Scaling Talent and Leadership with Nicky Russell

Hello everybody, you are live on Shelly's Alley and today is April 10th. Wow, time just kind of just blows right by, huh? Crazy. Well, my guest today is Nicky Russell. And Nicky and I actually just met recently at the Evolve conference. And I thought, this is a great topic, I should bring you on the show to talk about it. So here we are. Nicky Russell is the VP of People and Talent and at Advisor360— sorry, I forgot to say that part— someone who operates right at the intersection of talent and leadership and business strategy. It's like one of those three-way intersections. So she's led everything from hands-on recruiting to global people functions, which is rare. I think a lot of times the people, you know, HR, CRO, CHRO role and TA roles are not like career-compatible in some organizations. But she's scaled teams through some pretty serious growth and built some systems that connect hiring and culture and performance. And her work is all about alignment. It's, it's not just hire faster, but making sure the people, the structure, and the leadership are all moving in the same direction. So today, we're going to dig into a little bit about what that looks like in practice, where it breaks, what companies may still be getting wrong, and why Nikki cares so much. We're going to dig into that as well. Say hello.

Hello. Hello. Thank you. That was such a nice welcome. I appreciate you.

Oh yeah. Well, we were at Evolve and I was sitting in the back corner of the room. They had round tables, first of all, which I think is kind of cool. A lot of conferences have the theater seating, and I think it's just to try to pack more people in the room. But what ends up happening is people clump anyway, and there's still plenty of seats, but you can't get to the seats in the middle because everybody clumped on the sides. I think the round tables was a good idea. So I was in the back in a round table, and I, and I see Nikki coming around with these ducks, and I'm like, what the quack is going on here? And they're these tiny little cute little, uh, I want to say bathtub ducks. I don't know if that's what they're for, but they're small, and they all had like baseball uniform, a tennis uniform, cop, a fireman, you know, like they're all dressed up in characters. And I'm like, wow, this is really cool for recruiting. Um, so that was— and I just wanted to say that was fun. I brought some of those home with me.

Nice.

But your talk— tell me a little bit about— tell everybody what the talk was about, because that was— I think it was inspiring in some ways. And it was about— I, well, I don't want to take the power away. You said, you go.

Yeah, so I've used the duck theme a couple of different times. I used it at REC Fest back in the fall where Dan Lockhart and I came on stage together talking about getting your ducks in a row. It was a big hit. Everybody loved the ducks, especially when instead of saying, "What the—?" you say, "What the duck?" Right? So we use that analogy quite a bit. I know. So it was a lot of fun. So I wanted to incorporate something kind of similar because my style is just super authentic, genuine. It's who I am as a person. And so I wanted to use that same theme as I came into Evolve. And as you know, since you were there, Anna Morgan does a wonderful job of curating the right people, bringing them in and really inviting folks in to hear inspiring stories, to hear what's really going on with the latest and the greatest. So I wanted to use that same theme. So it really was talking about how you kind of maneuver through the process of recruiting. And sometimes all of your ducks don't have to be in a row, and that's okay. But we have to figure out how to maneuver them to get them to align better as recruiters. So it was just a way to kind of like say, okay, all of our ducks are swimming. Yeah, it was like all of our ducks are kind of swimming everywhere. Let's take a look and figure out how to bring them all back. Right. So I really enjoyed that one and just having the takeaway for people to kind of remember the duck analogy. Yeah, I loved it.

And I think I think I might have made a joke and quacked from the back of the room.

That was me. Probably did. There was a couple of people you were sitting— there was a couple of people standing back there too. So yeah, if you heard a quack, that was me.

I was like, might not have been loud enough. But anyways, so well, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Today. I have some questions on things, um, that I wanted to, to ask you about. Um, but I want to also kind of dive a little bit into, you know, the reason that— well, maybe not the reason, one of the reasons that you are in this industry and you are, uh, all about making connections and caring, um, as you told me, is because you grew up in foster and that kind of drives you to making sure that people are okay. Yeah, absolutely. More about that and how that got you into recruiting, because I hear that you actually asked to be in recruiting.

Absolutely. Which is so unique and so different because most people say, oh, I fell into recruiting, and that was total opposite for me. I didn't fall into it. I asked to be a recruiter. Um, so I'll back up and tell you the story is that, um, growing up in foster care, you kind of have that sense of like Hey, I don't know if a family's going to pick me. I want to be picked. I'm doing the best that I can. Who's going to pick me? Right? It's kind of like that feeling. And oftentimes when you're recruiting, you kind of feel like that too, or candidates have that same feeling. They're like, oh, I want to be picked for this job, right? So for me, there was— I know, pick me, pick me. Hello. So I think for me specifically, that is how come I treat people the way that I do. I genuinely believe in treating others the way that you want to be treated. Living by the golden rule, and helping people be better today than how they were yesterday. So as a leader and as a servant leader, it's more than just bringing people into the organization, which is where it works perfectly for me, not just from the talent perspective but from a people perspective too, because I get the opportunity to not only bring great talent in the door but take care of them while they're inside. Of the organization. So making sure we have the right benefits, making sure that we're giving them the best, best growth opportunities too. Like, all these things really matter for folks, right? Um, so that's why I just— I love that whole people aspect. It's all about relationships and not transactions to me. So I'll bring you up to speed and how I got into recruiting and me asking and the reason why. So I had worked inside of an organization for close to 6 years, and I worked in customer service, and I worked my way up in the organization to a leadership role. And as a leader, I was seeing people I was having conversations with—attrition was so bad that I was like, enough is enough, we have to be able to do something else. I feel like it's a revolving door bringing new people in. So there was something that I felt like I needed to do. So I went to the HR leader in the organization and I was like, Hey, can we, can we talk? Can we figure out a way in which we can hire better folks that really want to be involved in this organization and make sure they're, they're the right fit from day one, right? Because you can train people all day long, but they have to want to be a part of that organization. Then we also have to make sure we have the right leaders that are helping them while they're there as well. And so the question then to me was like, Nikki, have you ever thought about being in recruiting? I was like, no, never thought about it, but can I do it? And that's where it landed. I got the opportunity to start recruiting and it was like, okay, I really like this. I love to deep dive and understand somebody's story, the reason why they want to come work here, and what are their true skills that match what we have. And at the end of the day, for me, it was all about if a person could match the skills that we had for that role, that was great. But if not, that was okay too, because I wasn't going to leave this as a transaction. I was going to make this like, I genuinely care about you. We're going to be friends regardless. Like, if you don't get the job today, you could also be somebody that could join us in a week, you know? Yeah.

