Tara Noonan Live on Shally's Alley

Hey everybody, welcome to Shelly's Alley. You are live. It is March 7th, 2025, and here I am still going at it, bringing you the hottest news and trends from some of the leading thinkers in talent acquisition and human resources. You know, just people talking about people and not pulling any punches. We definitely keep it real here in Shelly's Alley. This week's guest is Tara Noonan Amrall, one of the partners at Riviera Advisors. And for those of you that may not know who Tara is, she's been in the industry for quite some time recruiting leadership at RPOs, driving strategy at companies like Marsh McLennan— wow, McLennan— um, Fidelity, New York Life, ADP, Aon Hewitt. Um, she's got a Six Sigma, and I think project management. Do you have a project management certification too?

I do not. I'm— I was a Six Sigma black belt.

Oh, okay. Six Sigma black belt is, is, is also like— that's connected to, uh, process and project management though, right?

Correct.

Yeah. Okay, so you don't have to have a project management certification if you're a Six Sigma. That's the top already. Um, yeah, so a lot of, a lot of experience with, um, organizational effectiveness in financial services and in, um, just the industry in general. Actually, you're also, uh, at the— with the Conference Board, aren't you?

I had previously been on the Labor Advisory Board and they've just restructured that. So I still participate in a lot of their activities. And I sit as an HR advisor for Semper Verens, which is a venture capital firm for new HR technology.

Oh, okay. Awesome. I didn't know about that. And you also work with, with ATAP as well.

Yes, I do.

Okay. Awesome. Well, Welcome on the show. Say hi to everybody.

Hello everyone, I'm so happy to be here. I'm calling in from Charleston, South Carolina, which isn't too far from here.

Hopefully your weather is better than here. It's not, not that great here. We have psychotic weather.

Uh, yeah, we had tornadoes on Wednesday and now it's sunny and in the 60s.

Oh, so you do have the same weather as we do. Storm watch and then the next day peaceful, cloudy, and calm, and then the next day sunny and hot, and then the next day, you know, freezing rain, uh, like just overnight. So, um, well, with, with all of your practical experience in large-scale talent acquisitions with, you know, strategy and operations in some of these large companies, um, I'm wondering if you can shed some light Bringing all that experience to bear, at what, what critical aspect, what one or two critical aspects of workforce planning do most organizations just overlook but shouldn't? What do they—

so I think, I think there's a few. There's probably two or three things. Um, the first is there needs to be a dialogue in partnership with the broader HR functions and the business or the financial arm. It's kind of like a 3 or 4-legged stool in that oftentimes talent acquisition is late to the conversation when businesses are planning budgets, talking about mergers and acquisitions or divestitures. And Everything comes as a surprise. So the more frequent and involved you can be in understanding the business planning cycle, if there's going to be any impact or infusion of investment which would potentially increase headcount or change the kind of headcount. So a lot of companies don't think about when TA has to be brought in. I always think the sooner the better, and I'll give an example. A client was thinking about labor arbitrage and where in the US they could get a better sorted talent pool for what they were doing. So while their headcount remained the same, they were reducing staff in one part of the country and growing in another part, and they didn't think about what that would do to volume. And so when you, you know, you reduce 50 and then had a higher 50, you know, and then there was additional attrition because people got nervous that there was layoffs, you know, it created a lot of volume. And going in, the business said, well, we're flat, but they really weren't flat because they were, you know, you had to go into a new market, create a new identity.

But if you look at it holistically, but But from one leader to another, it wouldn't be. Yeah, right.

And so that's an example where the numbers look the same. And but there really was a considerable amount of activity. And that even includes situations where maybe somebody is restructuring. And some companies may ask current employees to reapply for their jobs. And so while they think that the number goes down, but the recruiting activity, if talent acquisition is involved in that process, sometimes they are and sometimes that aren't— they aren't— that actually creates a lot of additional work and activity because now you have internals who are applying for multiple jobs. And that, that keeps everybody busy and you want to make sure you're, you know, treating your employees well. And so that again is often unaccounted for volume that happens. And so, it costs money. It costs time. It costs productivity from a lot of people. And so, those are some of the things that are often brought about way too late in the conversation.

Yeah, fascinating. Generally speaking, I have a couple of thoughts on that. Generally speaking, the CFO, or at least in, in the limited experiences that I've had directly with CFOs, um, they create the budget based on projections, but they don't account for cost in recruiting at all. It's not even a line item. It's like they, they just pretend that it doesn't exist, or maybe they're not even aware that it exists. So when I've come in and done audits and worked with clients as a, you know, investigating and diagnosing what may be going on and I come in and actually do a cost calculation, I've had TA leaders and, you know, people, chief people officers think that I'm hallucinating. But I show them the data and then they're shocked to find out that there's a lot of cost associated with it that the CFO just didn't even— I mean, it's just kind of hidden in there. I think partly because sometimes The divisions or the departments have separate allocations for their headcount planning. And sometimes, organizations have a centralized cost. But even if it's centralized, fully centralized, there are still hidden costs that people don't even take into account when they figure out the cost of recruiting. So, they might cut their recruiters and lay off some recruiters. Because they think that they don't need them as much because they're not doing as much hiring. And then something like what you just said, they're shifting talent from one place to the other. That's still recruiting. And but they just reduce the recruiting workforce because they think they don't— like you said, they're going flat. We're not growing, so we need fewer recruiters. Right.

