Rebuilding Recruiting Culture with John Vlastelica & Danielle Monaghan

Hello, all. This week's podcast was originally recorded during our Social Talent Live event where John Vlastelika, CEO and founder of Recruiting Toolbox, sat down with Danielle Monaghan, SVP of Global Talent Acquisition at Expedia Group to dive into real world lessons, strategies and challenges from the front lines of Talent Acquisition. Remember to visit SocialTalent.com live to make sure you catch our next live event. Now, enjoy the show.

Hey, Danny Monahan.

Good to see you. Hello, John. Blessed Lika.

We've known each other for many, many years when we were both teenagers, I think, and one of the things I wanted to do is ask you to introduce yourself and your background and then I want to dig into a little bit of the challenge ahead for you as you are recently appointed to the global head of TA for Expedia Group. And unlike some of the advantage I had where I was at early, early Amazon and I could do some of this when Jeff Bezos was down the hall and it was a little easier to do, you're working with a company that's, that's more mature, that's been around maybe 30 years or more that has defined culture and maybe maybe not this orientation we've been talking about. So I want to dig into that. But introduce yourself first.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Danny Monaghan, I'm in Seattle, Washington. As I said this morning, I'm wearing my plaid to represent the Pacific Northwest here. My background is generally, I've really, actually probably my whole career have worked for tech companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, Google, and now speak a group. And so, you know, as you were talking through recruiting cultures and companies that, that have really implemented mechanisms to embed it in the culture, I smiled because I've recognized all of that, both the good, the bad and the challenging. And so, yeah, definitely looking forward to our next chapter here at Expedia Group. And we can talk a little bit more about that.

Yeah. Let me ask, when you join an organization and you're looking at all the things, you're looking at the tech stack, you're looking at the capabilities of your team, you're doing your rounds with the executives to understand current state and where there's opportunities and such, is looking at the hiring manager engagement level part of a list of things that would be in your mind as someone who's been ahead of TA multiple times now, you're is, is that a priority for, for you? Is that a priority for most TA leaders? Do you think it's a missed opportunity? Give me some feedback on kind of where that sits and things you're looking at in your first kind of hundred days.

Top priority. Top priority. For me, actually that's the number one priority for our team and for the business for 2025 and that is rebuilding a culture of recruiting. Yeah, I think you and I spoke a little bit. Expedia has gone through a lot of change in the last maybe six months. You know, new CEO, new chief People officer, new chief Technology Officer. I'm new. The leadership team is new. So even though the company is an established company, this is such a great opportunity to do this work and there's an appetite for that. So that was my top priority. And then, you know, as you double click into well, what exactly does that mean? This is a, it's a, it's a big job. It encompasses so many modules to build this culture of recruiting. And so you have to, you have to decide what, what is it that you're focusing on and prioritize. And it might be a multi year initiative.

Probably, it's probably not elsewhere. You're not going to launch an email out from the CEO that says effective Monday. It's a new world and everyone needs to. Yeah. So let me ask you about some of those things you're thinking about. So one of the things I sometimes say, and this is a little controversial, but I have seen pretty average or maybe even not great recruiting teams paired with amazing hiring managers and they get top talent. I haven't always seen amazing TA folks paired with terrible hiring managers get top talent. And I'm not trying to discount the important role we play or how a quality recruiter can make a difference. But, but it is like we really do need hiring managers to be great, to get the best of the best. And I'm curious, when you're looking across Expedia now, what role do you see the recruiter at the recruiter at the rec level playing in building or reinforcing this culture of recruiting?

Well, the, so I see two opportunities, I see the today opportunity where because we have so many new leaders, people have come in bringing their practices from their previous. And so we're almost seeing five different recruiting practices at different business organizations. And so right now recruiters are really focused on that quality hire. Every hire counts. We will wait for the right candidate. We're not, you know, I'm bringing you three candidates. You've got to pick one of three and they're not top talent. And so recruiters have an opportunity and, and certainly are enabled to advise on our current state, future State's going To look very, very different future state. We are handing the keys to the car to hiring managers in a, in a very different way. But we are expecting recruiters to play more of a business partner and a, a talent advisor then a little more tactical. Today the challenge that we have is doing the upfront work is, as you said, what does good look like? And everybody right now has a different definition. So we've got to go around and understand what the various beliefs are and synthesize the beliefs into, okay, these are our principles. This is who we hire, this is how we hire, this is what we value, this is what we evaluate. So there's a lot of work to do in 2025.

