Shally's Alley Leadership Series - Nicole Scharrenberg, Dir. TA, CDW

Okay, well, it's Friday, it's 1 PM, so this must be Shelly's Alley. Hello everybody and welcome. I have a very special guest today. Nicole Scherenberg is joining me from CDW for our continuation of Leadership Talks. I'm very excited about this because Nicole and I have actually worked together a couple of different times on, on some projects, and so someone that I highly regard and respect in the industry. Let me tell you a little bit about Nicole's background and why I thought it was so appealing to bring Nicole as a guest on the show today. Nicole, if you don't mind, I'll, I'll give you an introduction. Nicole actually was an HR business partner doing talent strategy for about 20 years at CDW. For those of you that don't know CDW, they're a massive company that provides solutions for education, business, and government, and technology, and all kinds of things. You might have seen the logo before, but Unlike a lot of people in our industry, Nicole sort of went the other way. You know, folks often go from TA into HRBP roles, but Nicole came from an HRBP role and in fact has found it very useful. Now she's been in TA for 3 years, and at the organization that she's with right now at CDW, they've done this with a few other people as well. So I want, I want to ask Nicole a little bit about how that happened. She's very passionate about career development, leadership development, and mentoring. The future workforce. So we're going to try and keep the topics around that. Hi, Nicole. Say hi to everybody. Welcome.

Hi, Shelley. Thanks for having me here today. Excited to be joining everyone.

My pleasure. My pleasure. Good to see you. So tell me a little bit about why you decided to— like, what was the impetus for switching to TA? From, you know, you're still in HR, but from an HRBP to a TA role. I know that you did strategy, so that's always been part of your job, and now you're continuing that in strategy, but with a focus on TA. How did you make that decision? How did that come about?

Yeah, that's a great question and one that I get often, right? Because it is rare to see an HR strategy business partner make a transition into the specialized roles. You see it the reverse often, but I took a little bit of a different approach. So I spent the first 20 years of my career here at CDW on the business partner side, HR business partner side, supporting several functions of our organization and have seen tremendous growth. I think I was close to employee number 800 when I started and we're well over 10,000. Wow.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, and so one of the things that I pride myself in, in my career is really getting to understand each of the business functions that make up CDW and the continued growth that we've seen within the business functions, functions, getting to understand the leaders, the needs of each of the departments as it relates to talent, whether it's just overall talent management, performance management, change management, what are the different strategies that we're applying to building talent, growing talent, developing talent, and what are those expectations that we're setting. So as I continued my growth in the business partner world and getting very, very deep into each of the businesses, it made sense to really kind of take a different approach and bring over the knowledge that I had from several years of supporting both sales and our integrated technology groups and bringing that and infusing that into the talent acquisition team. So I joined the talent acquisition team in late 2018 and have been there ever since, and it's been an awesome journey. We also then see the connectedness that the business has with our roles, and since joining the talent acquisition team, there's been several transitions from folks from the talent acquisition team going back into the business partner So it has served us extremely well to have that cross-pollinated approach as well as get that intel and kind of infuse that into the business from talent acquisition. So it's been wildly successful. We've had some great transitions of folks moving over, and it's obviously been a great career journey for them along the way as well.