I totally agree with you, Shelly.

But you just decided to move all that talent. So that is cost.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and, or they'll say, well, we don't need a sourcing function. The recruiters can just do it all. And if you're a tech firm, for example, it's, you know, unless you're embedded in the technology world of talent, it's very hard to do. And, or they might say, well, you can handle a lot more recs, you know, than before, but then, but you can't because there's only so many hours in a day.

Volume is the same. It's not getting better. The volume is not improving. It's actually the same.

Exactly right. So, so I would say that, you know, there's oftentimes there's big ticket items like what you may or may not spend on recruitment marketing, right? Sometimes that's a big number. Sometimes it's hidden. And then there is always in larger environments, even if you save money and because you're always asked to reduce, right, something, can you reinvest it in better ways that are more cost-effective? And so, a lot of times the TA leader is partnering with their managers or their businesses to say we can do this better if we can do the following things. If there's more adoption, if there's more consistency, because I'm a big believer that when you have consistent processes, you do gain scale and you can measure quality better. And so then you can often identify, well, if people are not using tools that we've purchased, then maybe we should forego them. Drastic, I know, sometimes, but if If people are not using things consistently, I have a hard time justifying just because we've had them.

Absolutely.

And so it can often be a difficult conversation.

I've, I've been responsible for, you know, P&L and budget for the TA function. And I'm certain you have too, as well. And I've had to have conversations with the CFO. I think the most uncomfortable one that I ever had to have was when, um, we were up for renewal with our, uh, our LinkedIn recruiter contract, and the quote that I got was triple. The quote that I got was triple the current spend. I'm not going to share numbers, but, you know, instead of paying a dollar a year, we were now going to have to pay $3 a year.

Yeah.

And it was like It's, you know, I negotiated and negotiated and I went back and I pushed hard and did everything that we could. And I got that number down significantly by about half. But still, the, uh, the CFO's accounting for our cost expenditures increase was about 30%. So in their mind, we were going from $1 to $1.30. Yeah, and that was across the board. Um, so I had to have a very difficult conversation with them about the way things, you know, price out and how much, how much things actually are, are changing. And the reasoning that he gave for this 30% increase was, well, you know, we're, we're growing. And I'm like, yeah, exactly. When we had 10 employees, they charged us a dollar. Now we have 700 and they want to charge us a little bit more. I get that going from $1 to $3 is huge. But they do want to charge us a little bit more. So, we've got to give them a little bit more room. And it just— they think like— here's what my observation was. That the expectation at the CFO level is that you take the dollars that you spend on advertising and divide it by the number of hires that you made. And that's the cost of recruiting. Yeah, that is the most myopic version, and I cannot understand how a CFO can even begin to think that. That would be terror. That would be the equivalent of the person in charge of your household planning the budget of your household expenditures by saying the cost of my groceries divided by the number of children, that's my monthly budget, without taking into consideration all the other things— education and utilities and gas and car maintenance. Like, you're just looking at this one. You'd say, well, it only costs us this much to, you know, pay for, for that one line item, so we're going to divide that by the number of children that we have, and that's it. That's our— but that's our budget. That is so unrealistic.

It is unrealistic. And I think, I think there's a question of that, you know. I'm a big believer in using data to demonstrate why we need certain tools, and You know, I've been doing this for about 25 or 30 years at this point. And I honestly do think that talent acquisition is the most consumer-like of the HR products, right? It's like a business to B2C kind of business. In our case, the C is the candidate, right? And so when you think about how many candidates do you have to reach to get a hire, right, that number is growing, right? There's a lot of stuff out there about fake resumes, fake people, the things that are causing automation is great until you're not sure it's real. And so there's a lot of things going on where you say, well, if I were— are you having the same conversation with the people that are selling your products? Right. And so if they're also getting the same cuts and a lot of companies, particularly consumer goods, they try to make sure that their companies are reflective of the people that they serve. I was in banking for a long time and Our neighborhood approach was make sure we're like the customers that we're serving. And so, we advertised accordingly. And you could think about brand marketing and recruiting as the same thing. So, you can't just market one way when you've got multiple audiences, whether it's a geographic, a functional, a skill level that you've got to be prepared to be able to flex. And that's often not understood when we're putting budgets together. The other dilemma we typically have is usually everybody does the budget at the same time. And so HR is being asked to submit their budget before they normally see the hiring forecast for the business. And so it's a very, you know, chicken and egg kind of thing because we assume the volumes will be more or less the same as the year before. But sometimes it's not. And so we have a budget that says, for example, we're going to hire 1,000 people. And then we find out that the business wants to hire 2,000 people or attrition is spiking and we've got to hire another 300 more people. We then have to go either ask for more money or use the money we have, run out, and at some point during the year say, OK, 'Here's where we are.' Or I often recommend that when we start to see that there are volumes that are going to pull you above where you thought you were going to be, you have to treat this as a project. And very upfront, go to the business, say, 'Look, you're hiring 35% more people than last year. We're going to cost this out separately.' It's not always a great conversation, but it is a business conversation. Right? We can't just do more with less when the business has very specific time, quality, and cost expectations. So that's why the more you can have the discussion, the better off you are.