I love that you shared that the who we hire and how we hire part. You and I got to work on a project together when you were head of TA at Uber and we worked on Uber's hiring principles. And that's work that we've done for, you know, Starbucks and LinkedIn and Waymo and all kinds of interesting companies. And as part of that, we usually encourage our clients to embed something in there that talks about the expectation we have of the hiring manager, you know, that the hiring manager plays a critical role, that it's not just a, you know, consensus oriented like, you know, maybe the hiring manager, because they're focused on DEI or because they're focused on hiring senior on a junior team might need to play an outsized role in the hiring decision and might need to play a much bigger role in attracting and closing talent than they've had to do in their last company. And, and so can you talk more about, you know, the hiring principles idea, which I think is foundational. In addition to defining what it looks like for the role of the hiring manager, there kind of has to be an expedia way for you so you can be prescriptive and teach people like, hey, I appreciate you worked at Amazon or Microsoft or T Mobile or wherever you came from, but there is an expedia way. And so when we talk about you playing the role of a great hiring manager, there's, there's this expectation that you're, you're executing on, on our way. So talk a little bit more about this idea of hiring principles.

Well, again, hiring principles, as I mentioned, I've been in a lot of different companies and they approach things very differently. And so what I don't want to do is copy and paste what we've done before because I think every company, your hiring principles depends on where you are in the maturity model. Again, what you value, what your beliefs are as a company. And so that's what we're pulling together. But I would like to have us come up with things like we, you know, we don't fill a role just to fill a role. When we're hiring talent and we're hiring global diverse talent, that's what we, what we value. We also need to make sure that folks we're bringing in have an inclusive and a diverse lens. And so we have to interview them for that which rarely if ever happens. And so you bring people in and then you teach them your approach to inclusion and diversity versus making sure you're bringing the right people in. Yeah, we are playing with an idea of a. Not a bar raiser per se, but possibly a talent champion. The, the we have some appetite in some areas, less so in other areas. Some concerns about speed. You know, is it going to. Because you can really get into a bottleneck situation if you have a hiring or a bar raiser as appropriate. More important than anything for us will be and we have our CEOs buy in and for her to talk about hiring and recruiting and the importance of global top diverse talent at our all hands and our SVPs at their all hands. So talking about it and then actually modeling the behavior. So as you can see, we're doing a lot of basic work. A lot of companies are, a lot are further ahead. We're back to the basics in a big way. But I think my message is it does not have to be a huge heavy lift. You just need to have a clear North Star and then pick a few things that you're going to work on. The, you know, we consider modules and they attack that over X period of time.

One of the things I say a lot is, you know, change management is a full contact sport. And I was listening. But I also noticed Jacob Madsen who's very active on social media about all things ta. He made a comment a while ago that said something like well why can't we just have the CEO just send out a note and just top down this thing. And, and my experience is that's part of it. Like there's no question you want your CEO to kind of do some comms around this and your chro and you Danny and you know, everyone should be there should be top downs across. You have multiple PNLs, different, you know, business units at Expedia Group. But, but really the change happens at sea level. You know, it happens on the ground a lot. And I'm curious when you think about if you're willing to share. Maybe it doesn't be expedia specific, just more in your career when you think about the hiring manager who is not engaged, the hiring manager who is seeing themselves as a customer of ta. Right. Is there any advice you'd have for just kind of implementing whether it's these hiring principles or this culture of recruiting or a bar raiser program or anything where you're having to just tell the hiring manager, we expect you to show up differently, we expect something of you. It might look a little different. Is there advice you have for that full contact change?

Yes. Yes. It is a change management exercise too. It's something that you have to anticipate. You have to have your, your launch and your rollout and your communications. It's probably even more of a one to one between recruiters and hiring managers. But bring in the business partners. So utilize your partnerships. Whether it's a business partner or HR generalist, sort of depends on, on how your, how your company is set up. But bring in your partners. Set the expectations. Reinforce the expectations. Reinforce the expectations. But I, I'm going to get to a point where we just want, provide support for, for hiring managers that are, yeah, we will take a, a hard line, but we're not going to go out taking a hard line. We do need to, we do need to help with some change management.