It's— that's a non-traditional way to go. As, as, as someone who frequently imitates salmon in that I swim uphill a lot of times, I can relate to making the jump. When I was at Google, and I was there when they went IPO, I went from Google to Microsoft. And at that time, a lot of my job at Google was to get people out of Microsoft. So I was recruiting people from there. It was the waterfall of talent leaving Microsoft to Google, and I was like swimming upstream to go the other way. So I'm kind of familiar with the whole swimming upstream And recently when I was at Fiserv, I also swam upstream because as the pandemic hit, I realized that a lot of my job had become more about reporting and strategy analytics and forecasting. So I taught myself Power BI and Microsoft Automate. Now that I'm back in TA again, I never left TA, but I was more in a like an exclusively strategic role as an advisor. I've applying all that into TA. So I really see the value on transitioning from, from, from one role to the other. We had a guest on the show prior that was an economist and had some really interesting things to say. You can watch the recordings from that, but I wanted to bring something up that I think is really curious about, um, something that, that, you know, you're, you're passionate about in your 20-some-odd years in strategy as an HR partner. You focused on driving programs that advanced business objectives. And why I think this is important, it may, it may be common sense to you, and it may be common sense to anybody in an HR business partner role because that's the role. But when you come into TA, I noticed that there's a pretty big gap, a pretty big disconnect between business objectives and TA. In other words, Um, from, from where I've been and what I've seen as an advisor, as a consultant externally, very frequently TA stops at the tactical and they talk about interviews and offers and hires, but they forget to make the connection between that and the overall business vision. That's what the C-level wants to hear. So I often talk about the connection. How do you How do you demonstrate value in TA outside of just number of hires? Because number of hires, look, that's what the CEO hired you for. If your job is to run the— if you're the crow, the CHRO, reporting to the CEO on the number of hires is not going to be useful. They're expecting you to have that handled. But once you get into the TA leadership level, a lot of times people forget to make that connection. Have you found that to be true, and how have you addressed that?

Yeah, I think this is where my background came into play, right? Because I did sit in the staff meetings every week with our executives for the business functions that I supported. And to really have a good solid understanding of the business, I think was critical. And that's the knowledge that I came over and infused our TA team with and said, you know, you need to make sure that you understand the business understand the competition, understand the different regions and the markets, understand the roles. I had some folks kind of shadow people that were in the roles to get a good intimate look at what the role entailed. And I think infusing—

let me stop you right there. I want to explain that, Nicole, because I don't think people understand what you just said. You have your recruiters shadow the hiring managers that they support to learn how that job is done.

Hiring managers or the roles that they were, uh, recruiting for. Yeah, right.

That's awesome. Yeah, I did that at Coca-Cola and I learned all about merchandising. I even went on a route and found out what these people do. They, they turn the bottles so that the labels face out and they really take care of the product. And I was like, wow, this is not an entry-level job. This is like really— this is the lifeblood of the company. So I'm really impressed that you do that. Does everybody do that, or is that just your people?

Majority of people do that. I think in order for you to understand the impact that we have, let's say, to our customers, the impact that we make with our partners, you really do need to understand kind of what the role entails. We've had people do ride-alongs with some field sellers just to better understand what that job does. We did it on the business partner side. We've done it on the talent acquisition side. To me, I think it's incumbent on our leaders to ensure that their talent acquisition advisors kind of come along with them. They're an extension of their team so they can understand really intimately what's happening in the business. What are their needs? What's the vulnerability? Who are the competitors? That makes a better talent acquisition advisor, right? So absolutely, yeah, an understanding of what you need as a leader I can go out to market and search for the best talent possible, knowing what you need.

And I wonder, you said ride-along, so that reminds me of sales. I wonder in the sales world right now, how is the whole pandemic situation impacting the way that CDW approaches recruiting salespeople for these outside sales, you know, business-to-business roles? And don't reveal any company secrets, of course, But is there something that you've taken away from the recent changes that would help other people learn how to hire salespeople in this environment? How to outside sales, road sales, if you will?

Yeah, that's a great question. I'll share something that we've done that we started to do pre-pandemic, and then we had to actually switch our approach. Pre-pandemic, we partnered with an organization to facilitate an assessment day. Where we're bringing in bigger cohorts of candidates to interview, and we put them in a scenario where they can share their perspective kind of on a one-on-one basis, but also we can see how they interact with— in a group setting. And we would do this face-to-face, and we would have several hiring managers there that represent the organization to help make hiring decisions. We would put them, the candidates, through different scenarios and exercises to see how they would react to pressure, to negotiating, to selling themselves or selling a product, let's say, that we put in front of them.

Like an apprenticeship almost?

Sort of.

It was sort of like a trial by, by doing.

