Gerry Crispin Live on Shally's Alley

All right everybody, happy Friday, June 14th. For those of you that are dads, happy early Father's Day. Uh, and also Juneteenth is coming up, so wow, it's a pretty big, uh, it's a pretty big week coming up here, isn't it?

I think so.

Yeah, so you are now live on Shelly's Alley, and our guest today is the legendary wizard the mega mind, Jerry Crispin, who I'm sure you recognize just from the hat alone. Jerry and I go way back to— I don't even think the internet had batteries when we met.

Definitely not.

I remember you asked a question and nobody in the, in the audience wanted to raise their hand. And I raised my hand and you pointed at me and I gave you some answer. And I think it had something to do with diversity or something. And I went to school at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, which is part of or organized by Rochester Institute of Technology. And so I had some familiarity, recent familiarity with it. And yeah, that was like 25 years ago.

It had to be about that. We, Mark Mailer and I, my old partner that I burned out, he retired about 7, 8 years ago. He's 5 years younger than me, but he just got tired of doing all the work. But we did a project with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and it was just an amazing thing and amazing kids. You know, just some fabulous stuff. So yeah, that had to be about 25 years ago, but yep. Yeah, so yeah, we've been, we've been, um, uh, around since, uh, you know, this, the, the kind of the dawn of, uh, the death of the dinosaurs or whatever.

I don't know, something like that. Yeah, yeah, I've been doing this 28 years, so I was just a youngling then, and I think it might have been in an event in New Jersey or something like that. And then I just, you know, what you were talking about at the time really resonated with me. So I, you know, fanboy came up and talked to you afterward and then met Mark and just been following you ever since. And that weird feeling that you always do.

You've always been my go-to for, because one of the things that impressed the shit out of me when I first met you was the extent to which you were so obsessive over A/B testing and you were constantly looking at challenging yourself in each aspect of the practice, looking for that best practice. Is this better?

Can I do better? How can I improve?

I just love that piece of it.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Just-in-time management, total quality management, all that really kind of gave me the, that plus my P-score, experience where I taught, you know, people about appropriate technology and things like that just always made me pursue what can we do better, right? Constant continuous improvement, you know. But, um, man, so yeah, ever used to publish a book, and I think I bought the book back then, and I kept begging you for another revision, and you're like, nah, I'm done with that.

We did 8. We did 8 books. So yeah, we were probably just about done. We started in 1996 with the idea that we would be able to describe all of the different tools that were being used. And obviously, there were job boards and ATSs that were just beginning and all of that kind of stuff.

It just got—

the book got thicker and thicker and after a while thicker, and then it just became ridiculous. By 2003 was the last book. We realized that there was just an infinite number of things out there and they were, they were cooking the books and hiding their true colors. So, so you didn't know what was good or not.

You didn't know what was vaporware.

Unless you actually used all of these products and tools. So then we said, oh, we're going to have to, we're going to have to, you know, pivot a little bit. Why don't we help the people who are using these tools talk to each other?

Right.

And that was the start of the Career Crossroads Colloquium in 2001. And we're still doing it. I think we— I just told you, I think the 131st meeting is next week. Wow.

131st meeting. And these are monthly meetings, right?

No, they're yearly. We've been doing every— we started in 2001 with 2. We had 4 in 2003. We had 6 in 2002, and then we had 8. So we stayed at around 8 and got up to 10 just before the pre-pandemic, and we're probably doing 6 this year.

Member, member meetings.

It takes 20-some-odd years to get to 131.

Yeah, yep. Oh man, I was looking at my list of episodes here and I think I'm— I definitely crossed the 200-episode mark, but they're weekly.

Yeah, no, these are, these are day and a half sessions with 40 people.

Yeah, it's intense. Yeah, but nothing as intense as that ISO stuff that we used to do. Remember the ISO meetings with it? The sessions that lasted forever.

And Shelly, I have to tell you, I just rejoined the ISO. Really? Yes. I quit about 6 or 7 years ago because it took so long to come up with a standard that I figured I'd be dead by the time we got to the point of defining recruiting. You know what I mean?

That's what happened to me. I know, I know, I know. I wanted to publish a sourcing standard and not for everybody.

It really isn't.

But no, I'm glad that I participated in it for the years that I did, but it just— there, there was some politics too that, yes, I was a little surprised about, and that kind of made me go, yeah, no, I don't think I want to be—

yeah, I think it's calmed down a bit. Um, it's, it's kind of— they've changed and improved a little bit. It's still, it's still too old-fashioned for most people, I think.

Yeah.