Right. Absolutely. Because it's not just do more with less. It's do more with less and we don't even have a clue as to what the cost increase is going to be.

Right.

So, we're supposed to do more with less and then again, less because we have— because the cost is higher. You know, it's not like if you had this budget, that will continue buying you the same things. This budget, which is being cut, is going to buy you less things, but even less things because the costs are going up. It's double. It's like a double— you're being double punished, right?

I was talking to a leader over the last couple of months and they were talking about going into a new market and the company did not have that much experience. And in this particular market, you know, it was highly competitive. So you had to establish a new brand that, you know, was not necessarily a household name. You then had to market to a skill set that was already competitive. And then you had to take into account like no-show rates, right? So, you know, are you scheduling 25 interviews and only 12 people show up? And so then you think about it, you have to plan, you have to know the, the geography well enough and the culture well enough that says, OK, in this market, I have to plan for double because there's no shows at interviews, there's no shows at site visits, and then there's no shows on day one. And so you then have to think about to get that same number of hires, you may have to do 40% more work. Right. And so that's a whole other piece that you have to factor in in order to meet dates.

I have another one for you.

Go ahead.

I, I know this, this one is, it's happened a lot, but I'm working on this right now with a client. And hopefully at some point when the project is over and the dust settles, the client will accept to be invited on the show. Until then, I can't obviously talk about who they are, but this, this is a perfect example. Um, where we, we discover, when I say we, I discovered, I, I sometimes hesitate taking credit for stuff. I don't know why I do that. Maybe it's my imposter syndrome. But like, okay, so I discovered that for this particular class of jobs, let's just call them, uh, grade 13 and above. What you interpret however you want that, you know, that grade, um, not grade 13 and below, but so from, you know, this level and higher. For this category of jobs, they have to rework 1 out of every 2 jobs. So in other words, 50% of the jobs that they fill in that category have to be refilled. They don't take, right?

Yeah.

And, and this became— this, this came out in the analysis where we discovered that they have a 20% offer decline rate at this level, not at other levels. Now, you might think 20% isn't too bad, right? An 80% offer acceptance rate is considered industry standard. So, having an 80% offer acceptance rate, it's not terrible. No, actually, it's pretty good. I mean, you know, you could shoot for 90%. You're never going to have 100%. But at least, it's not 40% like I've seen some companies have 40% offer accept rates. So, they have an 80% offer accept rate, which means 20% of the time when they think they have the rec filled, and they make an offer, it doesn't take. So they got to go back to, you know, square one. So that's 20%. And then the other thing that we discovered is that they lose 10% of their, of their hires for each month for the first 3 months. So if you add it up, the 90-day attrition rate is 30%, and that doesn't sound like a lot. It is, it is high, but I mean, I've seen higher. And in some industries, people don't even stay one month, right? You know, so, but, but consider this is a pretty high level. Let's just say these are management and above, right? And so you got 20% offer declines and 30%, um, failure to, you know, failure to start, basically, because in the first 90 days they quit. That's 50%. That means half of their jobs, they have to start over. And they're only accounting for the hires. So the money spent on hires and at 50% cost straight up, that's not calculated. It's not being evaluated.

So, so I totally agree with you. And there's a time factor, right? So this is why did everybody start, you know, say June and now they're starting June, but then you have to rehire them for November because you're doing this that way. The other, the other piece that people don't think about is requisitions that are canceled. And so I've worked in organizations where we charge back the cost of recruiting in a kind of a shared services model. But it was always interesting to me, like, what if, you know, a lot of the work is done in the first 10 to 15 days, right? The sourcing, the screening. And so that's when a recruiter typically knows how's their pipeline doing. Do they have to go in other places? Is there enough flow? But when recs start to get canceled, That's also a loss of productivity. It's wasted cost on advertising. It's time for interviews. And oftentimes, you know, it's not explained to businesses unless there is a chargeback model. And then we know when there's a chargeback model, they're very serious when they open a requisition because they know, like, I think you get charged $5,000 if you cancel in the first 25 days. And so there are things that go along with that, that if you manage it not just as a people function, but also because we are contributing to the bottom line. One of my first ever projects I did back when we had to explain why email addresses were important. So I do date myself, I apologize for that. But one of the things that we did an analysis to get some funding was the cost of a vacant seat. Right? So we were trying to demonstrate that if we could get that fills faster by automating a big part of the process, that we could then impact the business revenue even if we just cut it by 2 weeks, right? Because then, you know, people would have butts in seats and then get towards productivity. And it was a big— it was kind of— it was a long time ago, but it still stands today. Like, if you can really figure out consistent process that everyone can follow 85% of the time, OK, so that you minimize distractions, you, you can set clear expectations for candidates. Managers know their roles. Interviewers know their roles. You really can make an impact to the bottom line of the company because it's not so wiggly. You know, there's a clear definition, much like if you have a sales cycle. In a business. Sales professionals are held to standards on how many calls, how many closures, how many, you know, and what does it take to close and what's the estimated cycle time to bring on a new client. It's very similar to that. And so, when you start to talk in business terms with your team and your clients, your internal partners, you can really make an impact on— we've all got skin in the game to help the company do better as well.