Or you could be a customer, right?

Whatever, right? And people forget that in recruiting, that at the end of the day, it is relationship-driven. So that is how I got into recruiting over 20 years ago.

Interesting. Yeah, you asked to be here.

I asked to be here. I asked to walk through all the chaos at times.

Some people, yeah, some people run away from it. Some people ask to be here. Yeah, I love it. So that's awesome. Yeah. That's really cool. You don't hear a lot about that. Well, so one of the things that I wanted to ask you, you kind of, as I gave on the intro, you kind of sit at the intersection of business strategy and people strategy.

Yeah.

Where, where do companies think they're aligned, but actually aren't?

Yeah, I think that folks, um, or organizations feel like they know exactly where a person fits or where they think that they may fit. But oftentimes, I think from a strategic perspective, you can have a conversation with somebody and realize right away that they have a skill that is maybe a gap needed inside of the organization elsewhere. So I have found it from a strategy perspective that it's been really great to kind of take those folks and move them to other positions inside of the org because we have a gap there. I think that in recruiting, that's kind of how I feel as far as like the whole strategy of just people in general is that where I think people get it wrong in like leaders and organizations is that they feel that this is a transaction. At the end of the day, this person is going to come in and they're going to work for the org, and they forget about how we really take care of those people at the end of the day. Everybody comes to work for a reason, right? We come in to make money, we, we're doing it for our families, whatever that reason is. So as a leader, I feel like it's my job, my responsibility to understand the why for my people. So I have conversations, I understand like their why. So when they need time off for family situations and want to go to that ball game or want to do this or want to do that, I fully support them. On top of that, I'm like, show me pictures. Like, I want to see all the reasons why that you do what you do. But then I also want to understand at the end of the day, not just in that moment, but what they're looking for in their future. So like, if you have that conversation with your employees and you understand they're coming in as an individual contributor today, but their goal is to grow into a career path as maybe like a senior recruiter or senior, like a lead recruiter or recruiting manager. My goal is to give them that journey, that career path, the path for them to move in that direction. So I think it's important to set goals and have realistic goals on a yearly basis. And even for my team, we kind of break it down and we do 90-day goals. So we look at the whole year, but then we break it down into 90s to make sure that we can achieve those goals as we need to. And that just helps us stay on task and on target. But it's so rewarding every 90 days to see the look on the face of the team for us to talk about like all the things that we've done, even from an individual perspective of how we're growing, how we're learning, how we're developing. And once again, you're just putting more tools in their tool belt to help them be successful. And I just think that organizations get that wrong. They just want to bring talent in, have them do the work, but they forget about the part of how do we get them to grow and learn, because they then produce better output for the organization.

Well, yeah, of course, that's actually, you know, capitalistically, it's a selfish driver. But even in a nonprofit organization, it's still, it's still a, you know, a very good driver to make sure that people feel like they're, they're contributing. Do you subscribe to— and let me know if you're not familiar with— but do you subscribe to the, to McClelland's 3 motivators or McClelland's human motivation theory? Do you know what I'm talking about?

I know what you're talking about, but I do not subscribe. OK.

That was something that was, was taught to me very early in my career, '96, '97. By basically one of my first mentors and one of my favorite mentors in the industry. And just the basic principle of like, there's 3 primary drivers or motivators, and according to McClelland anyway, which are their achievement, affiliation, and power. And it depends on kind of how you define that. One thing I learned along with that is that there's a dark side and a, like, there's like a negative side and a positive side to each. Like, there's positive achievement motivation and negative achievement motivation, right? So the 3 key traits, achievement is about people who want, they're motivated to excel. Like, they want to do the best, be the best. And the positive ones want to do that where they're, you know, they're part of a team. The negative ones are like, I will achieve in spite of everyone else. Like, they're, you know, everyone else can be— I want to win the race and I'll run people over. Versus others that are like, I want to win the race, but I'm, you know, I'm happy to bring people along. And so there's a little bit of nuance there. Affiliation are the ones that are more about like the relationship. So I want to work with people that I like, that I feel close with, that I relate to. Empower, um, is is not the same kind of power that people think of, like, "I am in power." But it's more like the desire of influence and impact. So, a good example of that would be teachers. Teachers can be power motivated because they want to have, they want to be influential in a positive way, role models, if you will, to the, you know, children and adults that they teach. But the negative, of course, side of that is the institutional power that becomes, you know, corruptible or whatever. So that's— I brought it up because I was thinking about connecting when you were talking about what makes people go. Yeah, work. It isn't just— it isn't just the money. I mean, money's important, but I don't think anybody goes to work only for the money and nothing else. No, agree a million percent. There's— it may be— it may be the most important, or it may not be the most important, and that varies too, right? And maybe that— where's— you disagree with the association or sorry, affiliation, um, sorry, power and achievement. You may disagree because, you know, money is actually another one there, but I feel like there's always more than just— people just don't come for the paycheck. If that's all they do, then they'll leave for another paycheck.