Uh, but good learning experience. Here's, here's the thing, they're really focused in on providing, I think, the SEC and maybe the FTC and maybe the European Union with the kind of standards that can be supported by data demonstrating what recruiting could be doing in adding to performance of the company.

Yeah, because we just haven't proven it. Right.

And investors are increasingly interested. Increasingly interested in knowing not just the financials of a corporation, but the extent to which their human resources and talent acquisition impact the performance of the company. And so there's more attention now being played on that. And as those investors talk with— walk the talk a little bit by putting some money on not just the financials but how people are behaving in TA and HR, uh, we might have more of an impact.

Well, good. You know what, I'd love to get reacquainted with it. Uh, not right now, I'm still going through a bit of a rough patch, but, um, yeah, if, if things start to pick up next year—

oh, that's great. Your voice would be great.

I'd love to get— yeah, I still have some of the stuff that, you know, that you You probably don't remember the formula that I had created and I wanted to bring in because that formula is actually a direct correlation to the value-add that recruiting and sourcing, the TA brings into the enterprise and it affects the bottom line. And I still think it's a very elegant formula, but just never had the opportunity to talk about it. So, I'd love to bring that back. Bring sexy back to TA. But that's not what we wanted to talk about today. Sorry to digress. We wanted to talk about something that is, has always been, I think, really ethos for you and you exemplify it. And I think I was inspired by it, which in part is kind of where, you know, how I got to where I am today through this impetus that you inspired in me, which is the difference between a job you know, the three— the dirtiest three-letter word in the history of mankind, J-O-B, and a career. So why don't you— let's start with maybe why is there a difference? In other words, who cares? You know, why should we care? Why should we care that there's a difference between a job and a career?

Yeah, I think the job is going— is important in the here and now. And that's a critical issue. You've got to put food on the table. You've got a family. You've got things that you want to do that satisfy you, accomplishments you want to have, et cetera. And the job becomes the tool of the day, if you will, in terms of getting it done. But the more you get involved in the job, the more you realize there's, time— there are issues and obstacles that get in the way. It might be that your boss doesn't have your back. It may be that the people working for you aren't very motivated. It could be a lot of different kinds of things that become part of why that job is either satisfying or not satisfying.

So, satisfying and not satisfying, but is that a— so how does that differentiate, I guess, from a career? Can a career also be satisfying and not satisfying?

It's— it can be. But in both cases, you need to own it. You need to own the job. And you need to own the career. And the main difference between the two is your job is what's happening now. It's in the here and now. Your career is the extent to which you have kind of aligned to your life, to all of the things, you know, how you blend what you do over a significant amount of time. And if you're young and you're able to think about that, what is it going to satisfy me? What is going to make me content? In the very long run. It's not so much the job, it's the sequence of things that take place that have to do with work that have fulfilled you.

Okay, so in a Maslow's pyramid kind of structure, you know, putting bread on the table is pretty low on that Right. On that, the pyramid, right? Where it's like basically food, water, shelter, you know? So job is base in that sense that, you know, you can't do a lot more unless you have that. And career is maybe closer to the top, closer to, you know, connecting with society, closer to contributing, you know? You know, beyond just your job? Is that kind of—

well, it's your perspective. You know, your perspective about your job is today. Your perspective about your career is how do you imagine yourself at the end of it? A quick story. You know, a quick story. I was working in career services at my college, Stevens Institute of Technology, when I was a in graduate school. It was a way to make a living and it was pretty easy. In fact, it was a very easy job. I was assistant director of career services and responsible for getting every single kid a job, except I'm working in a college in which there's 250 kids graduating and each one on average is gonna be offered 6 jobs. 'cause they're all engineers. They're all scientists.

In demand, okay.

They're in demand. It's powerful. And then the second or third year I was there doing that, we had a recession and we started seeing alumni come in. One alumnus was from Raytheon, had been working for them for 19 years before he was let go. Wow. And the law in 19— in that era was that your, your pension didn't vest for 20 years.

Oh man.

Now I'm a 23-year-old kid and I'm going, holy shit, I can't believe that companies would do stuff like that. It's so, so wrong. And I was upset. The guy was—

I mean, at that point, Jerry, I would have like taken a job as a driver, janitor, anything just to get that extra year so I can get my pension.

Think about how, you know, I— so I'm sitting there going, I can't help this guy, and he's near suicidal because obviously 19 devoted years and he left with nothing. So I went to my boss and I said, oh my God, I can't deal with this. This is— I'm not competent to deal with this. He said, go get some training, go find something. So I found— and there wasn't a lot in those days, but I found a week-long course that I could go to, taught by a guy named Richard Bowles. Richard Bowles had just written his third edition of What Color Is Your Parachute? Yes, became a lifelong friend. Uh, it was the most popular book for the last, I don't know, 50 years, selling about 10,000 copies a month. Um, but, and it's got its strengths and weaknesses, but the point is it was extraordinary at that time. And as part of the course, he asked me to write my obituary.