Oh man, so I just, I just had a thought as you were talking about that. It would, it would behoove us to be, to operate a little bit more analytically in our roles with regard to financial analytics. Why do we not do that? Are we not? What's the, what's the gap?

So I think that there has been a charge, I'd say, over the last decade to get HR as a function, maybe not so, maybe not necessarily individual recruiters, but the function of the function.

Yeah, to run like initially aware.

Yeah, yeah. I, and I have seen this time and time. I myself came business. I was a banker.

And that makes total sense because, you know, the banks are where all the money is, and so you count all the money. So you probably think like, like money. But in a lot of other functions, they don't. And as I go back, I remember having a very painful lesson learning about finance when I was starting to grow into a manager level. You know, that was one of the first things that I, um, when, when you transition from an individual contributor, especially when you are a very high production individual contributor. I mean, I outpaced everybody and that's how I got, you know, promoted and I got noticed. And then, I was put into a manager role. And people like, well, why don't, you know, why don't you want to be a manager? Why don't you want to be a manager? And then, I got into the role and I started realizing that there were all these other skills that I didn't really develop because nobody told me about that. I had no idea. One of them was, was, you know, budgeting and financial planning and everything. And this was a long time ago. I mean, I'm talking about 20— uh, yeah, 2005, 2006, when I was a director at Microsoft and I was given a budget right now. At that point, I didn't have any opportunity to negotiate the budget, but I was given a budget. And so now all of a sudden I had a P&L, and it started at the top line, and then I could spend whatever that was, but I couldn't get any more money. That's when I started realizing, okay, I've got this other— there's this whole other skill set that I need to learn. And then when you go from being a manager to being a leader where you have other managers, so you have— you're a leader of leaders, right? Then there's this other jump that you have to make to learn how to help them plan their money. You see what I mean?

Yeah, it's very, it's very diff— it's very complicated and We're not prepared to do that. People assume that the leader, the leader leader is going to make all the decisions. I mean, part of that job, or at least the way I approach it, was to prepare people to take my job. Right? So that they—

And that includes the money.

Exactly. The big part of it is the money and to be able to use data because talent acquisition always has had the potential to really use the data. To tell fantastic stories. I mean, differentiating stories. If people use the tools to track the data, and then we use the analytics. But I've yet to find an HR function other than maybe payroll that can track everything, that can really use the data to show stories in a variety of ways, both on the production of the recruiting team, the production of the managers, the quality of the managers. I had one senior HR business partner once wanted me to do the analysis on, can you tell me which leaders on my business team are the best at hiring talent? They were very sophisticated. But they really wanted to know, like, of the managers in the interview process, are their recommendations getting hired? And do those people stay longer, right, to your point? Point about this question. That's a very sophisticated— but you know, if you've got a, a revolving door on who's involved in the process— and the point was we should have our best leaders doing the interviews. Yep. Because they're really good. Not everybody can interview talent, and not everybody can identify what they need.

Oh my God, are you kidding? I mean, again, as I do these audits, I'm learning a lot more about our industry when I have exposure to so many different organizations. I'm, you know, when you, when you are in-house for a few years, you can only learn whatever that organization has to offer. But as a consultant, I get to see all these others. And I have ran into some doozies where we found this company where, um, the hiring manager that was most often picked to be part of the interview process for the CTO. So all of the tech jobs, right? There was a manager that was, that was invited in as one of the interviews for a lot of these, and people identified them as one of the best interviewers. So like you're, like you're saying, they had this, this person had the, the uber interviewer job, right?

Right.

And statistical analysis demonstrated that 90% of the time this manager gave everybody 5s out of 5. So basically their contribution was useless, completely useless, because like 90% of the candidates that they interviewed got 5s and the other 10% got like occasionally a 4. But, but that, but that's, I mean, when you look at the scorecard distribution for others They go from 1 to 5, you know, and they use all the numbers in there. This person, which, who was the, you know, the best interviewer, pretty much always gives everybody a 5. And that doesn't even like— so, if everybody's great, then how are we making a decision? That was the most awful discovery because then we're like, yeah, we got to stop inviting this person to interviews. They're not adding to the conversation. Not everybody's a 5.

Well, not everybody's a 5. And then, I had—

for every job, right?

