Leadership Human-Style

Measuring Your Recruitment Maturity with Liza Voticky

Lisa Mitchell / Liza Voticky Episode 118

“More often that not, talent acquisition is tucked into HR as a function that everyone has to tolerate vs. a strategic arm of the organization.”
-Liza Voticky

Without the right people in the right place at the right time, your organization cannot meet its objectives.   Today’s guest approaches the discipline of Talent Acquisition as a strategic and essential function vs. a necessary evil that should be done as cheaply as possible.

My guest is Liza Voticky. Liza began her career in Toronto, Canada as a Staffing Specialist for a temporary staffing service.  She successfully developed through various roles in staffing, national sales, operations, communications, and senior management.  Liza continued to grow her career through leadership roles in Recruitment Process Outsourcing, supporting teams in the USA and Canada.  After 5 years as an RPO provider, Liza kicked off her corporate leadership work with Coca-Cola Enterprises. At Coca-Cola, she built a recruiting team from the ground up, implementing a total transformation of the hiring processes across Canada.  Promoted to Vice President of TA, North America based in Atlanta, Liza was responsible for multiple re-organizations as the company transformed its North American business model.

After nine successful years with the Coca-Cola Organization, she moved to Miami, FL. where she joined Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines as the Head of Global Talent Acquisition, Shipboard & Shoreside.  During her time with RCCL, Liza was responsible for completely transforming and optimizing the global recruiting process for approximately 25,000 hires annually from 120 different countries. This included leading Talent Marketing, Talent Attraction Operations, and candidate experience.

Today, Liza is the CEO and Founding Partner of MXA Talent Solutions, an organization built to help companies review, assess and strategize for the Future of Hiring.  “I’ve left the corporate space to better live my passion for changing tactical, basic recruiting functions into strategic partners aligned with business growth objectives.”

In this episode of Talent Management Truths, you’ll discover:

  • An example of how treating Talent Acquisition as a strategic discipline can truly drive business results
  • How to figure out the maturity level of your Talent Acquisition function
  • Why you should train managers on how to interview

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Liza Voticky on Linkedin


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LM Ep 118

 [00:00:00] Without the right people in the right place at the right time, your organization cannot meet its objectives. Today's guest approaches the discipline of talent acquisition as a strategic and essential function versus a [00:01:00] necessary evil that should be done as cheaply as possible. My guest is Lisa Voki.

Lisa began her career in Toronto, Canada as a staffing specialist for a temporary staffing service. Then she moved on to Koch, where she built the recruitment process across Canada and helped transform the company's business model. From there, she went on to lead global talent acquisition, shipboard and Shoreside for Royal Caribbean.

There she was responsible for completely transforming and optimizing the global recruiting process for approximately. 25,000 hires annually from 120 different countries. Today, Lisa is CEO and founding partner of MXA Talent Solutions, an organization built to help companies review, assess, and strategize for the future of hiring.

And it turns out, Lisa and I met decades ago in a meeting where I was representing the corporate client, and she was our agency partner. It's just such a crazy small world. In this episode of Talent Management Truce, you'll discover. [00:02:00] An example of how treating talent acquisition as a strategic discipline truly drives business results.

How to figure out the maturity level of your talent acquisition function, and why you should train managers on how to interview. This was an amazing, fun conversation. Thank you so much for listening. 

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Hello and welcome back to Talent Management Truth. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell, and today I'm joined by Lisa Tki. Lisa is the Pres president rather, CEO, and founder of MXA Talent Solutions. Welcome to the show, Lisa.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Thanks for having me, Lisa.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: My pleasure. So we have Lisa, Lisa, there's two of us here in the room here. So, so thank you very much for coming on the show today.

I really appreciate your time and I'd love if you would first share with us a little bit about who you are and your background.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Sure. So, I have been in recruiting pretty much my entire life. I say that so that when I tell people that I [00:03:00] started doing it before there were computers, they don't really know how old I am. So, I, I mean, I started in staffing. I moved into recruitment process outsourcing. I. And at that point I think I'd had what I would consider an accidental career.

I grew up thinking I would have five children live on a farm and bake cookies. It turns out that's not who I am. And so as I started to discover who I was, moved into corporate and really found a niche in terms of building and transforming the recruiting function. Within large corporations and working a little bit more strategically in that space.

And that's what led me to, to start up MXA. It's truly a passion of mine to drive the strategic arm that is getting the right person in the right job at the right time.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: So it's a staffing firm or executive search.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: No, that's a part of what we do. But really, MXA is an organization that was initially built to provide transformation ta transformation support. I found as I was doing multiple restructures and [00:04:00] reorgs and, and building out TA functions everything from you know, small, in a small company all the way up to North American.

Coca-Cola and, and globally for Royal Caribbean. What I discovered was, as a leader in the space, you're not only working to improve and, and transform, but you're in the weeds trying to get the work done. You've gotta keep the plane in the air while you're changing the engine. So from my perspective as I started to think about what I wanted to do next, I, I saw that there was a niche, someone who would come in and.