Hmm.

So I thought, how hard could that be? And I wrote, you know, 4 or 5 paragraphs. And then I read it to myself and I said, oh my God, what an asshole that is. If that's kind of how I see myself at the end, that's not so cool. So I, I kind of obsessed over that, and I— it took almost 2 weeks. It took time after this whole conference or seminar that I went to, but I finally found 4 or 5 paragraphs that would make me comfortable and I'd be satisfied with. And, and it wouldn't be anything special versus today, but in those days it was. And obviously it had to do with The impact you have on the people around you that you surround yourself with, that you care for. Those relationships became much more of a centerpiece, if you will, to how I would want to be perceived. And I folded it up, put it in my wallet, and maybe 15, 20 times over the course of my career, I pulled it out when I was being promoted or being offered a new job or whatever. And I would ask myself whether or not going in this direction, following this path, would contribute to my being that way at the end. When I was 55, I took it out for the last time. I realized I was that person, and that was 25 years ago.

Wow.

We, we, we create we are by who, what we do.

Yep.

And over time, that becomes who you are. If you're consistent.

Okay, I see what you're saying. But you can still change it. You can still change it.

You can change it anytime.

Yeah, I don't, I don't think that you should derive meaning in your life from your career. But rather, your career should give some meaning to your life. Does that make sense?

Like, exactly.

Your career should be a part of what brings meaning to your life, but not the other way around, not the defining aspect of it. My obituary was not my career. What's that?

My obituary was about my life, right? And your career is only part of it. The question is whether or not when you have choices, you take time to reflect on how you're going to handle those choices in relation to how you see your life. And over time, that gets you there. Well, I mean, there's a, there's a, there's an old Chinese saying that, you know, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.

Yeah, right.

But the second best time is right now. So you can always change. The issue is, when do you start? And I feel very grateful that I was 23, 24 and had at least something of a reflection, if you will, on who I want to become. And I think that's an important aspect. Most people don't get there until they're about 40. They start really reflecting. It's that midlife crisis issue. So, you know, it's, it's going to happen at some point. So I'll tell you a couple things that I did over time that changed my way of thinking about it. One was I felt I needed to surround myself with people that had 4 things, and those 4 things are: I want them This has to do with job and career. I want people who are passionate and demonstrate to me that they're passionate about recruiting. I want to surround myself with people who are compelled to improve on a regular basis. I want to surround myself with folks who have critical thinking skills and can challenge me and each other in ways that are constructive and helpful. And finally, I want someone who's willing to share unconditionally. Those 4 things. And I will tell you that in our business, in Career Crossroads, we turn down almost 15% of the people that want to join and be members because they lack one of those 4 things.

Does anybody ever lack all 4?

Oh yeah, but I usually don't get to talk to them very often, right? Uh, so it's— and it may be, it may be just where they are at this point, and I obviously want to try to be helpful to them in terms of things that they could do that would satisfy what they want. But what they want isn't what, what I want around me. I want a room full of people who have and exhibit those behaviors in a, in a very visible way. And, and for that, that inspires me. Um, it's why I feel very humble, because I am totally inspired by, by people who are like that. And, and that helps me also maintain some of the enthusiasm I have for our our industry and our profession.

I was gonna add that. It— I was actually gonna, you know, if you hadn't brought that up, I was gonna add that because I think the, um, I think one of those or two of those can be inspired. In other words, you can inspire others who may not have found that yet. Uh, but I just wanted to— let's consider this for a minute. Would you define— would these be the 4 defining things that make a career? In other words, passionate about what you do, willing to share what you do, always looking to improve. And I'm sorry, what was the other one?

Compelled to improve, right? Critical thinking skills. Right, right.

So, I, I think maybe those 4 things are, are perhaps the, the 4 founding blocks of a career. No, don't you think?

They could be. For me, for me, they're aligned to the way I want to work.

Okay, sure.

I want to be able to impact. Um, I do think that there is a, you You know, there's a more missionary kind of approach that suggests that people that lack something that you want, you think that they should be, you know, that you could provide or need, that you should go out and, and do a little bit of that kind of work. But I want people who at least start at this point.

Okay.

And so for me, that's, that is a That's the opportunity really to be inspired by the people who are in our industry, in our profession, and those that I think I can be more helpful with in terms of finding ways to help them, if you will.