They wanted to understand, like, a lot of companies will do employee engagement, employee satisfaction, and many companies, the numbers for ability for advanced career are never as high as a company wants them, right? But when you start to think about, do certain managers have people that transfer out of that department more frequently? And so, when you're a sophisticated HR function, we were getting asked those questions like, why is this? They identified there was an attrition problem. And so, then as we were interviewing more people for replacements, the data showed that there were certain departments where it was a revolving door, whether it was job design, manager design, clarity of job. And when I have worked at organizations And you probably do, Shelly. You know, people know they're going to join a call center and then they show up and they're like, I didn't know I was going to be on the phone all day. Right. And so, you know, they've gone through 3 or 4 interviews, including a realistic job review, and then they show up and they're like, well, I didn't really realize I'd be on the phone all day.

And so the job is call center. The first part of that is call.

Exactly. So So, I mean, you see everything. And I think that, you know, the TA function with the variety of tools that we have, we do have the ability to pinpoint things, assuming everybody, including hiring managers or interviewers, I should say, embrace the process of helping us collect data.

So would you say, is it fair to say then that the biggest mindset shift that you wish more TA executives would make to become more future-proof would be numbers savvy, like whether that's finance or analytical data analysis, but basically be more numbers-oriented?

I think there's— I think that's a big piece. I think the other thing is you have to be able to influence without direct responsibility.

You know, some people actually did that organically and others have to learn that. But I don't think anybody out there is going to say that learning how to influence without authority is, is a missing skill. I think everybody tries to do that.

But some organizations, you know, there's barriers to silos. Like, don't, you know, don't tell me about this. You're in that little bucket, right? But you have to really be able to get out of the bucket, influence what, you know, what's going on. You know, even at some organizations, whose job is it to write a job description? Believe it or not, as we go into clients, that is often a bone of contention. Right? Comp does one to price the job. Then the manager puts their flair on it. Then the business partner might put their flair on it. The TA person should get something that they can have a marketing person— marketing approach to be able to post it externally. So it's attractive to candidates. But I have other organizations that just assume it's recruiting's responsibility to create the job description. And I don't think that's the case. I mean, you know, we're, we're filling an order and we can give them market information about what a job like this looks like. Right. But even those little things still create debate inside organizations and blur roles and responsibilities.

Yeah. Honestly, I think it ends up being a Frankenstein kind of creature that just has remnants from the past, remnants from the future wishlist. Incorrect data. I mean, I've never met a job description that I liked.

Just, yeah, I think I always say that in the teams I've had, the worst case scenario is, you know, Shelly resigns and then they want to backfill Shelly, but they want everything that Shelly did plus all this new stuff.

Right. And most of what Shelly did, he learned on the job.

Exactly. Exactly. That does, that person doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist. Yeah. I want to go back to something you were talking about in this kind of like large-scale leadership and changing mindset and address something that's a bit of a current event. Not a bit of it. It's a big current event. Administrations in the past, you and I have both survived multiple changes of the guard in government leadership. Executive leadership, you know, back and forth in the political spectrum. And you and I both know that talking politics is not a good idea because it's such a device, you know, like religion. It's such a divisive opinion-based area. But the reason I'm bringing this up is there's an impact to talent strategy. And previously, other administrations have dictated executive orders that affect immigration, that affect labor, and have pretty deep ripple effects on talent acquisition that we have to contend with. Not having been the policymakers, we still have to— by policymakers, I mean not having been the governmental policymakers, we still have to contend to those. So given the, the current political landscape, um, what are you hearing out there is, is going on with TA leaders preparing for these shifts that are happening, um, right now, you know, with Trump's executive orders? What can we take from previously when shifts has happened? Because this isn't the only time that this has happened. There's been What I'm trying to say is there's been other presidents that came in and signed in to order executive orders that were running counter to previous executive orders.

Yeah.

Okay. And I don't want to get into the controversy of politics. What I want to do is, can we learn from our predecessors how they handled other changes based on these big executive orders? And what can we learn from them to help us deal with the ones now without getting—

I've been doing a lot of check-ins, coffee chats with colleagues. And I think there's a couple themes going on. I think that organizations are trying to understand, given the transition landscape, you know, are they doing things that are in line with the executive orders? Right. And that you know, are, you know, maybe not to the letter of the law, but, you know, as far as it relates to how they show up as a company, what can they do to make sure that they're not doing anything that over time might be perceived as illegal? Right.

And, and a lot of people are doing gradual changes, whether it's illegal or not. It's the perception, right? I mean, exactly. But the executive order is not passing a law that makes it illegal to do something. But it's being perceived that way.

Correct. And so, people I think are taking a pause and they're trying to understand, what am I doing now? Do I need to alter? Is this a tweaking or is this a whole scale change?