Absolutely right. Yeah, but your goal is also, as a leader, is to help them continue to grow and get better So they can get merit increases along the journey too, right?

Improve their skills, get paid more. Yeah, yeah. But I think some people don't want that to necessarily be reflected. Like, where I see this going wrong, me personally, and I, you know, you've, you've led much larger organizations than I have, where I see it sometimes going wrong is that organizational leadership believes that people want to be publicly, um, accoladed. Like, that's not the right word. They want to be publicly recognized. The recognition. Yeah. And not everybody wants that. Some people want private recognition. Some people don't want it at all. Like, if you went to me and said in a public, you know, meeting with the whole team, and you said, hey, Shelly, great job, I'd be like, cringe, you know? Like, no, no, get me out of the limelight. Like, no, take them to the side and, you know, I like a pat on the back just like everybody else, but I don't want that publicly, right?

Yeah. But I think as a leader, especially when you're leading a new team or you have a new person on your team, it's your responsibility to understand what works best for them. What's their working style? How do they like to be rewarded? How do they like to be recognized? Because to your point, you never want to do something that makes somebody feel uncomfortable either. At the end of the day, it's all about knowing your folks. Right? That's exactly right.

Whatever it is that the driver is.

Yeah, whatever that driver is for them. So that's what's important to me. But I'll also say this too, because I think this is very important and a lot of people forget this, is that as a leader, I always tell my team too, like, my goal is to lead you. However, I need you to meet me at that 50-yard line. I will put in 50, but I need you to meet me at the 50.

So I don't need you to do 100 yards.

Yeah, but the thing about it is I don't know what I don't know. So come to me and tell me what you need. Like, I will always be that person that will be that listening ear and have a conversation. We may not agree on everything, but we'll find a neutral area. But in order to help you, I need you to come to me if you see a problem. If you have a goal that we're not talking about, like, meet me at that 50-yard line.

That's important because I think sometimes we forget and we expect them to come all the way to us, and that's not necessary. But also, if they don't even go to the first yard line, they're not in the game. Yeah, to continue the sports analogy. So yeah, you have to make it safe for them to do— to, to come to the first yard line. But also, it's not just— it's not, you know, hey, once you get to the first yard line, I'm gonna expect you to take it all the way to the end zone. Like, no, we're, you know, we're gonna give you the tools and meet you partway. So that's important too. As Cassie just posted something about a guy who won the Nobel Prize and didn't want to be recognized publicly, but then was like, I'm gonna show up because it would even be harder to not to explain that. That's even worse. I don't want to have to explain it. That's crazy. Yeah, so a lot of leaders and companies say, and I've asked a few people on the show this question. In fact, I need to go and transcribe that and find out how many times I've actually asked it. Maybe I'm obsessed with it. It's possible. I do have OCD. But a lot of leaders say that people are our number one asset. People are our greatest asset. I call bullshit on that. It's not always the case. In your experience, when does that actually become true versus it's literally just something that we have to say to make everybody feel good.

Yeah, I never say people are our greatest asset. I said people power business, but it's up to the business to give them the tools that they need to power the business.

But it's something you hear a lot, you know, people are our number one asset. Like, it's almost, it's almost just a meme now, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And the thing about it is, is like, what I'm— what I've realized over my career and what I continue to see and hear from others, especially at conferences, is that A lot of organizations today are talking the talk but not walking the walk. And so you can say all day long what you value and what you want to do, but are you actually following up and do you have the actions and the result to be able to show that that's what you're doing? Are you really taking care of your people or are you just saying that? We take care of our people here. Our culture is this, this, and this.

It's lip service. Yeah.

And that's why I always tell people, even now, because I can never step away from recruiting. Recruiting is my passion. So it's like, you wanted to be here.

You're not trying to run away like most of us.

The thing about it is, is like, even when I have conversations with people today in the recruiting world, I'm just like, hey, I need you to know that I'm gonna be the girl that's gonna tell you the good, the bad, the ugly, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens. Everything you can't read on ChatGPT, I'm the girl that's going to share it with you. Because I know at the end of the day, this has to be a great fit for them as much as it is for, for us. And so I want them to have all the answers. I want them to be able to go through my recruiting process from start to finish, even coming on-site, meeting with the team, to be able to say, hey, I can work here. And then in 30, 60, 90 days, be able to look back and say, is this everything that we talked about in that first discussion? And folks will tell you, yeah, absolutely, we've talked about all that. There's no surprise. So I think having that authentic conversation with people and not just giving the lip service, because it just doesn't make sense at all to me. I just don't understand why people do it.

