CareerXroads & Jeri Lynn Wilson: Live from The Shaker Vision Lab at UNLEASH America

[Music] All right, welcome everybody. Uh, I am Chris Hoy. I am the the C What am I? Where am I today? Uh, I am the CEO of Career Crossroads, uh, CXR Community. Happy to be here today. We’re actually at Unleash. We’re at the Shaker booth, uh, kind of hanging out, uh, and talking to some of the folks that are kind of coming by and, uh, re really at a at a pretty well attended so far. Unleash. We’re on day one. Uh, and it’s kind of fun and I’m very excited. I have Jerry Lynn. Do you want to give us kind of an overview? You’re at Cox Enterprises. You want to give us kind of an overview of what you do exactly over there at Cox? So, I lead strategy and operations for Cox Enterprises talent acquisition team. And so, what that really means is we have a tower of vendor solutions. We outsource about half of our recruitment. And so, that’s under that as well as vendor management. We also have all of our recruiter enablement. So our tools, our technology, our um projects under project management under that, our talent insights, and then we have candidate experience and internal mobility. So it sounds like to me you get all the cool stuff. I get the fun stuff. You get the toys, you get the Yeah, you get to go all the shiny bobbles, all the not so shiny bobbles, all that. So So this will be a great event for you to be at. So we to kind of go through and do more shopping. Have you seen You don’t have to name your names. Have you seen anything yet so far that’s like Oh, um I’m really interested. We just launched Paradox, so I’m going to just go by and say hi. You should. You should. Um and I I hope I find Hired Score. Uh we’re going to be working with them soon. Okay. So, all right. That is very exciting. Yeah, I would definitely stop by the Paradox booth. It is a good team. It’s a bad time. Well, so talk to me a little bit about like internal mobility, like internal recruitment. Can you can you kind of lay kind of lay out what that looks like at Cox Enterprises? Yeah. So, that’s one of the big shifts for RTA strategy this year is internal mobility. And so last year we had some transformations across the business and we had these career counselors being stood up in the candidate experience side. And so these internal mobility advisors are kind of career coaches if you will. And so whether they were going through a transformation or we had some impacts and it’s almost like an outplacement service but for internals and we were really able to like bring that to cost and say how do we help these individuals network and that’s different than the services they got from the outplacement team. And so now we’re able to really transition that to how do we help our employees regardless of where they are in their journey, in their growth, in their development across the organization. We it’s a huge company. We have 45,000 employees and we have an abundance of development programs and so it’s kind of hard to navigate sometimes of like who do I network and how do I network and who do I call and do I need to dust up my resume? Do I need to practice on interviewing? And this is kind of somebody that can sit side by side and help you navigate that. I love that. So, I mean, all too often you see these big organizations, right? Not not, you know, unlike the size of Cox Enterprises who kind of just put it on the the employee to figure out what their next move is. Yeah, we we propped up an internal career page and we propped up the job listings. They’ll be up for two weeks before we tell the whole rest of the world about them. You’re on your own. Yeah. Here’s a PDF. Learn on your own. That’s right. Yeah. Here are the rules. So, you have not done your time and title, time, and grade. That’s, you know, all of that, all that fun stuff. It’s really interesting to see in the last couple years organizations kind of doing these internal placement opportunities at these internal staffing centers and I have to imagine you are not only going to see dividends in terms of uh that mobility factor right that immediate but you’re talking about retention now. Yeah. Because now they’re moving internal they’re they’re moving their careers forward internally rather than just taking off and going somewhere else. Yeah. 100%. We’re hoping that that increases our voice of the experience and voice of the employee surveys. So yeah. Are you already get How long’s that been propped up? Oh, um Q4 of last year. Okay. And so we’re really Oh, very recent. We’re really just getting into kind of the rules of engagement and how do we work with our own recruiters? Um so those career coaches and how do they connect with our recruiters, etc. So was there, you know, I got to ask this question. Was there what about the politics though? Because any any leader who’s ever tried to take on internal mobility deals with, you know, hiring managers, you got these lines of business who say that’s my talent. you can’t have them or they’re sure sure you can take them but I need 18 months to finish a project or you know that kind of thing and and sometimes there’s a lot of headbutting going on. How does how does that get managed well at Cox? Um we don’t have an issue with politics at Cox anymore. Well done. Bravo. No from like a real standpoint um we haven’t had to address it yet. Um so it’s really about how do we help the individuals identify the skills that they have identify the skills that they need and that can be in that own like division in that own department right um