Right. Do we need to change our employer brand? Or do we want to not change it? We want to stand up for our beliefs and not change our employer brand. And what's the consequence? Is there a consequence? Can we do that without paying a penalty? Or is there going to be instability in the workforce, right? Whether or not it's a compliance issue, that aside, there's still the workforce that we have to consider, right? You said earlier that when you were in banking, because you're serving a community very much locally, each bank would seek to represent the community that they serve. And to me, that— I mean, I wish I would have stepped in when you said that before. But to me, that is the absolute principal definition of diversity. It's when you serve customers, are you serving customers with the same community that the customer— are you reflecting your customer? If you're not reflecting your customers, something's off. So, to me, that is the pure essence of what diversity is. It's supposed to be a diverse population serving a diverse population. So, you said that and then I kind of let it go because I wanted to ask you this other question. So, now, it's not just compliance, it's not just politics, it's not just law. It's also you have a community bank that has to behave a certain way for the benefit of their shareholders. It's in their corporate best interest to be a community.

I mean, there's all sorts of data and studies that talk to the bottom line impact of having a diverse workforce. I mean, there's companies that if you've got diverse work teams, you have more patents. There's a bottom line impact to the revenue of the company. There's all sorts of data that is going on and on for 20 years. And there's all sorts of crazy studies that talk about, you know, even the movie about the woman that was behind, you know, the moon calculations, the fact that the ladies' room was, you know, 3 buildings away. Those things still exist even in academic settings, right? And so, so people are just, you know, finally at a point where there's value in understanding diversity of thought, diversity of perspective, diversity of education, etc. So I'll give you one example. I was working with a client and they were very close to one university. And so they had— they were like ripe to recruit everybody from this one department. What they found was they had great talent, but these students were all taught the same way. Right? So when they approach the product, They, they had one stream of thought. They had another site that was also software development, but they were recruiting from multiple universities. And so what they found was when they looked at the productivity and the product, the product outcomes of these two teams, the team that had recruited students from multiple places had a completely different approach to product development, right? And they, they were in fact more productive and had faster success because they were challenging things and they came out with better outcomes. That's just one of those things when you think about diversity of thought. You know, it does impact how you recruit talent. And maybe this other, other place would say, maybe I've got— I shouldn't have recruited everybody from the exact same school. I should bring in people from different thought processes.

It does. But, but here's my problem, Tara, with, with this. Reactiveness. So, we are— I shouldn't say we. I'm hearing about and you're hearing about leaders that are kind of just reacting to this climate change. My question is, how do we prepare these leaders to not do that? Because simply a knee-jerk reaction is not going to help anybody. Policies— the point I was trying to make before is policies change. Every presidential change, there's going to be, you know, whether it's in one area or another, there's going to be changes in policy. We know that. We've seen that historically. It always happens. So, this is— I'm not trying to diminish it. I'm just saying this is another policy change. Why is it that leaders are almost like reacting in a jerking kind of like, 'Ah!' Why is that?

It's too It's very much a knee-jerk reaction. And I think that it feels like it's just a knee-jerk reaction.

They're not thinking it through.

You know, I have 3 kids, adults now, and, you know, every child is different. And so I had one child where I would literally have to say, could you please count to 10 before you make a decision? Right? Because he just needed to think it through. And sometimes he did the same thing. Other times he did maybe pivot a little bit. But I do think that we have to understand what is the impact to the business? How are these nuances going to help us or hinder us, right? Because if I think about it from the candidate's perspective, in many cases, it is still a candidate's market. Right.

And so that hasn't changed, right? Because the president changed, right? So why are we—

if somebody is minimizing some of the things that are in the— that are, you know, up for grabs now, and it's very important for candidates to join organizations that believe in diversity, inclusion of thought, belonging, and those are not as high on the radar. Candidates will have choices. And so there could ultimately— so I think taking a slower approach to understanding what, if anything, do I need to change, rather than the knee-jerk reaction. Because I mean, there are articles in multiple newspapers about, you know, people just taking down their DEI or changing the names of jobs. And, you know, and so I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were telling me they were applying for a diversity leadership job. And I said, oh, I'm so happy. Right? So that was a company that decided this is still important. This is how we define it. So I think it's going to, it's going to be different for every organization. I think, you know, there's a lot of— this is not new. I mean, the state of Texas had things in place a while back. So, you know, I know all the companies that work there have been dealing with this. And so you have to have nuances. I do, as a woman, I just want to make sure that, you know, people understand that stopping certain things, you know, as you know, does have an impact on— there was a recent thing here where, you know, an engineering day was halted. And I thought, okay, it took us forever to get women in STEM, you know, really as an initiative. I'd hate to see those kind of things go away. But I think companies are hopefully being thoughtful. And to your point, are not just having knee-jerk reactions.

So what I guess my question comes back to, what are we— what have we learned before about this? For example, I don't remember exactly the dates or who this was or where this was. But there, I remember there being an executive order that required that a certain percentage of government contractors and, uh, employ— I'm sorry, that it required that government employers, people who do business with the government, um, so primary contracts and all, it required that 10% of their hires have come from, um, people with disability. Yeah, the military was one, disability is another. So these have been— these are things that have been orders before. Why is it that we aren't learning from those? And instead we're just kind of—

I don't know. I think we're going to have to— your point, I think we're going to have to use the data to show people that, you know, businesses come with positive intent to hire the best possible talent.