Well, if they're open to share and they're compelled to improve, then, you know, there's going to be that appetite. People who are open to share are also open to learn. Usually, and usually, and people who are compelled to improve are often open to feedback, you know, because it's, it's part of the improvement. Now, that's not always the case, but I think that those are some pretty good fundamental building blocks. Now, you could apply that to, um, you know, to other industries as well.

Sure.

But what I wanted— so critical thinking to me is something that, that may not be inherent. I think it's something that's, that's nurtured, you know, the whole nature or nurture argument. Like, are we born with our talents or do we develop them? There's obviously clearly people learn how to do things. So there are talents that we learn, obviously.

It's a nurture-nature issue for sure. And I think that we need to learn all of those things in terms of how we practice. The issue is, you know, you can believe in it, but if you don't behave that way, if you don't act on it, and, you know, it is a little bit uncomfortable when somebody is willing to pay you money, but you're not willing to take it. Because of your values.

I see what you mean.

So that's— that you have to, you know, walk the talk. And sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not so easy. There's another piece that I've been thinking about I wanted to share with you, and that is I think we're so obsessed with putting a body in a seat as kind of the fundamental thing that we do.

Right.

That we don't kind of reflect a little bit on the much longer journey of how people that we're looking to hire got to where they are.

Which affects where they're going.

Which affects where they're going. It also affects the access and opportunity of people from a diversity point of view as well. I think that we should be— I get very enamored, if you will, of engineering and how engineering demographics, if you will, change over time for those people who can access and live up to or execute or become, use the opportunities to become an engineer. I've been tracking for probably 20, 30 years now some data, some statistics about engineering starting with the 9th grade. For example, My grandson, one of my grandsons, is 15 years old and got to be 15 when he started the 9th grade last September. He was joined by 4.7 million other kids in the United States, just the United States. We could go to the world, but let's just say the United States. Those 4.7 million, if you stuck them in one big room, probably represented what we look like in this country for that age group. But they obviously aren't all in the same school, and not every school has all the resources that every other school has.

I got teenagers. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Right. So, so when you look at it, about 91% of them go to a public school. 9%, approximately 9% go to private school. A few hundred thousand are doing homeschool. And the first question is, how many of them actually graduate? It's about 88%. Which graduate high school, graduate high school in 4 years. So 4 years from now, in the future, the future, 4 years from now, now 3 years, but, uh, in 4 years would be— is going to be 88% graduating if we don't do anything in between to change that.

And hold on a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And so right now they represent the population, but 4 years from now they don't.

They don't, or at least 12% aren't going to be— are going to be in a struggling position, right? They might—

that 12% is disproportionately—

they might be very successful, but they didn't graduate from high school.

Okay. All right, connect the dots then. Are those the 12%?

Are those minorities that in public school 86% graduate In private school, 98% graduate. Okay, so we have some differentiation, you know, without getting into it for the moment, that already takes place. So, so, so here's one thing. Wegmans— you, you should know Wegmans.

Oh, I know. Yeah, I love Wegmans. Great company.

Well, Wegmans in 1987 started a program in hiring at-risk high school students and giving them a job and a mentor. They've had 5,000 kids go through that program in Rochester alone. They moved the needle for at-risk students from 60% to 94% graduating from high school, where they, where they now get a job or get help getting a job from those mentors or get a scholarship to go to college.

So there's the impact. Is there because of the mentorship or because of the opportunity?

It's both. If you've got somebody who's given you a job and you've demonstrated that you can do the job and you demonstrated that you persisted and got through high school, those mentors will have a help, obviously helping you find either a job at Wegmans or a job in some other place was obviously very helpful in terms of getting the opportunity. But you also have to have access. So that's my point being, somebody from an employer point of view decided that this would be advantageous for them to do something to change the future, if you will. And in a way, they've changed the future for a lot of kids. I find that fascinating. How many kids do you think then start college who graduated? So of the 88% that graduate, 40? It's actually 2/3. 2/3 of the 88 is about 60%. Okay. So if we start by saying, let's take a random sample of 100,000 kids, we lost 12,000 of those just in high school, and you've got only 60,000 of them starting college. 40,000, you know, they're all going to be doing something different. It may be they're going into an apprenticeship. It may be something else. But, but obviously, I want to focus in on that engineer, if you will, and an engineer does need a 4-year degree. Right. And of the 60%, not all of them are going to a 4-year program. Some are going to 2 years, some are going to certificate programs, etc. So it's actually, okay, yeah, it's actually 40%, uh, 50% that start college with a 4-year program. And that's— so we're now down to 44,000, just saying. So I want you to think about that. And by the way, In college, 4-year colleges, only 41% are men, 58% are women. Again, choices are being made, access and opportunity are happening in some way, shape, or form. 19% are Hispanic, 12% Black, 6.8% Asian, 4.7% are from other countries, so not part of that 100,000. But, but there's a whole set of issues there about how many stay later, etc. I find all of this fascinating to me.