Be my right arm if I was the leader in ta. And so that's how we built MXA. That was the purpose of it. From there, a lot of my clients were asking me to do search, so that ended up evolving out of it. And in the last year, I've been asked to provide RPO services, so MX a's kind of evolved. But for me personally, what I get involved in is working with companies on optimizing their TA function.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah. So it's kind of this mentoring advisory fractional almost kind of role [00:05:00] around that with a focus on transformation.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Right, right down to the analytics. I mean, a lot of people don't know how to get the analytics and understand the resource modeling. What's best in class, what works best based on the talent segmentation in the company. So that's, that's kind of the stuff I dig into to pull out org structures, resource models.

How do you build an accordion? You know, and when you think about expanding and contracting as the business expands and contracts, how do you figure the model, how do you work through the model to make sure that you have the right resources in place in time for you to provide the recruiting services?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: It's that elasticity that we need Right. To scale up and down. And it's, it's so interesting, you know, hearing you describe what you do and how you do it. 'cause it's very similar. I have a different. Niche and service that I offered with a, as being a thought partner and consultant to HR and talent leaders around talent management in general, sort of HR strategy.

And so, you were smiling, I could see the energy coming off and you were like, yeah, I helped them dig

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah. Yeah.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: That's how I feel [00:06:00] too when I, when I, you know, get to roll up my sleeves with a partner organization.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Well, wouldn't you say that when the light comes on for somebody, when you say to them, listen, when you look at it this way, and then also just seeing it evolve, I mean, I've been doing this a really long time and you can get into the pattern, right? Oh, well it's this much on a work bench and it's this many days that it, they should cycle and so they should do this.

Many hires. Well, the talent market changes and most drastically in the last three to five years, it's really changed and so. Really getting ahead and being proactive. That's sort of what I think of as the future of hiring and saying, this worked 10 years ago. Is it still working today? And rejigging those models.

So you always have to be agile. You know, you're, you're paddling one way up the stream. You gotta be willing to turn around and go the other way.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: What I find with my clients, and I'm sure you do too, is they're often just so relieved to have somebody neutral and they, because it's hard to facilitate transformation and participate in it at the same time. Right. It's hard to.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: really is.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: When you're trying to [00:07:00] keep, like you said, the plane in the air and you're trying to change the engine.

So having somebody help you change the engine part takes the heat off a little bit. I wanted to go back to the, the scaling up or down piece that, that you alluded to because it made me think of our shared kind of crossover that, that we just discovered when we first back in, in the nineties.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah. Yes, I was at Manpower in, in Mississauga. I ran the Manpower off office in Mississauga back in the day when we were primarily a national account provider. Big branch?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Big branch and, and I had said to you at the time, oh my God, I was at Edge Links and I was doing the training and recruitment function. We had these massive peak hires every August, every December for student loan disbursements. And so I, I, I don't know that you and I ever crossed paths, but I remember, you know, the frustration just as a really great AC talent acquisition example of, you know, we would, we would.

Go through, get [00:08:00] all these people in and, and then some of them, once they were on the floor, either in the call center or back office processing, they'd be like, oh, and they'd leave, you know, after we'd invested all sorts of training time in in them, or they'd lead halfway through leave, halfway through training and so on.

So I remember taking the bow by the horns and contacting my manpower partner and saying, can we sit down? I wanna talk about how we can give people. A chance to see inside and what it actually looks like and feels like before they accept and before we put them through training.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Right.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: And so we created this whole tour kind of scenario and different things.

And they got to double jack with a, with a CSR. And it really made a world of difference in terms of retention and fit because then you had people that would self-select out and that was good for them and good for us and good for manpower.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah, you were way ahead of your time because that led to, you know, I remember and we did cross paths because after we spoke about this, I thought about it and we were in a meeting together discussing this very thing. And that [00:09:00] was right after I had taken over that national account piece. So I took over edge links 'cause initially.

I only managed one portion of the business within the Mississauga branch, but was promoted to take the whole branch that first time stepping into Edge links going, what the heck is this? What do you mean 200 people in two weeks? And we have to do, we have to do criminal checks? What? And everything back then was manual, right?

I mean, there was no automation.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: the criminal checks. 'cause

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Oh my goodness, what a nightmare. The paperwork involved in that. But anyway, I remember sitting there with you and then fast forward, I wanna say seven years, and I'm building out a new career site for Coca-Cola North America, and we're talking about day in the life videos.

I'm like, oh my gosh, we did this eight years ago and in Mississauga, so you were way ahead of your time. And now it's on a lot of. Websites, if you go on career sites now, the really good employment brands that are out there, the Nikes, the Heinekens, the or L'Oreals, they often have Day in the Life or [00:10:00] videos directly from managers talking about who they want and what they want and what the job involves.