Yeah, I mean, I think it gave us more perspective into a candidate than a flat let's say a 1-hour 1-to-1 interview. So we would invite these candidates for half a day, almost a full day of an experience, and they'd get to know a little bit about the organization. They get to meet some of the leaders there, and then we would put them through these, these exercises through an assessment day. When the pandemic hit, actually, I was in New York doing a face-to-face assessment day. The pandemic hit, we were all forced to go home, and literally we were faced with the challenge of how do we mimic this assessment day in a virtual setting. We moved to a Zoom environment, we scaled down the amount of people, so our sweet spot's about 16 people together that we could get into a candidate cohort, and did the same exercises, invited the same leaders to come in for the experience, and it's been wildly successful. And so we have now piloted it this past year and now are moving to all markets in, in this approach of hiring our sellers.

What about on the front of the funnel? One of the things that I found extremely challenging with B2B sales is the objection to, you know, basically being outside, and particularly during the pandemic, the objection of like, well, I don't want to go to businesses, I don't want to be exposed to COVID and all that. How has that been? Is that impacted at all? Or is that just an area that I ran into that maybe it was unique to me.

I mean, I think the challenge is for everyone, right? Like, we wanted to make sure that our coworkers, our customers, our partners were able to come together when it was safe and still taking, you know, measures to keep folks safe. We've opened up some opportunities for some more face-to-face engagement. They've been, let's say, smaller in scale just to prevent the continued spread, but I think being in the technology space and the tech industry, we had to put what we sell to the test, and that is bringing people together by the use of technology. And we've had some great success specifically in particular segments. If you think of like what technology has done for the education space, for the healthcare space, This is completely transformed it. So their value, right? We were there for our customers early on when the entire world had to go into a remote setting, and we were, you know, we were there for continued partnership to deliver what they needed to continue to run their businesses.

You're not just responding to the pandemic, you were there to help transition people, and you're there to continue doing that. Right, that makes sense. Um, I want to switch topics a little bit. Just something else that I wanted to bring up is, aside from what you've already done, what improvements do you plan to work on with your team in what's left of the year where, you know, things are starting to stabilize a little bit with the pandemic? We don't know what's going to happen still, obviously, but it's— we know more than we did before and we are starting to plan forward. So there must be some major improvements that, that you've been waiting on that you're now going to be able to implement? Can you share any of that?

Well, I would say that, um, you know, the, the pandemic has certainly propelled us in continuing to innovate at CDW. Um, we've had record-breaking quarters as well as record-breaking hiring of folks. I think we've hired well over 1,200 people in just the first half of the year. So, so our work hasn't stopped and it hasn't slowed down, which is, which is great for business. But I would say as we continue to grow and innovate as an organization, it, you know, as the leader, I need to look at our structure and take a look at how do we better support the business for growth? Are we set up the way we need to be set up to increase efficiencies, remove different roadblocks, decrease time to fill? All of our recruiters have gone through Talent Advisor training, and it's a continued education of how we make them better advisors to the business. How are they getting closer to the business? What resources and tools are they using to become better at what they do? I also think it's, you know, what are we doing to increase our throughput of diversity and diversifying our organization? So it's a lot of—

but you're award-winning already, so it's like saying we're a gold star, we want to get Triple gold star.

You don't stop. You can't, right? You know, if you take a look at the labor market and the pressures that are happening on the war for talent, if we slow down, if we take our foot off the pedal, Shelley, we're going to be left behind. The one thing that is continued in technology is change. And if we don't need to be agile and nimble to be able to change, we will get left behind. And so that's something that we need to continue to press on.

That makes sense. Yeah. So what do you expect from a sourcing team in order to make it worthwhile to have a sourcing team?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a continuous pipeline of talent. So it's not just sourcing for the, the here and now and what are the roles that are in front of us that we need to fill. To me, it's ensuring that we have a structure that we could make sure that we have sourcing pipeline for future roles and for future growth and to continuously tap into that pipeline when needed. So it's kind of twofold, right? We want to make sure that we can have secure sourcing strategy for right now and fill the jobs today, the urgent jobs, right? Decreasing that reduction to the bill, increasing the production of— or I'm sorry, the throughput of our diversity. But making sure that we have a volume of talent that's not only reactive, but proactive and passive, but also leveraging referrals, leveraging what we call boomerangers, right? Folks that maybe were with CW at one point and now are coming back to CW. There's so much value and richness in kind of diversifying that workforce with all of those things. So to me, it's really making sure that we've got a nice sourcing strategy that provides us with the best talent available, not just the known talent, but even through passive candidates, right, to get us the best talent available to present to leadership for hiring decisions.