or it could be how do we uh create some fluidity across the organization and but it’s not that we are identifying the role for the individual and so because of that we haven’t gotten into that politic yet of like that’s great yeah coaching people if you will now with some of the tools and as we look at um careerhub and other things in workday that might become a little bit more of that poaching element and so then we’ll have to address it when we get yeah cuz now you’re crossing crossing lines if you will right these different lines of business and moving over I think that roaching I have to say like we were out at Cox Enterprises not too long ago you guys hosted one of our meetings and just the the culture uh and the vibe uh within the headquarters I don’t think there was and it’s a wildly impressive campus oh my gosh it’s a magical place I calm down. Walk around like is this place real? It really I have to tell you like I and I even said this when we were leaving like I don’t think there was one amenity there was one sort of service available to the employees that we didn’t see in use whether it was like these big loungey chairs or that gorgeous courtyard about where people are outside or the on demand coffee we tal a little bit about we ordered some coffee for our tour got man it was great. So, you’ve got a great internal culture. I have to imagine that’s going to help ease some of that internally. 100%. I love it. I love it. Okay. Is there a tactic or a shift you think people are kind of underestimating right now? If you want to step outside of if you’d like to step outside of internal village, it’s okay. But is there something kind of going on in the space you think people are kind of overlooking at large? I don’t know that it’s a new a new tactic or a new shift really. But I think that from an operation standpoint, we aren’t very good at balance. Um, and so balance between the processes and the experience and finding the right balance is so critical. And I think that that’s one thing that often gets overlooked is from an operation standpoint all day long. I can tell you like, oh, how do we make this process more efficient? What are the SLAs’s that we’re driving? But it’s much more difficult to say like what’s the experience that we’re leaving behind and how do we think first about that experience and then support it through those processes. Okay. So are you is the is the goal there Julen to to sort of reverse engineer what you’re expecting the outcome to be and go through it through that lens or is there is there another approach that your teams are taking? It’s thinking about experience first. So experience should drive the process. Process should drive our tools, our technology, the data and all the things down the line that is typical operations. But if we think about experience first and balance that with the need to get faster, more efficient, cheaper, etc. Yeah. Speed speeds I mean speed wins most of the time. M so be being able to care for that is huge. Yeah. Yeah. And I have to imagine if you’re implementing this within everything that you do right across the board, you’ve got to start seeing some sort of fruits for that laborer, right? Are there any big wins you could share? From a balance standpoint, I don’t know that I have um big wins from a balance standpoint. Um when you cut this out and edit, I think that we can talk about how that might be my first piece of advice. Okay. All right. I think that’s good. big big piece of advice. So, let’s do that. Let’s just jump right to it. Uh, if you’re going to give a piece of advice to TA leaders for the for as we kind of march through this year. Yeah. Right. Is there something you’d say, “Hey, look, just don’t leave this out. Don’t forget this. Make sure you take this on.” Yeah. I’m really good about forgetting things. Preach. You You’re the same. Oh my gosh. And I can talk all day about the mistakes that I’ve made and things that I would want to do differently. um probably less good at giving advice, but one of the things that I think I left out this year is um being really thoughtful about my approach to AI and the justification for the budget for it. And so it was really easy to justify it to the recruiting team of like, hey, we want to take off this administrative burden. We want to make things faster for you. We want to take away some of the administrative tasks that you have to do. We want to automate that stuff so you get more time with the candidate. you get that human connection where that the value ad activities really come into you know more insights a better connection with the candidates with the hiring managers a better contribution for CTA overall or cocktail and acquisition overall and it was also it was just so interesting because recruiters yeah I’m game and that really I think helped our adoption of things like paradox later on because they understood that they get more human time with the candidates with more human time with the hiring managers which was fantastic, but I wish I would have been more thoughtful and thought about what does finance need to hear from me because they don’t necessarily see the quantification of that value. And so I I I realize now that we’re getting to budget season, I’m going to have to add in some of that story. And it’s not just about the hours we saved, right? It’s not just about the manpower we saved. It’s not about the efficiency we drove in the process. It’s that and all of these other value add. So now I’ve got to pause. I need to think about how to quantify that