So, I mean, you have to walk a fine line there because you don't, can't let everybody video themselves. I think it's, it's truly speaks to how ahead of your time you were just considering that it is good for people to self-select out.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: It It is, it's interesting. And I, and, and, you know, thank you for saying that. I, I, I think it was my idea, but I, I don't remember if it was probably a whole group of us. But later on I remember learning that Disney does that as well, like, as you say. You know, and physically, you know, tours people through, you've gotta, you've gotta put the costume on, for instance, to know what it feels like to be Mickey in the hot sun, right.

Directing people this kind of thing, right? So it's the same idea, and I think it's completely reasonable. And, and respectful of all parties, right? To give people more tools to make decisions, right? About something. That matters. Yeah, so interesting. I just love that we have that crossover.

It's really, really neat. So, so something that, you know, I [00:11:00] wanted to talk about is that you, you had shared something with me in terms of how talent acquisition is unfortunately seen in many companies, not all. There's, there's some of the ones you just named that have, you know, taken it further, but what, what's kind of like the sense you get sometimes around how

to review? 

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: I would, say it's more often than not, I, I would say that more often than not talent acquisition is tucked into HR as a function. That everyone has to tolerate versus the strategic arm of the organization. And, and certainly one of the more strategic arms of hr, because if you really break it down at its core, without the right people in the right jobs, at the right time.

Your company is not meeting its objectives. It's as simple as that. And when you think about things like what you, we were just discussing day in the life, people coming on site, giving it a, you know, four hours. You pay them for four hours and they spend time. I cannot tell you how many employers have said to me, I.

I'm not spending that [00:12:00] money. I'm not gonna pay them to be on site because they don't value the, the talent that they bring in and they don't understand what it means to make good talent selections on both sides

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: And then it's so shortsighted because not spending that money up front is gonna cost you a whole lot in terms of turnover. Right. And replacing, oh my god. You know? And retraining.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah, I was in an organization where we had very little budget with a lot of hires that we needed to do, and I, I literally had to beg, borrow and steal just to get the tools that my team needed in order to be able to function. And we received an influx of, of budget into the HR budget, and it all went to l and d.

And I'm like, well, that's great that they're gonna build learning tools, but. Who are they gonna teach if we don't get them in? Right? I mean, let's talk about that so you can tell you know, and, and, and, and I think I said this to you [00:13:00] before when I started MXA I'm gonna work with people who value what I do.

Banging my head against a brick wall and working with an organization that goes, yes, we wanna transform, but we don't want it to cost us anything. Well, you're not looking to your point at the cost of bad hires.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: yeah.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: are not looking at the, the, the compliance issues, the, the turnover issues and all of those good things.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: I mean. That's why, you know, for instance, in my last role, like my last couple of roles, it's been, you know, around the employee experience and that's how I would always explain it to people. We're talking about the entire journey of an employee, right from, you know, what their impression is of the company.

Before they even come in, right? How do we attract them? How do we get their attention? How do we then move them through the recruitment process in a way that respects them as humans? You know, when I went into my last role, they weren't acknowledging, you know, people who were following up three, four times and had had an interview already.

They weren't getting back to them timely and so on. And that's not how we want people to be [00:14:00] treated. 'cause then what are they gonna say about us out outside? So I used to say. This is critical. This is a chance to get the best fit people in place, right? To help this organization meet their, you know, the key accomplishments they're, they're shooting for, but it's also a chance to create ambassadors of the people that didn't even get hired.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Exactly. Exactly. And you know, one of the, I was very fortunate. I, I always say I, I probably did most of my learning at Coca-Cola of, I mean, we did, I don't know how many restructures in nine years. So there was a lot of learning there. But the thing that most came to mind for me, we did summer hiring.

Similar to Edge links, right? You've got a busy peak period you've gotta hire during the peak period, when we started to do the data analytics, we actually discovered that nine months outta 12 was peak. So there was no such thing as peak. There was only downtime. But what we discovered was that leaders on the floor, in the plants, in the distribution centers saw these, you know, summer students or summer hires as less than often.[00:15:00] 

And so they would call them at three o'clock in the morning and say, you need to be here by five, or you're not getting the shift. 'cause they needed, they had an emergency, understandably, there was unions involved, there was rules involved. There was, you know, lists of seniority and all of that stuff. But I sat down with the president at the, at the time of the Canadian operation and I shared with him a survey I did of the students that had left and only 60% of them considered themselves ambassadors of the organization.

And I said to him, how many millions of dollars do you spend in marketing to this demographic? And I'm touching thousands of them every year with your brand and how you execute the job, how they get treated on the job. They're gonna walk into a convenience store tomorrow and make a higher a, a buying decision.

Do you want it to be yours or the other guy? And I'm telling you, it had the biggest impact on the executive team when we put it in those terms. And that went all the way up to the North American president who sat me down and said, I wanna talk more about [00:16:00] this. And when he realized that globally, the TA team, this is important.