So, so when do you think it actually becomes true? You know, people are really important to us, whatever you want to— however you want to define it. Like, what— when, when is it You know, not just everyone's a number. I think I posted a little— I'm gonna go back and see if I can get that comment. Yeah, this one. When does this become true? We're all just a number versus the company actually cares. I know, I know we are all just a number. I get that. Yeah. But when are we all just a number, nothing else? And when does it become true that the company actually is gonna, you know, it's really living up to that? It's our responsibility to And let me just kind of give you an example from my own experience. So when I was at Fiserv, we had our, the chairman, Ibuki, came to our office, which was, they're based in Milwaukee, but Atlanta was like their second headquarters, although the CEO and big brass was over there. But he came over and he did a little, you know, town hall meeting. And one of the things that he said in the few times that I got to see him live, that I was really, really, really impressed with and taken, and really taken with was he said, as the CEO of the company, right, it is our, the company's responsibility to provide our team members with the opportunities to learn and develop. But it is not our responsibility to carry them through that development. In other words, we should give you the tools But we're not going to babysit you and make sure you take the classes. So to me, that's a symbol of a leader saying, I recognize that our people are important, and I recognize that we need to provide them with these tools. But I also recognize that they have to take, you know, it's your 50-yard line analogy put in a different way. When does that become, when does a company get to that point versus the opposite, which is everyone's a number, we don't care about you, like Oracle?

Yeah, I think it's when you have the right leaders in place. If I have to—

Is it a top-down? So it's a top-down.

I do. I 100% agree because here's the way that I look at that is that yes, you can provide all the tools, right? And you can say, hey, it's all here, it's in our intranet or wherever you have all that housed for people to go to. But isn't it up to the leader, the direct manager, people leader, to be having those conversations with their team members each week to help them grow and develop to be better? Because it's only going to help the team and then ultimately, you know, cascade and help the rest of the organization. So yeah, we have the tools, they're there. But as a people leader, it's my responsibility to say, here's the tools in front of us over the next year. Here's the things that we want to do. But in the next 90 days, What are the things that you're going to do for yourself to help grow and develop? Yes, I can give you everything that I know to give. But once again, back to this conversation is that that 50-yard line is important. So like if I have a team member that's saying, hey, Nikki, like I'm not— I haven't had the bandwidth to do it this 90 days. Okay, then that's your growth. You're responsible for your growth. So if you want to get to that next step, that's where I'm giving you the tools. You have to meet me at the 50 and then we can move forward. So I think once again, it comes down to leaders.

I'm not going to spoon-feed it to you, but 100%. But if you open the door, I'll help you walk through.

Yeah. But as a leader, it's our responsibility to have those conversations with our people. Yeah. I just don't think people are having those direct, authentic conversations with their people. I think clarity is kindness. Directness is kindness.

Because at the end of the day, it's really important. You talked a little bit about clarity in the, in the session. I always talk about clarity.

Clarity is kindness. Yeah.

Yeah, you mentioned clarity a few times. Definitely. OK, so that's leadership. And that's clarity. Where do you— you've led TA teams and people functions. Where does recruiting TA operate too far downstream from the real business decisions? Like, where do we lose— like, where do we, as a TA function, where, where are we too far down the path where we don't really see the business decisions anymore?

When you don't bring TA into the process, when you don't bring TA leaders into those business strategy conversations, to know what's going on in the business. Because I think for me, where I've been fortunate, where I've been successful, is being able to sit there and say, hey, I want to sit, I want to have a seat at that table, I want to understand exactly what's going on, how can I help support. Um, that's what's important to me, is being able to sit there and have that conversation, and that way then I can plug the gaps or have my team plug gaps that maybe we wouldn't have known of. OK.

So is that a— well, I guess, is that a people leader responsibility? Is that a TA leader responsibility? Is that a CEO leader? Most probably not.

I think it comes down to the organization and the way that it's actually operating, because it depends on how it's structured, right? For me, I've been blessed that I've sat in that seat in between the pathway of the people or the TA function to where I've been able to say, like, I have a really close connection with the people side to be able to have the observation to sit at that table and understand exactly, like, what the need is, where the gap is. Because when you talk about, like, headcount planning discussions and things like that, it's more important to have a seat at that table to understand, like, where's the challenges today of the people that's currently working? Like, are we going to see some attrition? What's the problems there? How can we be proactive versus being reactive to any situations that happen with inside the organization? Right? Like, our goal is to always be proactive.

Yep. Okay. It's almost like a culture, you really have to have a cultural, I don't know, orientation or a cultural drive. By orientation, I mean, this kind of orientation, not not your first, not your first day at, you know, new hire orientation, you know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that like, for a lot of organizations, they just don't pull TA really close. No, they don't.

Why is that? Why do you think?

I think it's because they look at it as like a transactional function where it's just like, hey, we just have to bring the talent in, where it really is that collaboration between the talent coming in, and then how do we support the person in the onboarding process? And then how do we set them up for success in the first 30, 60, 90 with their new managers, right? And then of course, how do we continue to take care of them? That whole process starts with us in recruiting because we're the first conversation that they have. But I also don't want to turn around and lose a great person because somebody else broke down the process. Right.