That's what you should do.

And to the degree that, you know, people with disabilities, you know, you want to make sure, okay, if that is something, whether we believe in it as a firm firm, or it's a government directive, we have to be able to do it.

What I—

and so maybe I didn't understand that. I hate to see some of these things that really have started to become parts of cultures and get eroded.

And so, yeah, here's where I don't really understand why we're having such a big impact or a big reaction to it. I understood that the executive order directs federal employees and federal contractors and like the, you know, OFCCP and things like that, and things like that, from, um, doing something. And it, you know, and it sounds a little bit like with COVID remember how the government, um, contractors and all were requiring people get COVID vaccines, but it was very— it was made very clear, if you are not a government organization, you don't have to require this. We're only requiring— so that was like the government saying that their employees have to do it. And I, I kind of understand this as the government's employees are, are impacted, but that's just them. Why is everybody interpreting it as every corporation? I mean, it didn't— so I say Hey civilians, and your diversity practices.

So I think that the concept of how far does being a government contractor reach is probably a lot broader than just government entities. And so I think people are just being cautious. There's a lot of businesses that you don't even— or they're receiving government funding. Um, and they don't know what's going to happen on volumes. Or do they have the same level of funding, or is it going to go up or down depending upon what else is going on? So it's not, you know, it's just one of those things that, you know, again, as I said earlier, it's a pause to understand what's going to happen.

That's right. That's what, that's what I, I, I like that about what you were saying, is taking a pause. But what the, the other thing that I don't like is all of a sudden We deleted, and I'm being serious here, like deleted the diversity policy from our website, which by the way, I want to express how ridiculous this is. All of the emails that you ever sent to any candidate in your signature have a link to your diversity policy. And in the future, they're going to click on that link and they're going to get a 404 error page not found.

I know.

What does that communicate?

It, it is not going to be fun.

I mean, so we're just deleting it? We're not even replacing it or rewriting it? We're just outright like—

I think I've heard that there's all those combinations. But again, you know, it's just not as easy as taking it off because, you know, maybe somebody didn't think about the signature. Somebody didn't think about what's at the bottom of the, of the website. So again, I think that taking the inventory inventory, taking stock, understanding what, if any, modifications have to be made. But there's definitely been a flurry of activity.

That's what we did last time though, when, when the veteran order was signed, when the diverse— the disability order was signed, we paused and we thought, okay, how are we going to bring this into our business? And we made the decision. But this time seems different. This time it's not like, well, let's think about it. This time it's like, Delete, delete, delete, hurry up, erase it. Let's pretend that it's never happened.

I agree with you. It feels very different.

It's like some kind of like, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Like a witch hunt, you know? Like, let's hunt down every mention of the word diversity on our website and obliterate it as it never existed. Hey, I have an idea. Why don't we rewrite every dictionary and remove diversity from the dictionary? Like, why are we going to such extremes for a policy. It seems—

I'm not sure—

a bit, you know, that's what I don't like about it, about what's happening, is it's just people are reacting and not thinking. And I think we should— in my opinion, the lesson that we should learn from prior administrations is that, um, even when something gets signed as an executive order, it can also be changed.

Yes, and I think people are starting to understand that now. I hope so, because From what I'm seeing, you know, in the papers and reliable news sources, I think everyone's saying, okay, um, that was that, but let's see how it really gets in, you know, as it moves forward, right?

Yeah. So that is the big shift. That's what I want to make sure that people are, you know, really thinking about, um, and preparing for. Because like you said, just reacting to it and deleting your policy from your website And then coming back and realizing that, well, hold on a second. We can't just eliminate diversity because we represent a community. And if we represent a community, we have a financial responsibility to our shareholders and our stock, you know, our stakeholders of all kinds to continue to do what's right for our business, which includes being representative of our community.

I know, I know. So it is, but I do think that collaborating across, because understanding the business strategy and what does this mean and how this will impact candidate experience, the talent pool we're going after, all have to be considered. So we're at the beginning, and so hopefully sound minds will prevail.

And one last thought about that is the administration's change. And so what about 4 years from now? You know what I'm saying? Like, are we making— are we doing something? Businesses don't just live for 4 years.

I know.

They don't just live during one presidential term. Um, so when the next president comes around, are we making changes that are, that are going to impact us beyond one presidential term?

I don't know if we should. Well, I mean, I, I honestly believe we are because, you know, If you think about with all that, again, not to get political, but if you think about a lot of the layoffs that are happening through government entities, right? I mean, there's talk about retirement packages and things like that. But if you— I would imagine that the most federal agencies or entities have an older workforce. And so a lot of the people that are being laid off are younger workers. What's going to happen when the older workforce is ready to retire? So now you've cut through people that you took years to recruit, years to get through security clearances, and now they're being let go. And then you're going to have institutional knowledge with people that are nearing retirement leave the organization. And then you're going to create another hole.