In a company the size of Coca-Cola, the TA team in North America touched a million people a year, unsolicited a million,

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Huge reach. I mean, PE companies pay for that kind of reach, you know, and here it's just a natural function of business. It's really reflective of the critical you know, role that talent acquisition plays. Overall, right. The journey and in the company's success. Wow. Fascinating. But I think, you know, I think we can't really fault leaders in some ways because they're, you know, if, if it's not sort of the main thing we're looking at, they're not thinking about the, the ripple effect of these things and, right.

So, bravo to you to, to

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Well, it falls on us to make that,

to make 

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: exactly. That's how we can add the value, right? Absolutely. Okay, beautiful. Well, so let's take a bit of a, a, a, a left turn, a little meander down, [00:17:00] down the path here, because something else that I'd love to hear more about from you is that you've developed a, an assessment and it's a maturity index.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: yes.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Tell us a bit about what that's all about. How do you use it? How does it help?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah. I found when I was doing strategic work, so building out two, three year strategies for recruitment I would try to measure us on a maturity model, and we know all the big guys, all the big consulting firms have these maturity models. And what I found for me personally was how do I figure out where I am?

Like I don't. I mean, it says this, okay. But do I really know that that's where I am on the maturity model? So I built an index really very mathematically based, I don't know when I turned into a data geek, but at some point I must have. And I. I've got a, a short survey assessment and a long one.

And I use the long one when I do large consulting where we're doing big transformations the longer version goes out to hiring leaders. It goes out to [00:18:00] recruiters, HR people, anybody who's touching the recruiting function. And it asks, not only is your organization doing this. On a scale of one to five, not at all.

Or well. And if they are, is it important or if they're not, is it important? So for example, does your organization go to campus to recruit for, you know, entry level positions? Do they do it well? On a scale of one to five, maybe it's a three, is it important? It, maybe that's a zero. So when you, when you're able to gather that kind of information from the users, the end users of the function of the service, then you start to understand what's important to them and then you figure out how to get their buy-in.

So if I do a survey and I've got a bunch of leaders who go campus recruiting's not important. And then I sit down with the HR leaders says it's extremely important. Well, there's a disconnect, and now we know. now we're not trying to jam something down somebody's throat [00:19:00] that they don't want. We have to talk to them about why they don't think they need it and why we think they do.

And that opens up a whole new dialogue. So not only does it give you a perspective of whether you're doing basic functional recruiting, or you're doing highly evolved, highly integrated recruiting with your business, but it also tells you where you have the disconnects with the business.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: That's really excellent. I, I've seen certain assessments over the. Years, like not necessarily related to this topic of talent acquisition, but where, where it does ask that question, it's so powerful, right? Not only, you know, rate how well this is occurring, this, this, this thing and, but how important it, because it's so funny 'cause often we just go surface.

It reminds me of coaching. You

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: what's so powerful about it is people will come into a coaching session, for instance, and then, oh, what are you bringing to coaching? And they say this, I wanna kind of solve for that. And yet that's not what. I would say 99% of the CA cases, that's not usually what we end up talking about because once we sort of dig in, so that question, how [00:20:00] important is this?

Is it important, goes deeper, goes beneath the surface?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah. Yeah. So currently we run this sort of through SurveyMonkey, but my, my dream is that we will find a developer who really wants to get their hands wrapped around this, and we're gonna turn this into a really simple, integrated tool that that customers can use more frequently.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Oh, well. Well I just thought of somebody we can talk offline,

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Okay.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: who might be kind of interested in that or have a resource for you. It's really, really cool. Yeah. Yeah. So that sounds like a really important tool for people, especially if, you know, for listeners, if you're looking at your hiring, your talent acquisition practices across the organization, there's some complexities and so on, and you're trying to, you know, get people on the same page and you need.

Sort of a systematic way to do that is a great tool for you.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Well, and Lisa, it goes back to what we first said, which is, you know, when we think about TA not being seen as a strategic arm, so isn't it better to go into a conversation understanding [00:21:00] how your vice president of finance sees recruiting,

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yes.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: the finance team does? Because we can segment it by function.

So we can say, listen, the people in your accounting. Organization think that you're doing this really well, but they think it's not important. They think you're doing this poorly and they think it's really important. You guys better get together and figure this out. So it opens up conversations that are more strategic, which lends the, the purpose of developing the value.

You know, TA is adding value every day. And having those conversations, I think is critical.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: I, I agree. Beautifully said. Okay. All right. Well, so now let's kinda move our attention to something that's, that's we both noticed in the industry. I, I, for me because I'm, I'm a. Small business, so I don't see it the same. I work with contractors for my team. But you've noticed something that's become more and more prevalent in the industry behaviors of, of candidates.

Can you speak to that a little bit? [00:22:00] This comes up with my clients too.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah, it's so interesting because initially what I was hearing was from candidates who flip that, candidates who would get online and talk about how companies stopped responding to them and how they've gone through so many interviews or they'd filled out applications. And this is true because we use technology and we don't.