In that way, that's really, that's really pipelining. I mean, pipelining is misinterpreted often. In my opinion, pipelining is about two different things, and you can do both, or you can do one, you can do the other. Pipeline can be having a list of warmed candidates that are in your talent network that are ready to be activated when the opportunity arises. These are people that are interested and not maybe ready yet, or the job wasn't there. That's, that's the warm pipeline, if you will. And then the second part of it is The pipeline is knowing how to get to the others that are not engaged. So that's not about making a list and, you know, constantly keeping it warm. That's about building research and knowing where to go, how to get to those people, what the message is, so that when you have to, you can respond just in time and send out a message and engage that. That's a much bigger pipeline, and that requires a lot more proactive forward-thinking research with the ability to respond, but both of these are pipeline, right? And if you're not doing one or the other, or ideally both, and you're just reacting to today, then there's not that— what I like to refer to as the long tail, borrowing from marketing, of sourcing. I think one of the biggest advantages sourcing has to offer is as a discrete capital investment. When we build this pipeline or have the research ready, that's an asset that we can use later on when we need it. If we're just filling jobs today, when those jobs are filled, then that's it. There's no residual value in our activity anymore. So even if you're filling jobs today, still using that research, not losing it, you know, that spreadsheet that you built, put it in a pipeline and do something with it so that you can build from it, learn from it. Otherwise, you're going to have to do the research again, and that takes time. So I think that that's a very important point of, you know, what the question was, what do you expect to get from your sourcing team in order to make it worthwhile? And, you know, you're saying, yeah, fill jobs today, but also build a pipeline. And also I'm adding, you know, the research and learning from where talent actually is. So very well said. So it sounds like you've got A couple of— oh, sorry, go ahead.

You can also lose sight of internal talent and what are we doing to upskill, reskill to get current talent ready for that next wave and ensuring that our recruiters have a healthy understanding of what talent is available within the organization, right? Because I think that's super important. And at CW, that's something that we also pride ourselves in is ensuring that there's healthy talent mobility happening within the organization.

Do you have an internal talent sourcing strategy?

No, but we have an internal marketplace, right, where we are serving up opportunities for our workforce and leveraging the skills that they have in their current roles for other roles that either become available or that we're building out, or let's say a new function that we're building out that we have specific skills that we're looking for, a specific language, let's say. But we do have an internal marketplace as well, too.

Yeah, I was asking because I actually put together a strategy for internal sourcing and was asked to deliver that, and it, it only got half implemented. But I do have some advice on how to do that. It may be a good topic for the future. The reason that it was only half implemented was because some parts of the business were afraid that their leaders would object to recruiters reaching out to talent and saying, you know, there's an opportunity open that might be fitting your background. However, the reason I think that that's not really an issue is because— and you're in a great position to answer this— as an HR VP, as a strategist, there's a whole other side to HR that has to do with future potential and developing, you know, people for the future. So if you're not going to give people the opportunity to switch jobs within the company, then why are you even doing that in the first place?

Right? So one of the things that we also look at is succession and slates for, for roles, right? And so ensuring that we have internal slates and potential built-out coworkers, whether it's ready now, or ready 3 years from now. And for those folks that are still marinating, as I like to call, what are we doing as an organization to get them ready and developed so that when we do have an opportunity that presents itself, that they are ready and they are successful in role. And so I think it's really critical to our organization. The other thing I'll mention is, and I'm a strong believer that talent is owned by the organization, not just on—

not the hiring manager, not the Yeah, absolutely.

We hire for the organization knowing, you know, maybe they'll spend some time in my area for a couple years, but potentially where could they go with that skill set and, um, with their career aspirations. So to me, it's really important that we, um, you know, that we have that philosophy that talent is shared by the organization. Just like, uh, recruiting isn't just owned by the recruiters or the the talent acquisition team that everyone be procuring talent along the way, whether it's, you know, engaging with customers or at shows or folks in their network, right? That they should always be recruiting for CDW.

