Upskilling and Micro-Learning w/ Darnell Hill – The Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Ep. 16

[Music] who are you and why are you here my name is Darnell Hill uh I am the VP of talent acquisition for tripa Mountain West group I am here uh from a talent management perspective just to pick up on what other companies are doing uh how to have an impact um I had a panel on quality higher so I did a speaking engagement on that and then overall again just networking I think it’s a great opportunity to do that nice nice so if you had one piece of advice just one nugget for anybody in our space what would that be stay ahead of the technology as much as possible embrace it um it is going to advance what we do on a day-to-day basis so fast it already has right um it comes with a little bit of bias you know bias in bias out but if you stay in front of it I think you have the opportunity to truly enhance not only your day-to-day space but the talent acquisition space in this entirety so I’m going to be brutally honest and tell you that when I think of Triple A I think of my parents getting directions to wherever we were going on vacation having it mapped out uh having you know flat tire you call triaa the hook security safety right there that brand must be a challenge but also an asset in terms of employment talk about how you how you tackle that yeah so with the traditional brand you have 120 years of just backing right that brings that level of longevity that draws people in your parents my parents our grandparents so on and so forth and I think what we’ve done now and and how we’ve tried to expand it it’s not just emergency roadside service right in my division alone there’s um home alarm division commercial alarm division uh called AAA smart home we have Club owned auto repair facilities so when your car breaks down we can take you to a AAA approved shop to get that repair done um they do a little bit of everything they’re incorporating uh some of the advancements with the Teslas and the auto auto auto uh battery operated Vehicles yeah so they’re incorporating a lot of that into the day-to-day in the repair space but outside of that we have a number of Divisions we have an innovation lab uh where we try to look up things that stay relevant stay ahead of the competition and so I think that’s been great I think you know our our vision is how do you transform Triple A for the next 100 years and that’s where it’s going because we know the Millennials are doing what less car buying and more ride sharing right and so how where does the rubber meet the road and so continuously trying to find ways to engage with them uh we had a division that was kind of a ride share division uh we’re sunsetting that business but what it allowed uh people to do was utilize an app based technology to get a vehicle and go wherever you needed to go provided it was in a geographic footprint and so that worked out really really well uh reaching out to Millennials and and trying to again Advance get more of the younger people into the fold of the day-to-day get those kids in there get those kids so so in 2024 still got a little bit left still a lot going on right what has surprised you the most about what has happened throughout this year I I think what what’s surprising to me is the enhancements that are happening in the space and the the hesitancy for large organizations to adopt them right everybody’s kind of playing it slow it’s like AI took off chat GPT took off some people ran didn’t realize there was bias incorporated into it backed up a little bit and then now technology continues to funnel in to the day-to-day and so companies are a little bit more cautious about how they go about uh doing things and and and so that’s surprising a little bit um what’s great about it is if you look at a lot of the vendors that are even here most of their platforms utilize AI in some shaped form or capacity and so that’s going to get us to where we need to be in 2025 and Beyond yep also as a brand I know you’re getting pitched by a lot of vendors and we’re here at an expo with a lot of startups and companies how do you make sense of the flood of of of sales calls and what do you look for in New techn knowes how do you filter that out is there a process is it just something that’s in your gut like talk about that that process yeah sometimes it’s just like I got to turn it off um just being you know completely honest but more often than not for me it’s the relationship piece it’s this it’s the networking and it’s getting an understanding of a vendor that can truly be a business partner in the everyday sense and not just a vendor that’s looking for my business right so somebody that’s going to be an extend of AA and everything that they’re doing and trying to be the same for us in return and saying hey this is what you want this is what we have product wise out in the market how can we incorporate that into the day-to-day for you to make your journey that much easier so looking forward now 2025 it’s coming up quick it’s coming up quick what’s going to be your major priority in 2025 it’s going to center a lot around AI right and and taking the technological advances to get into to some of the things that I talked about on the panel today measuring quality a hire I think that’s huge right now we’ve all talked about the candidate experience and what that Journey looks like for a team member coming AB board from day one to uh the life cycle of their their tenure but what we haven’t done a good enough job of focusing on is the quality of hire we all know if we hire a high highly qualified individual the output from that individual is going to be higher they’re going to stay longer I always say if you invest in your people they will invest back in you and so from that perspective you you got to figure out what motivates team members um the AI is good about doing assessments and so we take the information from the assessments to better understand who you are as an individual and that helps us kind of advance that day-to-day the relationship building um to better understand what makes people tip so that’s a great tool to bring people in and the right people in we’re hearing a lot more these days about upskilling yeah take the person here bring them up here bring it in house are you guys doing anything in regards to upskilling learning program is getting someone to the next level oh yeah the learning programs you know we’ve adopted that philosophy of the microlearning um you take in things in small bites you tend to retain them a lot better than sitting in a training for 60 minutes at a time um you always Circle back around in those individuals two weeks later and say hey what did you retain from that training very little right like 5% of what they got um so the micro Learners have been great upskilling is across the board something that we’re we’re heavily focused on um um we used to recruit for experience directly related to the role now we’re recruiting for 60% of the experience because when you when you’re new on a job you’re going to learn anyway right and so that’s where the training and the development piece really come together um so that’s been great it’s open to candidate pool a lot so we’re not solely focused on finding uh that one individual that’s you know kind of that uh subject matter expert that’s going to come with everything you find somebody that’s got a mindset and a willingness to want to learn um and then they apply what they learn on a day-to-day basis it’s all about learning There’s Hope for me I think even for me I wouldn’t go that far Dar Darnell thanks for joining us man so if somebody wants to connect with you or maybe they want to check out jobs at Triple A where would you send them yeah you can uh go into your search engine and type in Mountain West group careers it’s going to refer you back to the Cal State uh site where all of our uh job postings are placed you can look at LinkedIn indeed all your search engines out there and you will find AA Mountain West group Excell thanks for hanging out and enjoy the rest of the show appreciate you guys [Music]