Treat people. So to your point earlier about the whole experience starts with reaching out to the candidate. It's like an ecosystem of touch them, bring them through, let them go, bring them back, right? It's a cycle. So, so that was sort of the first thing that I started to delve into is. You know, how are we leveraging technology in a way that doesn't dismiss the human contact that's critical to talent acquisition.

And then as I started doing search, because my clients asked me to do it, I hadn't been on a desk in a really long time. So here I am, the CEO of the company reaching out to do interviews with people and they set up an interview and then they don't show. And I'm like, what? What's happening here? And recently I [00:23:00] dove in with one of my RPOs.

I took a desk because I wanted to really understand what the challenges were for the recruiters, and I literally had a 50% no-show rate for people that I set up video interviews with. 50% of the people who took the time. I'm not talking about passive candidates, to apply to a job on a website, answer a phone screen, agree to an appointment, accept an invitation, and then not show up.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Oh, I've.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: And it's at every level. It's at every level. It is not, we're not just talking about frontline, but it happens at the VP level. It happens at the director level. They just vanish. It's almost as though we've lost the capacity to have any accountability for the choices we make. If I have an appointment with you, Lisa, to interview with you for a job, and I've taken another job, I'm gonna call you and say, thanks so much for your time.

I've decided to take this other [00:24:00] opportunity. People are just like, yeah, I don't wanna deal with it.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: It, it's a, Hmm. It makes me really sad. I gotta

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: makes me sad

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: I just, I just, I hear that and I think, oh because, you know, here you're talking about how do we make sure that technology is not completely removing the human element, and how do we show respect to people and, and bring them along and let them know they're valued and here.

When you, when it doesn't get reflected back in, it's like this, this I don't know, the, like, what's going on for people in that case where they just, they, they don't value the human element. They're not thinking that, hey, there's a human on the other side that I've just stood up who wasted their time preparing and looking at my resume and my profile.

And you know what it makes me think of, and I'm sort of cautious about even bringing this up, but I deal with, with ghosting, both for the podcast and with prospective clients. Not, not a lot, but it's, it's pretty upsetting. Like I, I, do these pre-calls, like you and I had an initial pre-call to discuss, is it a fit?

Does it make sense, and do we have lots to talk about to make it an [00:25:00] engaging episode? And there's been more than you would think people where we had this great conversation and I say, are you interested? Would you like to come on? I'd love to have you. I can send you a formal invitation if you would like to.

And they're like, yeah, absolutely. And I send it to them. And then I wait, and then I, I don't, it's not like I'm sitting here waiting. I've got rather busy, but I have a way to, to check and follow up and go, oh, I haven't heard from this person. So then I go and I'll follow up maybe once or twice and never hear from them.

Now it's fewer than the people that actually do come through, but it's a shocking number given the level of these people are typically director, VP, and up.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: So I find that really surprising, especially when I'm, you know, trying to give them a platform and, and, you know, I. So they can sort of demonstrate their thought leadership, but also on the potential client aspect.

So it's not the same as a candidate talent acquisition, but some people, you know, it's really fascinating. I had one, person that I've been in [00:26:00] conversation with about something and, and she's so warm and engaging, genuinely interesting. Interested in, in something that we might work together on. But then she'll just go away for months at a time and, and I'm like, okay, what's going on?

Right? And I follow up once a month. And then finally, oh, thank you. Thank you for not giving up on me. I've just had a heck of a time. Okay. It's interesting though that there's no thought to even just say, Hey, have not ignoring you, and I'm just not ready to talk.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah, and it's all generations. You can't blame a generation for this. It's all generations. It's all levels. I actually said to my youngest son the other day, I feel like we've lost the capacity to have civil discourse. That even to the point of just saying to someone, I'm so busy, I'm gonna get back to you, I promise, but I'm busy right now.

Like, how difficult is that? I don't know. But it hap I, I, I think it, from my perspective, very, very surprising for people who are taking the time to look for a job, because finding a job is not easy and everybody thinks it is. But it [00:27:00] isn't

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Well, and on top of that, we're also interconnected, right? So someone who ghost you or doesn't show up, and then who knows how that person's name might come up again later and you're gonna say, Hmm, yeah, wasted 20 minutes of my time.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah, one of these days, I'll tell you a little story about that, but yeah,

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Oh

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: a small world. It's a small world, and we get out of it 10 times what we put into it. So, you know, just treat everybody the way you wanna be treated. It, it, you don't, you don't wanna be ghosted. Why would you ghost somebody?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah. That's so interesting. You just made me think of something and listeners, I'm being really transparent here. I think what I'm gonna do next time I have a pre-call with somebody who might wanna come on the podcast, for instance, I'm gonna say, you know, are you interested? If they say, yes, I'll, I'll send you something and would you please do me the courtesy?