I'm controversially known for being a proponent that hiring managers are not the customers for recruiters. It's the business that's the customer. So, you know, you— a lot of, a lot of times recruiters say, oh, my— the hiring manager is my customer. I think that the hiring manager is your partner in filling the position, but not your customer, because the company, the organization— as you said, the organization is, is really the one that's filling the job. So it's, it's a nuance in perspective, but it's important because otherwise we lose sight of the fact that We don't have to serve a particular hiring manager if they're difficult or belligerent or becoming an obstacle to the progress of the organization. We can try to work around that or work with it, but ultimately filling jobs for the company, not filling jobs for that one Mr. or Mrs. Hiring Manager. I'm really happy to hear you say that. That's very cool. I also wanted to ask you about technology. You guys are a technology company. You have a lot of technology. What do you see coming in— this is a question I like to ask all of my guests— what's on the horizon? What type of technology are we going to be using in the future, or what type of technology do you think we should all be using more that already exists?

Yeah, I'd say one thing that comes to light is gig workers, right? So one of the things that we leverage at CDW is when there are, let's say it's a project or a short-term initiative that we need some assistance with. We run pretty lean. So how can we leverage our gig workforce into helping us with a particular project or an assignment or a task? And I think it's been wildly beneficial, right? So what are some of the things that perhaps are on my plate today that take up or eat up a lot of calories, right? And so where can I be more efficient, carve out perhaps a role, maybe it's a couple hours a week that I could leverage the gig workforce. We have a partnership with Upwork at CDW, and we've been leveraging their network of gig workers to help us, whether it's, you know, I need a quick PowerPoint created, or I just need some, calendaring, um, help or administrative support, for example. So we've been doing a really nice job of serving up Upwork to all of our leaders at CUW to say, if there are some initiatives, short-term initiatives that you just need some reprieve or some assistance, leverage the gig workplace to help you out with that. And it's been quite popular. It's been very successful. We have several gig workers throughout the organization that are working with us alongside, and some turn into full-time opportunities down the road, but some are just really better served as it's a short-term initiative that we just need some help on and, you know, make us more efficient at the end of the day. So we've been pretty pleased with that. I see more of that happening as we continue to grow and maybe just need some, some reprieve here and there, but it's a great way to kind of serve up something that has an immediate need.

There's definitely a gap there. Yeah. You know, that actually might be the answer to a question that we had previously on the show where we were talking about the globalization or the shrinking of the world and how it's becoming more common to have positions available to people in multiple countries. And, you know, with the, with with remote work being easier now than ever before because of the advancements in technology. I'm wondering, and by the way, the challenge that came up, the question that came up was, if we're going to open our jobs to more countries and we're gonna be able to have this position posted remotely anywhere in the world, there's a problem that arises, which is essentially how do we pay them? There's different regulations, there's different payroll, there's different basically everything, right? And in some countries, you even have to have an office locally in order to even do business there. So I'm wondering if gig work is somehow the answer to that, because when you use these solutions, you're paying with a, like a credit card, right? It's not, it's not payroll. So does that avoid some of these entanglements of having to create unemployment and, you know, all these other things that would operationally be very difficult to do in 200 countries?

I would say that, you know, we have the benefit of having companies located in various countries at CDW, and so that kind of eliminates a little bit of that. Risk, but, you know, to have a partner like Upwork that takes on some of that liability and that responsibility is also very helpful. But I would say it does help to have, you know, some international presence as well from an organization standpoint.

Well, that does answer the question. So that could be a tool that you could use. Some of that liability can be, you know, carried forward into that. Okay. I like it. Good, good, good. So let's, let's end with a very pragmatic question. How about that? I wanted to ask, what is the longest a job has ever been open in your 23 years of experience? Even as an HRBP, I'm sure you've heard stories or even been involved with jobs that have been open a long time. What's the longest a job has been open?