Yeah, you have to meet people where they're at. Yeah. I mean some managers, we do a lot of focus groups and training and some hiring managers, you know what will say, not my job. Right. So like that's the recruiter's job. I'm not going to help close a deal. I'm not going to refer, I'm not going to go on my LinkedIn network. I'm not going to share this post about like that is your job. How about you do your job and I'll be a product manager, I'll be a salesperson, you be the recruiter. But then we have other leaders that say I'm willing to help. I don't know how, like what am I supposed to do? So sometimes it's a, it's a will issue, but sometimes it's a skill issue. And when you think about the managers that are willing to step up because they have a huge incentive. Right. I mean you show them that, that chart I shared, like top talent goes to really engaged hiring managers. They probably have, if they haven't yet, they will at some point in their career lose a great candidate because they sucked as a hiring manager, not because of pay not because the recruiter wasn't good, but because they didn't engage enough. But is there something you recommend? If there's a skill issue, what do we do with that? Like what is your thinking at Expedia around upskilling the hiring manager so that they can play this bigger role in TA or in recruitment?

Yeah. So upskilling hiring managers and upskilling recruiters is part of our, our sort of our rollout plan. There's communications around it, there's training around it, there's reinforcement around it. We do have a license to hire program and before you can be on an interview loop, you do need to pass license to hire. And we will continue. It will be a dynamic module which we will continue to update and upgrade and then have annual reinforcement. That being said, it's got to be a fairly light lift as well because people have full time jobs.

Right.

But I will say our approach at Expedia is hiring is your job. It, it is bau. It's extra. It's not different. It's not, as you said before, part.

Of your day job. This is your day job and recruiting is inside that, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it is your day job. You know, again, we've been harping on this, but the, the top down support is immensely helpful. It doesn't mean you can't start building a culture of recruiting bottoms up. It goes so much faster if you have senior leadership alignment and CEO alignment.

Last thing I want to ask you before we wrap up and I pass it back to Johnny is, you know, I mentioned in the intro, I've had the benefit in my career of working at some companies early enough that I had the CEO down the hallway or I knew the executive team really well and I could have some conversations where the change was hard, but not nearly as hard as if it was a mature, established company. And one of the things that I think a lot of folks listening in are thinking about is know where, where do I get started? Maybe I don't have a CEO who's bought into this. Right. Maybe I don't have a chro. Who knows what culture recruiting is. Maybe they're. You're so lean as a company right now that asking anything extra of the business seems inappropriate because you're just so under resourced. And so I'd ask Danny, when you think about where to start, if I don't have executive buy in, I don't have necessarily someone like you who's, who's experienced this before. But I want to get started. Is there a place you would Start. Would it be, start with changing up your interview training to be more licensed to hire. Sneak it in there. Would it be giving the recruiter something to talk about in their kickoff meetings? Like where would you start if you don't have some of this bigger stuff in place?

So I think you can do very grassroots start but work with your HR partners in coming up with a philosophy around what do we value. And HR partners could also help you help talk to senior leaders about like what do we value in hiring as a company? Let's package that. And then once we know what we value, then we develop principles. We make sure our recruiters are equipped to be able to talk about it does not have to be complex and then they take it. One on kickoff meetings, when you're doing intakes, when you're hiring, make it part of the new employee onboarding, a short module on recruiting. And again what we value and why and how we approach hiring. There's a lot of different ways you can do it. Interviewer training. Yes, yes. But that's a heavier lift. That's a heavier lift. But I think that is important. That galvanizes teams sort of around again your principles and your approach. I Nick's also going to talk next a little bit more about. Yeah. What, what are some of the things that we can all do to build a culture of recruiting if we don't have a programmatic top down approach.

Yeah. And if you're a small org. So hey Danny, I took some things away from this so thank you. One, one is, you know, get those, those principles and values articulated, you know, teaching, teaching your business in a more prescriptive way, kind of the Expedia way or the company way of thinking about it. Establish what good looks like like we talked about for hiring managers and maybe embed that into your interview training, your license to hire a program, your onboarding and then get recruiters to really, you know, push this, talk about this, reinforce it at grassroots level, down at C level. Don't just make it a yes, get the executive to send it out. But, but really make sure it's, it's something that that's, that's living. If you create a document with a bunch of values or posters or other bullshit HR stuff that's just like something on the wall, but it's not actually there's no accountability around it at the recruiter, at the rec level, at the hiring manager level, it's just a bunch of posters, there's just a bunch of emails. Has been my experience. So it has to come alive. Come, come to life at that recruiter level is one of the takeaways from.

Our cat and then the last. And I know we're running out of time, but I would say courageous leadership from in talent acquisition and from your recruiters.

Yeah.

Because people don't like change. You know, make sure as a TA leader that you are giving your recruiters air cover because sometimes giving tough messages to focus on the unturned loop 100%.

We could do a whole other talk on what to do with managers that are pushing back hard on this and how to arm your recruiters, but that's great advice as well. Danny, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate. It's great to see you again. And I'm going to turn things back over to Johnny.