Of, of not ghosting me. If you decide that you don't feel confident enough to do it, 'cause that's often the case what I've learned or that you're no longer interested, just do me the courtesy of just saying, [00:28:00] Hey Lisa, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a pass. That's all. Just so I know and I'm not spending time chasing you.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Interesting that you say that. So not confident they can do it. So they just avoid it. It's avoidance, right? It's just all about avoidance.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah, it is. It is, it's just easier then I don't have to think about how I'm feeling about this. Right. And I, I think, you know, that goes to, you know, fear a little bit too, that sometimes people, if they realize they ghosted or they just, they're like, oh, I just don't wanna think about it. And so I'm not even

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Well, it's a vicious cycle, right? Once you've done it, you know, and it's been a week, how do you go back?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Oh

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: accountability, avoidance, those are the things. I think that, that, that drive this.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: do you think, I mean, you know, I've mused with some of my clients and partners a bit about this ghosting thing in the recruitment world. Okay. And candidates ghosting this comes up 'cause I know a lot of, a lot of people [00:29:00] in this space and. Some of them seem to feel that it has been worse simply because the market was really a candidate market, right?

Like, you know, for the longest time, like there, there were so many opportunities and, and you know, people could quit and move for a lot more money and, and do that. So why would they bother, right? Like they sort of attributed this, this terrible behavior to, being spoiled for choice. Now I think that might be changing a little bit economically.

We're recording this in December, 2023. What are your views on that?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: I have been in recruiting through really hot candidate markets and really hot employer markets. I've been through both multiple times because eco economics is cyclical, right? I have never seen this, so I. It's not about the market, it's about the way we are. I mean, we could get into a really deep socioeconomic conversation about this, but I really believe that with [00:30:00] our lack of connection through remote work, more remote work than in-person work.

So we're not spending a lot of time with other human beings other than our family, which is awesome, and we should not lose sight of that. And we spend a lot of time like this. looking. I walked and I'll tell you this. We were, we were in MB for a weekend and we were at the Starbucks and we went upstairs because the lower level was packed.

And as we came down the stairs, you had a view of the whole seating area of the restaurant. There was 50 people in there. Not a single person, not one. I was looking at another person, not one. I stood on the stair. I almost took a photograph. I stood on the stairs. I looked down, I looked at my husband and I said, nobody's looking at anybody.

They're all looking at their phones. And I said it quite loudly 'cause sometimes I like to stir the pot. And sometimes, and literally half [00:31:00] of them looked up at me like, like deer in the headlights. I just started laughing and I walked away and I'm like, there. That is our problem. That is our societal problem.

We go out for dinner, we look around, we see couples having dinner together. They're not looking at each other. They're barely speaking to each other. Our friends that are sitting there, a table of friends. You remember going out with your girlfriends, we were talking. They're not talking.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah, I've noticed that too. It makes me a little bit crazy. And, and it's, you know, it's interesting. We have a, a custom in our house well since, so my son's 17, so, you know, since he was little and my dad was with us for many, many of those years. But we have dinner as a family. So, so I purposely didn't eng engage, get him enrolled in any activities that would mean that that was sacrificed.

It's just my thing. I'm not. I'm not judging other people that are doing it on the run at all, so I wanna make that clear. But for us, that was really important. And so to this day we take dinner together where we can now, Patrick's working so occasionally it's a little tougher, right? But we actually like candles.

And [00:32:00] we may only be sitting there for 10, 15 minutes eating our dinner, but we're conversing and we're not on our phones. Even with my husband and my son, knowing how important it is to me, and they've agreed that it's important occasionally. It's kind of the, the phone, I even feel the, the, the, the lure sometimes, right?

Because somebody will say something, we're like, oh, let me look that up. Or I wanna make a note, like, I gotta put that in Google Keep. Oh, we're out of this. Let me put it on the ground. You wanna just pick up the phone right away? And then I'm like, Nope, hang on, we're doing the phone thing. No, they gotta go away, right?

We're done here. This is our reprieve.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: yeah.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: So it's interesting, so even for somebody like me that really values this, as much as it sounds like you do, you know, that human connection and, and getting away from the phone, I still feel tempted too.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah. Yeah, I, I think I, I mean, and I'm not blaming social media, I'm not blaming the phones. I couldn't live without my phone. It keeps me connected. It means I can live my life and work, which, which I love. I'm just, I [00:33:00] just think that, that it has created and maybe it'll evolve. You know, it's funny 'cause I was just saying this to my son the other day because he was getting all worked up about the world and I said, you know, the pendulum has to swing all the time.

It swings far this way, and then it comes back this way, and then for a little while, it settles in the middle, and then it keeps going, and then it comes back, and then it settles in the middle. And that's human nature. And so we're going through a phase right now where we've become, because think about it, Lisa.

The smartphone is not that old, right? I mean, 15 years, maybe 10. Barely a generation. I mean, my, my kids, my oldest kids, their first phones were flip phones. They didn't have smart phones, so, so, you know, it's barely a generation who, which is adapting to this disconnectivity that they have. They, I mean, it's, it's masked in connectivity, but it's truly disconnecting from people and it's [00:34:00] connecting with information and so.