Um, since I came over to talent acquisition team, there was one and it really, it haunted me. Uh, it was a position that was open for well over 100 days. And, um, to me a bit unacceptable on that. Uh, but knowing that there were some complexities to the role, um, and trying to find, uh, what I would call a purple unicorn, right? Um, and Shelley, you and I have talked about these types of roles, but they're highly technical. And on top of that, there might be a clearance requirement, right? A government requirement that is piled on top of, you know, the technical expertise. And so trying to find really solid talent that met those criteria was quite difficult for us. In fact, we probably would partner with a handful of search firms to help us with that. And even they came up short with saying, okay, that's kind of a highly— that's a big wish list. And, you know, we did have some success filling it, but then we wanted more of that. And so we finally got it filled. But I think the lesson learned there is how do we continue to grow that talent organically early on so we know we have this continuous pipeline of that sort of talent that we were looking for, knowing that there is a shortage. Shortage in the market for that particular skill set, plus the clearance. And so we, you know, we realized that maybe we need to go back to the drawing board, look at the job specs of that. Do we kind of carve it out into two separate and distinct roles? And then in the meantime, or in the interim, do we build organically the talent that we need for the future as well too? So, so that one— okay, but it was a great lesson that we learned on that one as well too, and that is really inspect what's actually needed and what's actually required versus what we could build and grow on our own.

Right, like basically maybe you're never really going to be able to fill that job the way that it is structured. So after a certain period of time, and I don't know what that advised period would be, make the determination, is this really two jobs, post two separate jobs, or can we bring somebody in with half the requirements and then develop them, you know, the other half? And the reason I asked this question is because I run into this a lot. Sourcing, as you can imagine, is a very good solution to these purple unicorn jobs where it's going to take a lot to just find those people. And I remember working one in my very, very, very early career, which was at Motorola. This is before the turn of the millennium. I think they had just put fresh batteries on the internet for the first time. And it was a position that had such a rare skill that there were really only about 7 or 8 people in the country that could actually do it. And that's because one of the other parts was that as Motorola, they couldn't hire from a long list of customers that included a lot of the organizations that would have someone employed that had that skill set. So there are more people that would be, that had the knowledge, but most of them were with customers. It was a very small list of only like 7 people. But I will tell you, the record that I have seen is 450 days. I'm not gonna admit which organization. That wasn't Motorola, it was somebody else. But wow, 450 days. And when that position ultimately got filled, it was because the company sold the division to— basically spun it off, and then they hired somebody for that, for that job. And I think the reason sometimes these roles are open for so long is that the person that was doing the job started in, you know, this, this role over here, and over the 5 years they've learned all these other things, kind of like what happened with me at Fiserv. I started in sourcing and, you know, leading sourcing teams, and then I ended up in this kind of BI, TA, future forecasting kind of role. If they were to post that job, it would be pretty hard to find somebody that's done both, but the role sort of evolved. And so backfilling that role is a unicorn because it— that isn't a skill set they ever hired for. I kind of adapted into that role. So I think sometimes that's what happens. Would you agree?

I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I think it's as we, you know, continue to forge into maybe uncharted territory that that might happen, right?

A lot more. Yeah, exactly. So something to think about is, you know, how long is too long? Is 100 days the limit? And then you start saying, okay, this has been open long enough. We need to analyze why is this really two separate jobs. This is a job that really evolved into what it is now, but it wasn't really, you know, let's hire for the original position. Without the add-ons, or let's hire for the add-ons and forget the— you know, let's recalibrate here. And that's a really good segue between your HRBP strategist and the TA. So I'm going to encourage more folks to do that. So HRBPs out there, get a job in TA.

I agree.

Any last words for our audience? Nicole, thank you very much, by the way, for being such a good sport. I know this is kind of an unusual environment. So appreciate it. Anything you want to share with the audience before we go?

I really appreciate, you know, you all joining, and if there's questions or an opportunity for us to connect, I welcome that as well. I'm on LinkedIn, so love to connect with you and share different perspectives or different ideas that we could, you know, potentially help both organizations, UW as well as your organization. So happy to connect with you on that. And thank you all for having me today.

Oh, you're very welcome. And I will testify that yes, both NCOL and CDW are very collaborative organizations. And I really appreciate that. Well, thank you again. Everybody have a great weekend. And we'll see you next Friday.

Bye.