Do you, do you know what the correlation is between a college, a 4-year college degree and a career? I'm assuming in engineering it's pretty high. In other words, Yeah, if you go to school for the hard sciences, the hard engineering, you know, civil, mechanical, electronic, I bet that the career conversion is pretty high because you're literally learning some hard skills that if you think about, think about some of the, those hard skills.

So science, engineering, medicine, accounting, or example, let's say IT kind of things are probably harder level skills that you're advantaged if you take a 4-year degree. Yeah, it's not impossible to become something like that without that, without the degree, but much harder, you know. But if you're a nurse, you know, you're probably not going to get hired without having a nursing degree, BSN, right? So, so, and those are the jobs that we want to typically fill on a given day or that, you know, recruiters are going to have to deal with. And so my challenge to most people is, do you know who you're hiring and how they got there and how many of them are there and whether or not there's an opportunity to change that, that number? If you will. So if I just, just to finish it off, of the, of the, after 6 years, how many of the 44,000 are going to be left? How many graduate within a 6-year period of the 44,000?

Uh, 80%.

It's, it's again, two-thirds. Okay, it's about 30,000. Give or take, right?

So all in all, 30% of that population start to finish complete the whole high school and college transition.

Yeah.

30%.

30%. How many are engineers?

10%.

Very good, about 1,920. Think about that for a second. Of the 1,920, I wouldn't be hiring an engineer, I'd be hiring a mechanical engineer, for example. 480 have a mechanical engineering degree. Of the 480, 65 are women, 39 Hispanic, 20 are Black. None. None are Native American.

None?

None. It's, it's a 0.75 or 0.5.

What about low vision, blind, hard of hearing, and deaf?

Not part of my statistic set, but that would be an important One to add?

Cohort. Yeah.

Here's my point about all of this. When we start thinking about the journey and the evolution and what we could do either as an individual or as a company or as an industry or as a college, as a whatever, to change any one of those numbers. To increase representation among those who are underrepresented, etc., we're doing something well beyond putting a job in a seat, a body in a seat.

It's a career.

But it is recruiting. How do you feel about contributing to changing that number? If you are Wegmans, and you know what you're doing to change those numbers at the high school level to improve the number of people who are doing that, it makes a difference to the people who are working at Wegmans who weren't high risk for graduating from high school. In fact, Wegmans has been on the 100 Best Companies in America to Work for 27 consecutive years.

Yeah, it's a great company. I wish they—

and I suggest that part of the reason is because they looked at work, the workforce, if you will, in a very different way that impacts the way in which people, people think about their job as more of a career that has an impact on the lives around them. That's what I'm trying to get at here is that I think world-class is how we break our mental sets about our job to think about the broader idea of if we're hiring nurses, how can we add more people or more options for more people to choose nursing who might benefit by it. And I think that's a different kind of recruiting. It doesn't get paid in the same way. No, fundamentally, at the end of the day, satisfies, makes you a lot more content about the career that you've had. Does that make sense?

It does. And it does, it also satisfies a societal need that is currently at Gap. Um, so Cisco Systems did something— I don't know if they still do it— when I was there at the time, they did similar to this, which was the, um, Cisco Academy. And they started, I think, at 9th grade. I may be wrong about that, but they— it was in high school where they would fund laboratories at these, uh, high schools in depressed areas where there wasn't a lot of available funding.

Sure.

And they would stock the classrooms with the necessary equipment for these kids to learn network engineering. So, you know, they would put computers and routers and, and switches and all that in there, and then they would offer CCIEs to, to volunteer to teach specialized courses along with the curriculum. So they essentially were creating network engineers pre-college, you know, I mean, in some cases the CCIE certificate itself was, was enough to get a job, though you could get a better job if you completed your college degree in some cases. But still, you know, you were prepared almost like a trade school for network engineers. And I think that that's the kind of long-term thinking that you're talking about. However, that's an employer doing it.

Yeah, but how can a recruiter— so a recruiter could be looking at, you know, Society of Women Engineers and finding what is it the Society of Women Engineers is doing to educate kids about engineering, and could they help by, by obviously sharing the kinds of people and careers, uh, that they offer within the— as an employer.