That's another impact. Yeah. So that's, that's interesting. Um, I don't know if that's even being debated or discussed because it's been going on for a while. We've had an aging population for a while and demographically we've seen kind of that bell curve, right? Where, where there's just more of us than there are of the younger workforce. And so Is this actually having another unseen impact, right, where, um, there's going to be even more vacancies, accelerated, if you will, vacancies? That now that you think that— now you bring that up, I, I just, I just popped into my head, um, this year— sorry, this and last year, 2024 and 2025. So for the last year and a half I have had at least 7 conversations with friends, not just, you know, people that you call friends that you, you know, maybe see once in a, once in a long while, but actual friends, right? Uh, that, that have retired. Um, and my God, it makes me feel old. I mean, like, I, I'm not anywhere near what I think is retirement age, but my friends are retiring. What is going on? I know it seems very early is what I'm trying to say. It feels like I shouldn't even have any friends that are retired, and yet I've had, you know, in a very short period of time, several conversations with people that are like, yeah, you know what, I just decided to just pack it in, move to Costa Rica, uh, and I live in a fishing village now. And I'm just like, what? What?

What? Maybe they're prepared. I don't know. I don't think I'm old enough to retire.

Neither am I.

When you do something you love, like when you do something you love, I can't imagine retiring.

So yeah, that's probably part of it. You're right. It's probably because I just don't imagine myself retiring no matter what the age. And it's coming as a bit of a cold shower that some of the people that are my contemporaries, right? In my age group are retiring, and it's making me think maybe I should be thinking about retirement.

But nah, I know, I know.

Yeah, when the government needs to hire a whole new crop of employees, um, it used to be stable. Gosh, that's a huge point, right? Used to be getting a government job was a stable job. I think that just, that just changed.

I know my father was a government worker for a year, for decades, and, uh And but, you know, I, with the CIA stuff, I mean, I remember benchmarking with either the CIA or the FBI. And, you know, it is a very long recruitment process. And so like, if that's the norm, and, you know, look, we know we have an aging workforce, we know that more and more people are looking to retire and newcomers, people in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s, you know, they're trying to obtain new skill sets and bring them to the table.

Talking about the CIA, I am going to— folks, stay tuned because I'm going to have a guest in a few weeks who used to run things and advise some of the clandestine services. I myself have worked with all 16 of the clandestine services in different points, but he's, um, one of the head honchos in, in DC who's agreed to come on here. Now, I'm pretty sure he knows well what not to say and what to say, But it's gonna be interesting because I think he might have another perspective and I'm gonna revive this conversation then and see what he has to say about that. So, very insightful. Thank you, Tara, for answering my hard questions here and agreeing to be on the show.

Thanks anytime, Shelley. It's great catching up with you and chatting.

Yeah, thanks. I do have to ask two questions that I ask everybody on the show. And it doesn't matter how far back we go, everybody gets treated the same way. So the first of those is, who should be our next guest?

Good question. I recently reconnected with a former colleague. Her name is Lisa Scher. She worked for me way back when at ADP. And we really started their first social media campaign. She has since gone on to be a pro— I think she's a recruitment product manager. She just switched jobs again. And she was just pinging me about needing some assistance on some activities. She would be an interesting person for somebody who has been in and around the talent acquisition world.

All right. So that was—

I can reach out to her.

And what was her name?

Lisa Scherr.

I'm going to try to—

S-C-H-E-R-R.

Okay, great. All right, awesome. Now, she might not say yes or no, but that's okay. So at least—

But I'll prep her, Shelley.

All right, awesome. Awesome. And then the other question is the, you know, kind of the wrap-up question, if you will. What do you want our audience to think deeply about over the weekend? Something for them to chew on and think about? Not— I don't want you to give a statement for them to consider, but a question for them to ask themselves.

So, you know, I think about this a lot because I do try to ask myself that. I really think that everybody has to show up as their best self. And, you know, Some days it's easier, some days it's harder. And so what are you doing to make sure that you can show up as your best self personally and professionally?

As often as possible.

As often as possible. So whether it's reading or meditation or whatever, going deep in your industry, like, what are the 1 or 2 things? I have this thing for the last 2 years. I do 1 new thing every month that I've never done before. This month, last month, I went fishing. Like in a catch and release kind of thing. I've done all sorts of things that I've never done before. And that's really to make sure that I am making sure that I'm keeping myself fresh and relevant to my outside environment.

Okay.

All right.

So ask yourself what one or two— just let's just start with one thing— are you doing for yourself to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward, that you're being your best self. Okay, so good. I like that. That's, that's good. And it doesn't have to be specifically like read a book or whatever, but what? Yeah, whether it could just be, you know, taking, taking time for yourself.

Not a lot of people do that.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, it seems like the older we get, the less we do that until a certain point, right? Well, uh, again, thank you very much, everybody. We will see you on here hopefully next week. Our guest is Tawfiq Abu Khajil. He is an employee referrals expert. So if you have any interest in that, we'll see you next week. And I guess be kind to yourselves. Take care.

Great. Thank you very