, and your organizations. Pairing all that together and having a very um, focused AI-enabled recruitment marketing um

function within your orgs um, can really uh, get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. Um, but then it's scale, right? And it's not one message to all. So, I think that we're going to have some uh, some increased spend there. I think it's uh, it's almost ripe for that kind of uh, kind of spend as well. Okay. So, keeping in line with our ecologist um, our ecologist theme um, yes, these are mushrooms. But what we're not seeing is uh, the mycelium network underneath. If you know what a mycelium network is, drop a mushroom in the chat. I'm kidding. Or a thumbs up in the chat. For those of you who don't, um, a mycelium network is the root structure and the systems that share and bring nutrients. Um, so what you're seeing above the ground, the the fungi, if you will, um, that is the result of having a healthy mycelium network. We have a couple of thumbs. Great. Some other bio nerds in the chat. Love it. Um, and so I think uh, as a talent ecologist um, when you build a healthy foundational system, not just in recruiting um, and not just the marketing, not just the talent intelligence, but also uh, throughout the talent management principles in your company, um, we can grow a healthy mycelium network, if you will. So, here's what I'm what we're uh, I kind of struggled putting this slide together because um, if any of you a couple of you in the chat have known me for more than 10 years. And um, at one point, I would say and I think I this on a video, uh, we're the fun side of HR or I'd never uh be in HR, but what's funny is half the things I'm talking about today are very HR HRBP-ish type things. Um and so I'm going to walk you um from left to right and top to bottom for this screen. And I'm a sucker for a Venn diagram as well. So, um when we talk about a healthy talent ecology, right? Um instead of going from recruiting and then putting them uh through the recruiting process and you're vetting for skills, you're vetting for culture, and then you put them in the organization, and they get a performance evaluation, whatever the their rubric is for it, right? 6 months down the road, and rarely have I personally ever had skills brought into the mix. It's how am I doing today against the goals given. Well, this is what I'm doing today with my HR business partner, my VP of HR. Instead of working from left to right from attract and then uh doing a skills assessment, selection, make sure culture, and all that stuff, and then we push off, they're onboarded kind of in the middle of that slide here, uh and then they get performance evaluation. I'm working backwards. So, we'll go the perform uh the HR business partner and I go to the hiring manager or whomever and say, "What are the skills this person needs to do? What are the What do they do for this role? " And we're doing it from building a performance evaluation checklist first. We derive skills, and then we go recruit off of it. So, this is a really um uh a really tight partnership between my HR department uh and I uh and bringing it the skills throughout the entire employee life cycle is crucial um for us. We're uh the company where I was a medium-sized company um and I think getting the right skills at the right time it's crucial, right? So, why have uh a performance evaluation that says, "Hey, you meet our company values, are good culture fit, but you're not doing well at this, and this. " What are we talking about here, right? We're I was recruited for this, now I'm being performed against this. And so, being clear um throughout uh their recruitment process all the way to their first 30, 60, 90 days until their first performance evaluation, just brings more strength uh and clarity throughout the employees um uh through employees' vision as they navigate our company. Um I'm going to draw your eye down to the bottom. Here's where sometimes data is just dictated to us as a recruiting organization. We have budgets, got that, understood. And we have to hire um you know, a data scientist for $100,000, right? Joking, but uh we're given a budget sometimes. Um where now I'm sharing candidate market information with tools that we've bought or have uh have access to um before we even go and start talking about uh the recruiting piece, right? Like, you want to hire um a uh director of marketing? Great. Here's a candidate map for their compensation. Here's the skill sets we just talked about. Um so, how are we map how are we uh mapping this to our internal organization? And furthermore, do we have upper mobility or left uh left or right mobility, right? That lateral move as well. So, the things that we share from a recruiting perspective from the left circle to the right is really we all want the right skills to perform for the business. We want the right culture uh the culture add for the business, right? Because we want others to bring ideas and their own backgrounds and thoughts. Um but also, we're sharing compensation data throughout the process. So that we don't have a higher