I imagine at some point people are gonna really talk about this in, in terms of the human impact of not being respectful of each other's time.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I know. It's fascinating. Well, we could. We could keep going down this rabbit hole because this really is a, a, it's such a massive thing confronting us. I think right now, as, as you know, just

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: my, my suggestion, sorry for interrupting you, but my suggestion to anybody who listens to this is do what I do and hold people accountable. So if somebody ghosts me, I message them. So you didn't show up for our meeting? Everything. Okay. Hope you're doing well. Good luck with your search. Nine times outta 10 they respond.

Oh, I'm so sorry. I meant to call you. 'cause you guilt them. I mean,

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah, well, I did too because, because occasionally there has been an issue and somebody was like, I remember one person actually had a car accident. Like it was really legitimate. That is the rare occurrence, so I always try to be gracious. I hear [00:35:00] you as well with. Following up and, and you know, and sometimes you'll get a, an apology and other times, you know, not so much.

There's nothing. Okay. So let's, let's take a right turn now, Lisa, I really wanna get into this, this last topic which both of you and I feel very strongly about, which is the power of training leaders and managers in how to do hiring and selection Well.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah, I think my best, my, my best experience with that, or the thing that really struck me back several years ago was within the company we were building out leadership training and, you know how much money we invested in training managers on how to deal with millennials. Do you remember that? Yeah.

So now they're all managers. Like, we forgot they were gonna grow up and just become leaders and want offices not shared space. So, we spent. We, we, we really saw that there was a gap promoting people from individual contributors to [00:36:00] leadership, bringing new leaders into the company. We're gonna build this leadership.

And Lisa, we need you involved because we want to teach them how to, how to interview. How to interview or how to select No, we want to teach them how to interview. Okay. So you're gonna be on the calendar for one day. You are gonna get a day, we're gonna, we're gonna build out this training deck. You're gonna teach them how to, we're gonna do role play, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that.

So about a month before the first leadership training launched, I got an email saying, we're gonna have to cut you down to half a day. You're gonna have to do it from nine till till noon. Okay, when am I

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: I've been.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: from nine till you've been there, right? Anyway, it turned out that we got an hour and a half, and essentially all we did was show them what a standard interview guide looked like and what to expect from their recruiter.

That's what it boiled down to. And you continue to watch leaders not understanding the impact of the hire that they make. And when you have recruiters that are true partners, talent partners, talent leaders, they can really work with managers [00:37:00] not in high volume areas, which is by the way, where it's really important.

But in those more corporate areas, they can really work with a manager on. Tell me more about what you're missing on your team, what kind of competencies you need. But managers will still have those unconscious biases that they've never been shown how to understand. And that's one of the biggest issues is those that unconscious bias.

I knew a girl in elementary school whose name was Caroline, and she was too pretty, and she went after my boyfriend and I never gonna hire anybody named Caroline. Like those are those little voices in the back of your head that you don't even know are there? I had a vice president tell me once that he doesn't hire anybody out of cos out of the pharmaceutical industry.

'cause he made a bad hire once

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Oh, yes, I've heard these stories. Yes.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah, straight out conscious bias. If you take the time to sit with leaders and help them understand the overall concept of creating a team that works together and compliments each other, if you teach them how to dive [00:38:00] in to understand what that person is saying to you during an interview, I always say to hiring managers when I'm working with them.

Your job in an interview is to allow that person to show you the best that they are. your job. Help them get an a. Not look for something to be wrong with them. Right. You've seen it. Right. So that's one-on-one, I can do that. But overall, as an HR function, I really, really think that it's a, it's a gap that we haven't spent enough time thinking about.

And I, I take it all the way to having leaders bonuses and their performance actually based on their talent selections. You know, if you're, yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't understand why, because again, I'll go back to my favorite. By the way, our mutual friend is the one who taught me this a long time ago, right?

People in the right jobs at the right time, and if your managers don't know how to get the right people into the right jobs at the right [00:39:00] time, then you're never gonna meet your objectives. It's not all on your TA team. And sometimes companies will blame TA for turnover. You brought us the wrong people.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You made the selection. I shortlisted for you. Right.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: I, I, well, another piece too, where there, there's a lot of kind of fingering too is, is when. The pool is small or you know, there's the repeat people in there and like, you know, well, what other ways? And you're trying every possible thing to attract in different people, right? Through different vehicles and, and so on.

And, and it's like, well you're, you know, talent acquisition is not attracting the right people for us to choose from, like even before they hire somebody. And, and I think that I think that the way. To manage that is through partnership, through, through, as you say, training, really building awareness about the criticality of this function.

That this isn't meant to be an afterthought tucked into the corner of [00:40:00] hr. Like you mentioned earlier. This is really critical for you to invest your time, your thought you know. Put that power against what you really, really want, what you need, and partnering with your TAC and them as a partner, and they'll meet you halfway, right?