So the question, right, what— whatever, whatever group, um, you're passionate about, reach out and ask them how you can help them. And you might have some resources, right? Like, for example, at Fiserv, when I was there, we invited the Society of Women Engineers and Women in Technology, WITI, to have their quarterly meetings on our campus because we have these nice rooms. Perfect. And we, you know, organized it for free for them. So, you know, that's something that they— we reached out and we asked them what they needed, and they said, we need a meeting space because it costs money and we don't have money. Um, you know, they're volunteer organizations. So ask your community that you're passionate about, what they need, and then see if you can somehow help them connect them to the right people or find those resources.

I think the more you brainstorm those kinds of ideas, it could be going to your— maybe within your company, there is a group that's involved in philanthropic stuff so that the company has decided that so much money is going to be spent in some way, shape, or form. Going to them and seeing whether or not there is an interest on their part in directing some of that philanthropy into an area that might fit the framework that we're talking about here. Career Crossroads started a foundation. I mentioned it to you earlier. About 3 years ago, 4 years ago now. And one of the things that we're doing is working on getting a partnership with Dress for Success. We were, we did a project up in Seattle with, with the local Dress for Success and were blown away by this organization and some of what they're doing on a national basis. Now, in every city that we go to, we invite our members to join us who are in that city to spend a day or half a day working at one of the locations for Dress for Success. It could be just simply unboxing garments and hanging them. It could be It could be running a workshop on doing resumes. It could be any number of things. We're looking at a couple of different ways that we can be helpful. My point is, it's not trying to change everything. It's trying to say, what would satisfy you on a given day if you volunteered to help that has some potential for moving the needle in this journey that's going on?

And I had a world-class career.

That to me is world-class. It's not something that only a few people could be. I think it's something anyone could be. But it's a— it's obviously takes an attitude and a kind of a focus that allows you to learn a lot more about who it is you're trying to hire And where are the opportunities that are missing for some of that group that you might pay attention to?

Something that's bothered me for as far back as I can remember about this word that we keep throwing around, diversity, that I think is often used as a flogging tool and not in a very positive way. Two different ideas there. Sometimes you use it, you know, it's used as a flogging tool. Sometimes it's used as a weapon. Where do we go with changing mindsets? Because we somehow ended up in this place where, at least in the United States, I learned this in the ISO, that diversity defines a very small category of minorities. And in many other countries, their definition of diversity is completely different. It's almost like here we use diversity as a euphemism for a race, right?

Right.

How do we get out of this? It's bothered me for a long time. It's, you know, we talked about this with NTID. People that are deaf and hard of hearing, they are absolutely considered diversity. In fact, sure, you know, you couldn't identify a clearer distinction in a community, within a community that goes as far as having their own language quite literally, right? They may know English, but they also know sign language. And they, you know, they may have cultural values aligned with both communities, but it definitely distinguishes them as a group that would be a minority, but yet they're excluded like blind people, like neurodivergent people. They're excluded from a lot of these efforts for diversity that focus on maybe one or two criteria like gender and race.

Yeah, I don't think that this is an easy question, but I think it's one that should be tackled. I do. My own point of view is when we focus on inclusion as a commitment, I'm committed to the fact that in our society, we should be including everybody. 100%. I get that.

That's why inclusion—

One is access and the other is opportunity. The first and foremost is going to be something that's near and dear to your heart. I know it's data. That is, who is included and who isn't? Coming to grips with the fact that, for example, in IT, something like 20%, let's just go with me on that. 20% of those folks who are developers are women.

It's about right, 20, 22%.

Let's assume, assume that I'm right. So it's 20, 22%. I'm not gonna, you know, whatever. But if you—

I just recently did this.

So you should know that number, right? If you're hiring IT developers, you should know that number. And you should also know what your number is in your company. And if you've got 100 developers and 5 of them are women, you're not being inclusive.

Right.

By definition. By definition. So fundamentally, if you're going to walk the talk, you need a plan to decide how many opportunities might there be Are we going to grow to 105? Is there going to be turnover of 10%? What is the opportunity over the next 6 months, next year? What could we expect to be able to move the needle to? And that's just that as opposed to anything else that might—

That's exactly my point, though, Jerry. That right there is my point is we know we Well, let me rephrase that. We should know and very frequently know that an individual identifies as female. They ask that question in the application. We sometimes collect that information. But we don't know if someone is neurodivergent hard of hearing, visually impaired, because— and there's other categories I'm ignoring— because we're not asking that question. And even when we do ask that question, the collective we, those populations are very reticent to answer.