straight to the budget, where can we adapt our uh our internal P& L for that? Um so, I think this is uh this has been a big shift for me personally because I typically partner with HR really well, but sharing data um all the way from uh organizational planning then moving to recruiting is a new muscle for me. Um so, if you're doing something like this at your organization right now, give me a thumbs up. I don't know. Oh, great. Love that. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of thumbs. That's great. We're on the same page. Cool. All right. And so we talk about skills-based uh based hiring. We're also talking about skills-based recruiting um and succession. So uh that head of marketing role that I was just talking about, the job description is there for everybody to see. We can go into it. And in the job description, it's clearly laid out. Here are the skills. In the performance evaluation sheet, which I didn't get a clean screenshot of, those skills still show up. So it's again, it's the same signal across the employee life cycle. Um but also when we uh if you'll notice the bottom, we're what we're looking to hire uh somebody Oh, that should say uh FY27 Q1. Um but and we have a marketing operations specialist now. We're going to be recruiting for a head of marketing um in the very near future. So as we're recruiting for this head of marketing role, I'm asking my HR and I'm asking the hiring manager, how do we not have to hire for this for the future? What skills do we need to grow in your marketing operations specialist um to get them into the head of marketing? What projects do they need to do? How are we going to have them um work on a demand generation strategy as they execute it to get to the point to where they're going to own it and then possibly develop it, right? And so that skills-based recruiting um and succession uh is is uh is critical for us. Um and we're building this as a muscle um in across our entire organization. And so now we're looking through the I would say the frameworks or the scaffolding of this marketing department. We have head a marketing, marketing ops, and then a future growth. Great. Love that. Um that brings me to the next slide. Where and I know this is pretty busy. This is a screenshot of uh HireEZ search, right? And not everybody in this call will have HireEZ, so I do have prompts that'll help you get to some of this information we're talking about. Uh I'll talk about that in a second. Um but when you look at this, this is the actual search that I've got that I'm ready to go. It hasn't kicked off yet. I haven't been given the green light, but we've got everything all our ducks in a row. We've talked about the performance management, skills, talked about um location, budget, all that stuff. We lined all that up. Um and now I've got uh a sample size of roughly 509 candidates within the geos that we want to look into that are skills mapped. They're within our compensation range, at least according to uh the information we get from HireEZ. And I've already got a messaging that's ready to go, right? So all I literally have to do is put all these uh 509 uh candidates This says 504, old screenshot, whichever. 500-ish candidates into the good fit, and it automates the messaging, right? Um and I think the timing on this is where we have that candidate immobility, right? Um the timing on this is crucial. So the head of marketing um was unexpected timing. We knew that there was uh um this person was looking to grow and move on, move forward, and do great things. Um Uh and we knew it was coming, but this timing was a lot sooner than we anticipated. I'm going to go back one really quick because it'll take us at least 90 days uh to fill this, I'm guessing, based off of uh of how uh how the uh current market is and what we actually want, and our interview process, and all the other things that we do internally, which is quite robust. Um but, whilst I'm recruiting this person, right, I can already start messaging folks that have skill sets within this market operations specialist well ahead of time. Hey, we're currently hiring ahead of uh uh we're not currently building out our marketing organization. We're hiring um the head of marketing. We're going to get things ready. Would you be interested in say the first quarter of Y 27? If they're if we do the same thing for this operations specialist, run this same report, we can start engaging the market early. And so, I think that's one way we're getting ahead of this uh increased um this increased time uh to hire someone, right? We are seeing our hiring times creep up um across

our organization and our consultant side within the corporate environment as well. Um That said, um if you don't have an HireEasy uh platform, and you're still uh scraping things together, um all you have to do is uh drop me a message, drop me a follow, uh and I've got some uh really great um compensation uh prompts that'll get you in the right direction. They're not as uh robust as say uh uh Dr. Mallory's organization, but it'll point you in the right direction if you don't have these things. Um there's a quick talent uh there's a talent intelligence engine that I have where you can drop in uh um a job description or a name, and it'll prompt you with questions, ask you more questions about your organization, and it'll spit out a um a decent talent intelligence report. Um and I'm pretty sure everybody here has some sort of job description engine here. Um so, uh these are some things that I can uh share with you as well. And I think I've got 4 minutes left. — So, bear with me 1 second. I'm going to share one other screen to show you. Hang on, managing some screens here. Sorry for the dead space there, Dan. Okay. Share. Screen two. And share. Somebody give me a thumbs up if you see an org chart. — Yep, you're good. — Great, here we go. All right, so what I'm doing right now currently is I'm mapping out my entire organization, the jobs the job skills, and we're also showing like for instance Q3, I need to hire a recruiter. I need to start getting through some um uh through some mar- market mapping now, right? And or for instance we're going to be hiring product manager Q uh at the end of this quarter this is coming, right? So, I'm going to work through the same thing with him. So, the reason I'm showing you this is not to show you my workload, but I'm showing you this as far as start mapping out and getting some time frames within your partners. Have the conversations now. Have the conversations with your HR partners. Um and show them the same information. Take some screenshots from the previous presentation. Um and show them the lag in the market, right? And so, getting ahead of it before we get the decision to go is the best bet.