So that's why I think just bringing TA in a little bit closer to the people, at least start with just giving them some transparency, maybe, you know. Yeah. I've been in places where, like, I felt like we were left out in TA. And I, you know, I ran, uh, people analytics and the, the, the top-of-the-line sourcing, you know, function and all that together. It was internal people analytics as well as workforce planning and everything. It was a startup, you know, $2 billion startup. So I had to wear a couple different hats. Um, but I felt like the leadership was not being transparent about where the, you know, where things were going. You know, it was almost like they kept us in the dark. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but they just sort of didn't communicate with us the things that they, they didn't communicate with us the same way they didn't communicate with certain employees because they didn't want people to fear and panic. But in TA, we kind of need to know that and we need to know not to share that and we need to know not to, you know, do anything about it. Like, I think we're more, we have to be more responsible. For example, here's something that, that, that I think scares leaders. A different organization, one of the recruiters was able to, because they have access to the ATS, of course, as of course they should functionally, right? But I think maybe they just didn't understand they had access to all the requisitions, and for some reason they went into a requisition that, uh, whether it was accidental or not, that one of their peers got hired into. In other words, they, they saw a recruiter role and they went into the recruiter role and they saw a colleague's notes and they saw how much they were making. And then they brought that to their boss and complained. Now, I'm not asking you how to solve that problem, but I do want to bring it up to the, you know, the point of like, this is why sometimes, you know, leaders are a little bit afraid of being transparent. You know, the, the, the ethical, the right ethical thing for that person to do was to keep their mouth shut because they're not supposed to see that information. And if they saw it, it's okay, but You need to kind of pretend you didn't see it or just be— because you're not supposed to really be there, right? Bringing it up was a breach of ethics. Now, how to handle that is a different story, but that's the kind of thing that scares leaders because they think, oh, what if they're going to do that? What if a recruiter can go in and see how much the CEO makes or whatever? It's like, you know, it's okay for you to know that. You need to know that that's, that's just what it is. Yeah. So sometimes I think they're afraid of that. Yeah. Maybe that's why they keep us out of the—

Yeah. And I think there's so much, there's so much to unpack there for one. But I would say that for me, I have to trust my team. If I don't trust my team, then I don't have the right people there. Right.

It's okay if they have access to that and see that. Yeah. And it's fine. You're trusting them with that. But then the problem is if they do something with it, they're crossing the line. Right.

But us not trusting them is also it. Yeah, so that's where like they have to know their roles and their responsibilities to know like not to share information. I think anytime anybody onboards into my team, naturally, you know, the conversation is you're going to have access to a lot of confidential and private and proprietary information. This information is held with inside our organization. Um, I would never want somebody to like go purposely phishing for information No, and I don't think that's relevant.

I don't think they went looking for it. But they saw, yeah, and then did something about it.

Yeah, different. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that just the trust is the big component there. And I think like, even for myself, when I'm sitting in rooms and having conversations, I will come back to my team and say, hey, look, I'm seeing an issue already, we need to proactively start sourcing for this role. Like we may not do anything with it, but let's just source, let's just have a pipeline ready to go so if something happens, we know it's there, right? So I think I wouldn't be able to do that and we wouldn't be able to be one step ahead if I wasn't having those conversations or sitting in the room or somebody in a TA leadership capacity is sitting in the room having those conversations. So, yeah. Yep.

I don't know if that's— trust is a difficult one. It's, it's not necessarily— I think if you, if you are selected for the job and in a position where, um, I'm having a hard time kind of explaining this. You got hired to be a recruiter. There needs to be an understanding whether this is trained into you or not. There needs to be understanding that As a talent acquisition professional, you are part of a subset of people at the organization that have access to what I would consider classified information. Not classified as in government top secret, but classified in that this information—requisitions, salaries, compensation—is only visible to people in this class of employee. TA, right? Right. And as a result, you have a responsibility to maintain that classification and not to step outside. If you take that information out of your lane and share it with someone out of that lane, you're violating trust. You need to come into this knowing that it shouldn't be something that we have to teach you, right? That, that you need to stay within the, the, the lane that you were— at least with regard to access to the information. But at the same time, we really don't make it very clear to people in talent acquisition, generally speaking, that they are actually— they have access to classified information. And I say that because I deal with this a lot with ethics, and I'm not an ethicist, but— well, maybe I am actually an ethicist. I deal a lot with ethics and privacy and have run that, you know, function for companies and advise on that all the time. And I see in TA a, a big lack, a big gap in people just kind of understanding general ethical guidelines and general guidelines around, um, privacy. They just sometimes don't seem to— the governance of it. Governance.

Yeah, yeah. And you know what, to be honest, sometimes I wonder if it's because— and I've thought about this too numerous times— but because recruiters, a lot of us that have been around for a long time, We've had different experiences at different organizations, and every organization operationally does things different. So if you think about like a brand new recruiter that started out in one organization that didn't have a lot of structure around governance, right? They were there for maybe a year. You hired them into your organization. They just don't know what they don't know. So it's our responsibility to share that information around our governance policy with them specifically. That's the way that I look at it. And I know sometimes when I've onboarded newer folks that maybe they've been in the industry longer and they're like, well, this is a no-brainer. Why am I having to sign this off? You know? But I'm like, we have to say it in the event that there are other people that haven't had this experience and haven't been able to understand that this is how we operate here. Because our operation is very governance, um, in the sense that we have to keep that information tight within the walls of HR. Uh, but other organizations, maybe not so, right? Um, but that's just the way that I look at it because I've thought about it a lot too. But I've also hired a lot of recruiters throughout my career.

So, um, yeah, you know, I think maybe— and this could be one of those simple, you know, the root of the problem It could be because we come into— like, you, you came into this from, from not the traditional path of a recruiter, which is staffing firms and, you know, RPOs and, and so on. And in that environment, this, this doesn't really exist because their access to their data, all that candidate data, is shared company-wide and everybody has access to it. Versus in a corporation, you have access to a sector of data that not everybody in the company has access to. And so it could be just simply, I learned recruiting in a staffing firm or a temp agency or an IPO where there was no such distinction. Could be that simple. So maybe we do need to make governance and privacy and that kind of thing part of the general curriculum of TA, because you're right.

Agree. Yeah. All right.

Well, beating that one to a pulp there. You talk about alignment across talent, leadership, and operating models. What kind of misalignment do you commonly walk into between those 3?