I agree. So if you're, if you're known as someone who is not inclusive, They're even more reticent. So part of that has to do with how you, how you make a commitment to begin with and how you promote that commitment as part of your EVP. And you bet your ass a lot of companies are uncomfortable promoting what they say privately. They're, I'm committed to X, Y, and Z, but Publicly, they don't really walk the talk. And fundamentally, there's going to be a shift or has to be a shift to deal with that. And I see one that somebody says in Bulgaria, we're fighting to hire neurodivergent and disabled people. I mean, if you look internationally, each country has its own definition. Yeah. There are groups that we consider to be diverse that would be locked up in other countries. So fundamentally, you know, we've got our own issues. There are some— in some cases, there are worse issues in other countries, or just a lack of data. In most of Europe, they can track women, but they're not allowed legally to track almost any other group. So you don't even know what the baseline is. Yeah, you will never be able to move the needle. So yeah, I think there's two things for me that are missing in various societies, including ours, and that's a radical version of transparency in which that data is accessible. To a recruiter and to others. The commitment on the part of individuals and obviously the employer for inclusion, and then a willingness of all of us to be able to step up and execute against that commitment. If the commitment is there, what does that look like? From an observational point of view? How do you measure the fact that this is an opportunity and therefore I'm going to increase the number of qualified candidates on the slate to include a broader proportion of people who are underrepresented in our company, not just underrepresented generally. But underrepresented in our company so that we increase the probability that one of those positions is filled with a qualified person who represents that group, at least up to the point where they're represented.

You know, I think, you know, you're right about this line, you know, kind of circling back to the job and career question. We really have to, at the very first step, is we have to understand what there is or isn't in order to have a plan. So, you know, what is the case? Wegmans, for example, when they started this, the community of people that would be considered impacted by economic disadvantage in Rochester is going to look different in gender and ethnicity and age than the community that would be disadvantaged in Atlanta, for example. So we have to start out with what do we have or what is missing? And, you know, what's missing in the community, what's missing in our company, and what's the gap between those two before we can even start to plan something as a company and as an individual before we can start to contribute. And that's a, that's kind of a loaded question because we don't always have access to the data. My point is related to we know gender and ethnicity, but we sometimes don't know these other categories. You know, and that makes it kind of hard to start.

Just where do you start? I, you know, I think collecting the data is going to be the incredible opportunity for those. It's going to be a great opportunity for those who can collect the the data in a way that encourages folks because they understand your commitment. I think there's plenty of wonderful brainstorming ideas that I think can come out of that anytime people decide we're going to do it. I'm just saying, it's fascinating. I had somebody call me I don't know how much time we got left.

A couple minutes.

A couple minutes. Uh, the last story. I had a woman call me from, uh, Hershey's that, uh, that heads up talent acquisition. I think it's Rebecca or Barbara. Anyhow, she says, look, we, we have this incredible thing that's been going on since— for for almost 100 years where we, we take in hundreds of orphans from around the United States and raise them. And I'm going, what? And, and as she— I said, I think I— now I think I remember reading about that. Well, how incredible. She says, yeah, one of the things we do, we have We get a percentage of all the money that Hershey makes, um, to be able to do this. And one of the things that we do is we hire couples to raise these. We, we have hundreds of couples who hire— who raise these kids. So we build homes We give, we give the couples $90,000 a year in payment. We give them food, we give them a house, and they usually stay with us for 3 to 5 years from a commitment point of view in helping to raise kids who are orphans through high school. I'm going, wow, that's, that's freaking amazing. She says, yeah, but we have problems. In figuring out how to hire them, how to find them, engage them, and hire them.

Yeah.

And I said, well, I don't know the answer to it, but let me put— let me get a group of smart, sharp people on a phone call with you, and, uh, let's see what we can do. And that was a year and a half ago, and I did have nearly 30 volunteers from our industry, uh, that, that sat there in and, and brainstormed with her and her staff for about an hour and a half. And I just got an email, and so I, I forgot about it totally, and then, uh, yesterday I got an email from her And she basically gave me a laydown of what she's been doing, what she's tried, and how she's moved the needle to increase the number that she's been able to hire. And I love that. I think it's— my point is, you know, you come up with any kind of problem, how do we do more with neurodiversity, et cetera, or with other disabilities that aren't neurodiverse, but just as hard to identify in relation to that. And I, I would suggest that we could easily come up with answers if there was somebody willing to commit to action.

I think calling for a think tank committee is a really good place to start because at least you aren't going to run out of ideas. That's really brilliant. I like that.

Do it. Yeah, I'll come.