and make sure that it doesn’t feel like an add-in right at budget season. Yeah, I think that’s Well, I think that’s super insightful because you’re talking about your own lessons learned along the way. You took you took a user first approach because you knew it was the right direction and everybody’s all on board. Communicate, communicate, communicate. And now you’re going back and thinking, “Oh, this stuff’s expensive and how are we going to make sure we sustain this?” I mean, yeah. Well, I’m also selling it of like in the first few weeks we save 300 man hours. That’s fantastic. And we’re speeding the time to fill, we’re speeding the time to interview scheduling. And that’s making a big a big difference. And I can tie that to revenue targets, right? Because we’re filling roles faster. But that also means like, well, do you need the heads? Well, yes, I need the heads because we really need to use that time and the in the other value ad aspects of things. And I just need to take a step back and quantify that and I should have done it before budget season. Well, I think look, it’s a great lesson to learn. It’s an absolutely great lesson to learn. I think what’s really interesting is you got what’s happening. We see a lot of organizations like yours is they’re implementing these solutions. Great great example of paradox, right? Which you you know the math math like this stuff’s going to pay for itself after after a period of time. They’re implementing this and we’re thinking, oh my gosh, we’re saving all this headcount. But but the reality is for the team leaders who are in those trenches and no no what we’re doing is we’re we’re leveling the work that these recruiters are already doing cuz we were already doing too much with too little and now we’re kind of leveling that out and now we can optimize. Yeah. But to your point uh you know there’s more money to go back and like if you’re getting top top money or if you’re getting money that comes right out of the TA budget like those those are really big conversations D. Yeah. Very much so. And I feel like if I would have focused on what are those quantifiable aspects of the human the humanpowered connection points, how can I tell that story and use that from the very beginning? It would have been a little bit easier come budget conversations. Yeah. Interesting. I imagine though, so you’re a leader that’s not only bringing the people with you, right? Which is I think that’s what makes a great director, that’s what makes a great leader. You’ve got to be hearing kind of their they testify along the way of like this is a game changer for me or here’s where I stumbled or here’s where it’s working. Like that’s got to be that’s got to be great in your quiver to begin to kind of write those stories. Take those forward. I hope so. Yeah. It’s good stuff. I Well, look, I’m excited to watch the work. I love the work you guys do. Thank you. Uh we’re just big fans of the team over there. Jen, if you were going to if you were going to write a book, you know, we ask everybody, right? If you were going to write a book uh about the state of things, all the things you’ve learned, the work you do, what would the title of the book be? Um I think the title of the book would be my motto for my team this year and that is that curiosity, connection or curiosity, courage and connection. And so we have this motto of we’re in operations and we are really problem solvers for our talent delivery side of talent acquisition. And so if we can build a curiosity and what people are doing, why they’re doing it, and how they’re doing it, then we can spot problems or spot efficiencies. And if we can be courageous enough to act on what we find through that curiosity, then we can really start to build a connection, whether it’s with the recruiting team, the talent delivery team, whether it’s with hiring managers, whether it’s with the business and kind of what our revenue targets are. Then it becomes this flywheel of being it’s easier to be more curious. It’s easy to be more courageous. It’s easier, be more connected. 100%. I love the I love the tie with curiosity and action. So, not being afraid to actually take action. I love it. Look, uh, who who’s who’s going to get the first signed copy? Well, I would love to say I mean, my team’s fantastic, but they would not want my book because I talk about that all the time. Um, so I think it would be my husband, Jason. Okay. The sailor. Yeah, the sailor. Okay. All right. Your husband gets the first signed copy. I love that. He can read it on the boat. Yeah. There you go. Or you read it to him while he’s doing the sailory things. All the lines and all the things. Uh I’m so I’m so grateful that you you came by and you stopped to chat with us to catch up and I I really wish you the best. Uh and I hope you get to meet some really really cool people. Me too. I know that sounds like such a lame thing, but like I I really think these are more about the connections uh and meeting some really cool folks. You can kind of take that with you and take back to the team. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Look, uh if you want to hear more podcast, see what’s going on cxr.works/mpodcast. We keep it pretty simple. Uh you can follow us on all the social media channels. We’re out there. Uh but out on cxr.work/mpodcast, /podcast. You’re going to see all the previous as well as upcoming episodes. We encourage you to check out and hit the subscribe button and you know, we’ll do more stuff every week. All right, thanks everybody.