So that this isn't one person or the other, like it's all of us in here trying to, to make this happen.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: yeah. And helping managers. I, I, I did a very, very brief how to. Ask behavioral questions with a team. It was a manufacturing company I was doing a small project with, and these guys, they were, they're building airplanes, right? They're not, I mean, they're mechanical and we're sitting in a room and we're talking about how to ask a question and do a follow-up and listen for an answer.

And literally jaws were hitting the floor because I was role-playing with one of them, and he was trying to be difficult. he was trying to give me difficult answers. Again, I don't want this to succeed, I wanna show you it doesn't work. Right. Is kind of how they think. And I was able [00:41:00] to literally keep asking him open-ended questions, almost coaching questions, to be honest with you.

I kinda had to go down a different path with them, but they all kind of sat there going, wow, like the things we uncovered, the things you discovered about this person. And, and I was like, yes, and this is what you can do because it's not my job to talk in the interview.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Right. We.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: As I like to talk.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Well, we're trying to surface what's this personal about and what's their experience and what, and more importantly, how, you know, what are they, what can they bring? What's the potential, right? What do they see as the opportunities here? Like, like what if we actually talk about what, what they plan to do?

Right.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Yeah,

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: You know, give them enough context to have them kind of weigh in. I mean, that's powerful. That's helping people even see their own potential, right?

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Right. I mean, I had a manager recently tell me, we did, he did. He hired four people and the interesting thing was the people he didn't select, you know, for reasons that they didn't smile enough or they didn't seem [00:42:00] interested, or they didn't seem to wanna do it. But I hired these four people 'cause they're really good, so let's get them hired and then to say, well, they're three weeks in and we don't think they're gonna make it. What does that tell you about your selection criteria? Right.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: well. Yeah. In, in one organization, I, I was in, oh. It was actually my leader and I was in a senior role. I was interviewing for somebody that would report to me and my leader did not like the woman's shoes, disapproved of the shoes, felt they were too frumpy, and that she, for somebody, you know, interviewing at that level, they should not be wearing that kind of shoe.

And in the same organization I had, they were having trouble hiring a lead of sales. And I know somebody personally, who's incredible. Well, in the end, I got in trouble because I'd recommended her. And she came in and she has a bright shock of pink hair in the front. And they were like, how could you think that, you know, that would fit into our organization?

And I was like, it's, [00:43:00] it's, I don't understand.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Well, yeah, no, I know. I get that. It's, and, and I think, I, I think one of the things I learned in, in, in, you know, some of these large corporations, I'm sure you did as well, there's a fear of holding leaders accountable for talent selection when they're really good producers. So they're either really top in sales or they lead the best sales team.

They could be leading that team with fear. For all we know, they may not be the best leader, but they're driving numbers, and so let's leave them alone. And it doesn't matter that they have a 40% turnover when everybody else in sales has this 15% turnover. It doesn't matter if people have filed complaints.

It doesn't matter if they haven't selected, you know, the right people and, and, and people don't get through probation. What matters is they're driving the numbers and, and that's the fine line we walk. Lisa, right? So yes, I can stand here all day and say, TA is critical to your strategy and we wanna help you make the right selection.

[00:44:00] But I can't step on the toes in my company of someone who's driving really big results from a revenue perspective.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Well, the good news is that when, when with, with some people like that, it does eventually catch up. People will only tolerate the, you know, a person's need to, like being a bull in the China shop or, you know, like constantly falling down on 80% of their, you know, there, kPIs, save for the, the bottom line ones kind of thing.

And eventually it's, it's, I do find it catches up and it's addressed. But it's, it's usually not, doesn't feel good for anybody involved. I.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Right. But I, I do think that having those conversations, you know, we talked earlier about the recruitment maturity index, having answers and data, data-driven decisions are always better, especially when you're dealing with corporate. So if we have data and information that says, you, you don't think that?

TA doing this is important and we think it is, and now we can have a conversation about [00:45:00] how we can bridge that gap.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Yeah,

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: And then that leads to, and it goes back to we're talking about training, not ed leadership, but that goes back to if we can show them. If we can show them why it's in their best interest to make better choices and work more collaboratively in the talent selection process, and we can show them that results from a revenue perspective and growth perspective can be there if we do it right.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Absolutely. That is, that is our role ultimately for listeners. I'm sure many of you are smiling and listening going, yep, yep. That's, that's the key. And sometimes it's, it's daunting, you know, how exactly do we do that? But I think you've, you know, given some good examples today already, so. Well, we have come to the end of our time together.

I wanna thank you very, very much for for digging into talent, all things talent acquisition with me today. It was a pleasure.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate2: Oh, my pleasure. Honestly, Lisa, it was great to have this conversation. Thank you.

Liza Voticky GMT20231214-190756_Recording_separate1: Thank you. I. [00:46:00] 



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