Everybody coming up with their own way of doing things or the way that they want to without getting, like, sitting down and, like, talking through how we're going to move. And operate amongst those areas. Um, usually you have one leader that'll say, this is the way I want to do it. Another leader will have another way to do it. Um, but I think it takes that sit-down conversation to say, we're all sitting down, we're figuring out the best process to how to operationally move things across the org. Um, and I think there's a misalignment because people don't sit down. There's an expectation that this is the way we've always done it, this is how we're going to do it, or you're gonna learn how to do it because you just walked into this new role, Nikki. So like, you just get on the bandwagon with the way that we're doing things. And I'm like, but maybe I have a process that might work a little bit better. Let's sit down, let's talk about what you're doing today. Let me take a while to observe and encounter the process, and then let's sit down again and talk about are there ways that we can process improve, right? Um, At the end of the day, as cliché as this may sound, comes down to communication. I talk about clarity all the time, and clarity comes from communication. And oftentimes people just don't sit down and communicate what they're wanting, what they're doing, how we're operating, and then cascading that information where it needs to go throughout the org.

Why? Sorry to drill down, but like, why? No, I think it's okay.

I think because people get so tactical in the operational of this is the way that we're doing it tactically, that they forget about the strategic concepts of sitting down and having the conversations. I think also organizations kind of get lost in the fact that this is the way that we're doing it, and there's never that thought process unless you have somebody in that role that's going, we need to process improve. I mean, how many times in recruiting do you sit down and you go, Well, this is the way we've done it the last year. How can we take a look at it in a different lens to decide if, if we need to process improve or do things differently?

Yeah, right. No, it's like, it's like one of those things that people want to fix what's broken and they find something broken and say fix it.

But that's not the same. They never sit down and just look at the whole process and go, this is what we need to do. So like in my lens, I, I do think that you have to sit down and look at that every 6 months in recruiting right now with AI. That looks totally different because AI changes every 8 weeks. So it does look a little different. So luckily for us, we operate in a 90-day cadence. So we do look at things operationally and we have had to make changes operationally. And that lens may look different now today. But I think back to your question from an org-wide perspective, once again, communication, clarity, that's where it comes down to, bottom line. You have clarity.

Wow, clarity is so important. It's almost like we need to teach a class on that.

And that's what I said, like, I, I hate to keep saying the word clarity, but it's like, how are we missing it, right?

We know what— why don't you define that for us? Because you did at the— you did it at Evolve, and I'm just realizing we have a common language, but people that are listening probably don't understand. Um, I mean, of course people know what clarity is, but the way that we're talking about it now, can you define what that means? Because you actually had a very succinct way of putting it. Yeah.

So clarity is when you're able to explain something to someone and then take the understanding of what you're saying and call back to you that, yes, I'm understanding what you're saying. And yes, this is how we're moving forward with it. Because what I say, you make one side and that's only one side, right? So what I say may be like, hey, this is how we're moving forward and doing something, right? So that's just Nikki saying something, but does the other person really truly understand the why? Because I think that was part of my presentation was understanding the why behind we're doing it and accepting that why to be able to move forward. I didn't want to interrupt you. You were going to say something. What were you going to say?

Because the way that But when you were talking about this, the way that you framed it was, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit because I'm not, I don't have an eidetic memory. But you talked about it's got to be on both sides. It's not just clarity of me communicating and them understanding. That's only one part of the clarity equation, which is clarity of what I'm saying. But from the leader's point of view, it's not just everyone understands what the business is trying to achieve. From the leader's point of view, it's the leader having clarity about what their job is, and not letting all the noise of all the leaders pulling in different directions that impact them get to the people that they lead. In other words, if you're the leader of the function, you have a lot of things coming at you. Yeah, your job is to filter that out so that it's clear to you what you're supposed to have your team execute on and communicate that as well. Because sometimes the people in your team might be getting mixed messages. And when that happens, it's, it's kind of on you. So clarity isn't just communicating clearly. Clearly, it's also what I understood from what you were saying is also having clarity in your own mind of what your focus should be. Right. And I'm not saying a singular focus. You could have 3 focuses, but still having that clarity of focus. Because if you then go to your team and say, here's the clear idea, and then tomorrow here's another clear idea and it's a different one from the— that's still giving that— you might be very clear, but you're giving them mixed signals.

Two different things. Yeah. And I think especially like how I operate with my team is more around like if I give information, it's like, here's the information. And then I'm like, hey, does everybody have clarity? Do you like— of course, when I give the information, I'm like, here's the why, here's how we're moving, here's how we're operating, here's what we're doing. Here's what we expect the outcome to do. Here's going to be your role and your responsibility in this, and here's how you're going to see success. And then it's like, does anybody have any uncertainties here? Are we all clear? Is there clarity around what we're doing? And then I love when my team does that. Yeah. And then they come back and they're like, that was so clear. I was able to like accomplish exactly what you wanted. And so for me, it is a lot about like reducing all the other outside noises because, yeah, I mean, you do, especially in a leadership role or even in a recruiting role. If you're an individual contributor, if you're working with a leader that's given you like 5 different pieces of information and you're sitting here trying to figure out, well, how do I manage this? Right? Like, I was told this, to your point earlier, one day, the next day it's like, oh, I need to do this. Sometimes it's a sit-down, come-to-Jesus conversation about like, this is what we're going to do.

Like, listen, I also have ADHD, but you kind of need to keep that in check.