Yeah, definitely. You know, I did it for the blind and deaf community. I did that for a long time. But you are— we are running out of time here. We're a couple of minutes past the hour. And since you've never been a guest before, I've got to let you in on a little secret. At the end of our chats, I have two questions that I ask every guest. And no matter how, you know, we've been— we've known each other for a quarter century. I'm not going to let you off the hook. You get the same treatment everybody else does. But first, the reason that you're on this call today, aside from the fact that we've been longtime friends, is that I asked this question of Jim Schneider, and the question is, who should be on our next show? And he said, Jerry Crispin. And I have to tell you, that was one of the biggest forehead slap moments of my life because I was like, Why did I not think of that before? I'm like, yeah, of course I know, Jerry. But you know, just it— and that's why I asked the question. It takes— sometimes it takes a little prompting. Uh, to be honest, I never thought of asking you because you have so many other, you know, places that you appear. I just thought you probably wouldn't even be able to do it. But he said, just ask him anyway. And I did, and you agreed. So I have to ask you the same thing. Who should be our next guest?

Wow, that's a, that's a hard one.

Um, I might have already invited them, or they may not want to appear, but I gotta try, right?

Yeah, you know what, I would— I think, uh, right now I'm going to say Paul DeBettignies. Yes, Minnesota recruiter.

I know him. Yeah, that's great. That's a— nobody's—

he has— and I talked to him about the community that he's been building in Minneapolis because I think your listeners would benefit by that. He's done a yeoman's job in periodically every couple, once or twice a year, in running a kind of almost a free— I think they pay a few bucks, but it doesn't make money. It's a community that comes together, typically about 80 to 100 people that love to show up, and they go to the University of the MBA group, Carlson. And they just put on a nice—

it's an exemplary group. I've participated. I've spoken at that group and local.

Yeah, it's again, it's— I'm a fan of local community efforts, whether it be Atlanta or Minnesota or what have you.

Good place to share.

It's a good place to share. And you just need somebody who loves doing it. And he's one who does that. So I would—

I would— I'm on it. I'm on it.

Okay.

The last question is going to be, I think, extremely difficult for you because we have already done this throughout the show. So coming up with yet another thing here, and that is, as people listen, most of the time they're, they're playing back the video, or a lot of folks check in during the weekend because they don't have time on a Friday at midday. So I like to leave them with a seed of an idea for them to think about. So consider it a provoking thought. What parting question would you ask the audience to ask themselves that we haven't talked about? Yeah.

Well, I'm gonna repeat the one piece of that because I think you can look at it from a couple different points of view.

Fair enough. Yep.

And that is that Chinese saying that I mentioned periodically. I come up with that. So I'm going to give you that and one other thing. The best— so the best time to plant the seed is 20 years ago.

Yeah.

And, and you could, you could substitute seed in a whole variety of different ways, but the second best is right now. And, and so there has to be something in each of us that we that we say, you know, I wonder if the time has passed for me to be able to do X. And I really think that most of us can come up with something that we should be writing down and saying, you know what, that's one thing that I'm going to make sure gets done sometime in the next few weeks, few months, whatever. So that the second time is now to get that done.

If you can do that, what seed have you planted? Right.

Yeah. And the other thing that I think is really important is to look in the mirror every day and say thank you. Thank you for the day. I, I gotta tell you, um, the older you get, the easier this gets done. But it's something that I've thought about for many, many years, and that is, um, today is not my last day, so it's absolutely my responsibility to make this the best day ever. And if you can think about it as the first thing that comes to your mind each morning, it sets up an attitude that's a little bit different because some days are more stressful or not. But, but you need to look at the fact that in the context of the thing, this is the only time you have. This present day is all you've got. And you really—

it's not your last day, but it's your last chance.

It's your last chance. I like that. It's your last chance for this day. That's right. And I love it. I, you know, I'm, I'm pretty—

it's your last chance to plant the seed.

I'm very, very grateful for the friends that I have, for the family that I have, uh, for the, you know, the privilege that I have to be able to get things done the way I want to get them done. And so I feel a responsibility to give back. But, but to be honest with you, I get more out of it than, than anyone. I get the satisfaction of living my best life, being very content in being able to do what I do. So I, I do believe that most people could get there in their heads if they get— if they work at it. But I do think it takes practice to be more present in today, making sure that it's your best day.

So it's not your last day, but it's your last chance to make that— plant that tree. Okay, that's a good one. So what question is then? What tree are you going to plant today? All right, we're going to— we're going to close with that, Jerry. Thank you so much. I'm going to reach out to Paul. It's been— it's been As always, a pleasure. Hopefully we'll be able to see each other face to face and share one of your magical, uh, dinner experiences.

I'd like that.

But, uh, great to have you on the show. Everybody else, uh, thank you so much for being a guest today. If you'd like to tune in next week, we have Chris Carver, AKA Aquaman, coming on the show. So, uh, June 21st, tune in. And until then, please be kind to yourself.