And you know what? I have to be honest too and say, like, I think that's why I love to write things down. I think a list is important, or documentation is important when you're having conversations. So I'm a big fan of like AI note-takers. Because at the end of the day, the AI note-taker doesn't lie. Like, it has the whole conversation in there. So then you have that information to give to others. And then when you have a list and you have things that you're working on together as a team, it's our source of truth. It's where we can go in and we can say, here's the things that we're working on, here's what we're doing. Oh wait, hold on, this isn't clear. I need to like change this, right? So there's like something that we're working on together, progress to keep us on path. Like, we do that for our 90-day plans is how we accomplish that. But Interesting. Yeah.

Can I add something to that? Kind of build up on that. So, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years. It's a long time. And I've had different kinds of bosses. And I've been different kinds of bosses too, by the way. And on a previous episode, I talked a little bit about the difference between managing and leading and how it was not that hard for me to become a manager. I just had to learn a few things. That I, you know, and pay attention to a few things that I wasn't paying attention to. But it wasn't that hard. It was a lot harder from going from a manager to a leader. And what I mean by that is I've always been a leader in the sense that I lead by example and I'm a leader in the industry, whatever you want to call that, but actually a leader of people in an organization. The distinction was I had people who reported to me who were managers. Yeah. And that's different. So all my direct reports had other direct reports. And it was a huge shift. So I had to go back to school, literally, and even, you know, I had an executive coach for a while. So I've done a lot of learning about intentional leadership, right. And then I took this job where I'm working now. And my, my current boss is new. They are not new to the organization, they're new to the job. In their previous job, they were a chief operating officer of a major directorate within the laboratory. And, um, that's an operational job, obviously, COO, right? Duh. But they taught me something. I shouldn't say but, um, the reason I'm bringing this up is they taught me something about this 90-day plan thing. They asked me— they asked all of their direct reports to start using Microsoft Planner, we have at the Microsoft shop. And I was like, I've never used it before, right? Because I thought of it as like it's a Kanban board for software development. You know, I knew lots of reasons to use it for, but I'd never thought of using it as a management tool. And I'm loving it. Like, I've just started using it and I'm getting— and I really like it because it's an easy way to put projects into buckets and have checklists, talk about the, you know, checklists, and we share. The checklist. So somebody can be— one person is the owner, so it's either my task or his task, but the other person is tagged and it communicates via email, via Teams. And the neat thing about it is you have a, a little, I don't know, window of what the project is with the items in it, and it combines a checklist with reminders or a thing. I never thought I would actually do that. Like, I just always had my notes. Yeah. So it just woke me up to a whole nother way of thinking. It's project management software being used for, you know, do you have anything like that? Or different?

Yeah. So Canva is really good. Okay. Right. Yeah. So I'm a note taker too, right? Yeah. So for me, like, I'm a huge note taker. I have notebooks everywhere. Like, I'm old school. I write everything down. Me too. That's why I was like, this is such a big jump. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you said it, that is notes for us. But having a system or a software or a tool in place where the team or other members of your team can go in and you can work together functionally and be able to see the task and then work together to accomplish those tasks. It just keeps us on target, right? It's better than just me having my list, combining it with your list. We just all checking in on you.

How's your list doing? Let's compare. Exactly. Yeah. And let's not overcomplicate it. I mean, there's not a lot of notes in here. It's just a, you know, is it— are we working on it? Is something due? And, and what are the—

it's a timeline. Yeah, exactly. It just keeps you on task with what you need to do. And I think like especially for my team, we talk about it a lot. Like, just because we have a 90-day plan doesn't mean that we have to come up with something just to put on our 90-day plan.

It doesn't mean that it's going to be finished in 90 days too. I mean, part of the 90-day plan would be let's get through this stage, you know?

Yeah, exactly. I think for us especially, it just holds us all accountable as a team. Like, we know that we want to get stuff done, and we know that we want to do it right, because at the end of the day, if we do it right, then we're only providing a better experience for candidates that come and talk to us. And so we want to process improve and we want to do things. So that's how we take a look at our 90-day plan. But I think also I operate with a global team, so it's different. Like, when I'm asleep at night, then my India team is focused on doing stuff during the day. So it's just, it's just awesome for us to be able to have that handoff.

Yeah. And for that you do need a little bit more documentation. Um, Teams has, uh, Teams has an auto note-taker, you know, record— not records, it transcribes on the fly, but it's, um, it's just a loose transcription. And then recently they upgraded it to add like a summary button and something else. And what I found is that one of those buttons is a customized one. So I customized our team meetings to have a special prompt, I guess, that takes the transcript and says, okay, recognize the voice of the user and sort the, you know, to-do items into groups, like who's, who's this to-do, and, and like make it so instead of just a summary, which is just a summary with bullet points that has Shelly said, and then, you know, Steve said, and then Audrey said, like, that's great, but it's not very well organized. Yeah. Now it goes, all right, Shelly's takeaways, Shelly's, Shelly to-dos, um, you know. Yeah, Nikki's, you know. So that was just a little customization that I did in the Teams thing. So now when they click on the summary, it summarized the regular way, the one that Microsoft provides, and there's the alt, you know, the alt version.

Exactly. And that's just how tools are getting better and better for us all the way around, right? Of— yeah, especially recruiting tools too. There's a lot of new recruiting tools that are out that we can use that are just helping us tremendously in so many different ways. So I agree with you, the note taker is, is huge. We're, we're big MetaView fans over here.

What is— um, I just started seeing ads on that on my Roku come up and I'm like, whoa, wait a minute.

MetaView is really cool. It's a really cool recruiting tool for sure. I'll be honest with you though, when it— when I first started using it years ago, I've used it for a few years now, when it first came out And honestly, I was like, what do I do with my hands if I'm not typing, taking notes? What do I do with my hands? Literally, I'll never forget, I was on the first few calls. Yeah, well, at first, full transparency, sorry, but yeah, whenever I was on a call, like my very first time, I was like, I'm gonna take notes anyway because how can I guarantee that it's actually gonna— oh yeah, that happened. Yep. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna take notes. And then I was like, 'Oh Nikki, you don't have to do that.' So then it was like, okay, so what do I do with my hands? And I had to tell people, I was like, 'Look, I'm using this AI note taker for the first time, not really sure what to do with my hands. I don't know what's gonna happen.' Like, I just told people, it's like, I don't know. Hey, get back to your hand!

What are you doing?

I was just like this the whole time.

Yep, fidget spinner.

Yeah, whatever. Yeah. So now what did you end up doing?

Did you get a fidget block or you just Yeah, I mean, I think I have Anna Morgan's little star thing.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or your ducks. Yeah, all of my ducks, your little quackers. So, um, I wanted to kind of close things out a little bit because we're at the top of the hour. Thank you so much for sticking with me here. It went by quick. It does. Yeah, this happens a lot, believe me. Um, what's something that, uh, that you think in, in— and you can, you know, pick your own adventure. TA or HR, either way, you know, it's the TA track or the HR track, but pick one of those two. And tell me something that you think is overdue for a hard reset, like Ctrl+Alt+Delete reset.

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's don't just say that you're taking care of your people, but really understand your people. Like, the thing that's blowing my mind right now, and I keep hearing it over and over and over, is Okay, we're doing this for our people. We're doing this for our people. Oh, we'll give a survey to understand what's important for like benefits and stuff like that. But what else are you doing? What are your people leaders doing to understand what's important to the individual outside of benefits, right? I just think it's more conversations need to be had right now around really understanding your people. I said it at the very beginning too, that I feel that You know, coming in as a leader and understanding what is important to them and what drives them as they're working for your organization and how you can best equip them with being and bringing their best selves to work each and every day. I just feel like we've forgotten about that. Everything right now is more AI-focused. It's more tech-focused. It's more like, Let's move tactically. And it's like, but what about the people?

Well, let's take that, let's drill down on that a little bit. And let me get here. So my, my business partner Jeremy Eskenazi, um, actually floated this question to me and he said, if you have a chance to ask this question, that would be great. And you literally just made, gave me an opening for it. What, what role do you see the administrative TA professional You know, some people call them the RC, the coordinator. They, they do coordination, they do onboarding, they do general support. Yeah. In, in this transition that we're going through right now to, um, do a lot of these things like the notes and automation and, and, and, you know, ATSs have a lot more automation beyond just like offer letter automation, right? What role do you see administrative TA professionals have in this kind of new world with all that recruiting process automation? Yeah.

Room for them? It's funny that you ask that because I say absolutely. And you want to know why I say it? Yeah, I do. It's because the systems aren't always correct. They don't always provide accurate information and you have to have eyeballs looking at them.

Yeah, but short of just kind of being the, you know, the robot supervisor. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's not— nobody wants to just sit there and watch them. Yeah.

No, I'm just saying from like a data perspective, like the data has to have eyes on it.

Data wrangling.

And at the end of the day, like, let's still talk about the fact that we can automate emails all day long. We can send emails to candidates. But is that the experience that I really want for my candidates? If all of a sudden my hiring manager has to reschedule within an hour that they are scheduled to talk to them? No. Nikki, right?

So the automation comes from the original scheduling, but rescheduling and dealing with troubleshooting, that's an escalation. So what you're saying is that the role is still there.

It's an escalation. It's, it's there. It's just in a different capacity, right? It's more of like, how do we bring them into all the other things so like the recruiters can still continue their jobs and do the things that they need to do? But then that role can come in and help on all the other things that we get pulled away from, right? Like the example I was just saying is that if a hiring manager has to cancel within an hour and I have to reschedule, I'm not sending an automated email to a candidate. I need to pick up the phone and give them a call. But maybe I'm already on a recruiting screen and I can't do that, right? I already have my calendar booked out. So having somebody there that can do all those other things. So at the end of the day, if you're asking me like, are we removing that RC or that ops person? No, I think that there's ways that we can—

yeah, elevating the role because now they don't have to do all the itty-bitty teensy-weensy back and forth scheduling that's being handled by the robot, but they can manage the exceptions, the international ones, the— yeah, so that's, that's right, and that's actually more valuable. So they're elevating their value.

And I'm not the only one that thinks that way. We've had that conversation for a while now because everybody kept saying, oh, AI is going to replace these folks, or the new tools or the upgrades in the systems are going to replace these folks. And I'm like, there's other things that they could do to help us, to give us the bandwidth that we need to be best at how we're being, right? So that's, to me, that's where it comes into play.

That's right. Okay, very good. Wow. Well, we are definitely at the top of the hour. Any, any famous last words that you want to, you know, say as we part ways here? Anything you want the audience to really mull over?

Yeah, I would say kindness. Lead with kindness, always. Clarity. Yeah, kindness and clarity is big. And then always treat others the way that you want to be treated. Be authentically you all the time. And how do you connect?

So there's, you know, there's Nikki. She was kind, she was clear, and she was here.

Yeah, I guess you could say it like that.

Kind, Clear, and Present. Yeah, that's the title of your new, uh, of your new book, right?

Yeah, I love that. That's awesome. Hey, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much, and thanks for everybody who jumped on. I've really enjoyed the conversation, so let's keep it going. We will.

All right, everybody, uh, you heard it here. So we will see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourselves. Take care, everybody.