Talent Acquisition Leaders Podcast - Recruiting, Staffing, Human Resources

In this episode of the TA Leaders podcast, we sat down with Shelia Gray. Shelia is a long-time HR veteran who currently serves as the vice president of talent acquisition at Quadient, an IT and services business based out of Bagneux, France. Previously, she’s been a global TA leader at GE Appliances, Citrix, and AMD. Shelia talks about her journey in the human resources field, the things she loves about talent acquisition — both the fun and the challenging — and how she rose up through the ranks from HR generalist. She describes the point in her career when she knew she wanted to focus on the operations and technology behind recruiting. This was when she was working at a place called AlliedSignal (later acquired by Honeywell) as they went through their digital transformation. Fresh off her 2021 team goal-setting, Shelia shares what she’ll be most focused on this year, and some of the types of tools she’ll be investing in, which provides valuable insight into where she sees TA going in the foreseeable future. She also talks candidly about the changes Covid-19 brought around that will likely stick, and mentions that remote work — or at least a more rapid march toward it — is one of them. Mentioned in this episode: Quadient To learn more about Sagemark HR and how we can help you assemble the right tech stack for your talent acquisition team, visit sagemarkhr.com. This episode is brought to you by SageMark HR. Sagemark HR can help you: ✔ Improve your talent practices and make better, more informed people decisions. After 20+ years of experience leading Recruiting and Talent Acquisition across a wide variety of industries, I've seen enough hires (over 100,000 to date) to know that hiring decisions truly can make or break an organization. ✔ Identify opportunities to not only improve your talent practices, but also delivering tangible business results. We understand every organization is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all magic solution. So we listen first and identify the gaps and sticking points in your current process before ever recommending a solution. ✔ Bridge the gap from “traditional” to modern recruiting, without the painful learning curve. We believe recruiting, talent, and HR technology is a deep well of untapped business potential, and our mission is to help you identify and implement those hiring tools in a way that works for you. If you’re interested in learning more, you can reach me at: www.sagemarkhr.com ✉ ryan.dull@sagemarkhr.com

On this episode, Sean Barry sits down with us to share his recruiting expertise and career experience over more than 20 years in talent acquisition. He’s currently the senior director of TA at Walgreens, leading talent acquisition across the organization. In 2020, that meant filling 135,000 jobs across the corporate call center, distribution center, and field networks. Sean dives into how he approached his first charge at Walgreens — creating an organizational structure allowing the team to expand and contract as needed while still providing a consistent candidate experience. He also describes changes they made at the beginning of COVID-19 to ensure faster hiring and onboarding, as well as what the company has done to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in the hiring process. In sharing his reflections, Sean also points towards what he sees coming for the future of talent acquisition, eyeing opportunities for differentiation in empathy, candidate experience, and anticipation of market needs. That future, he says, will be largely bolstered by technology. To future talent acquisition executives, he advises: “Learn as much as you can about technology. I think that the way you communicate, the way you engage with people, has evolved tremendously. And it’s only going to continue.” Mentioned in this episode: Walgreens Learn more about Sagemark HR and consulting services around human resources technology at sagemarkhr.com. This episode is brought to you by SageMark HR. Sagemark HR can help you: ✔ Improve your talent practices and make better, more informed people decisions. After 20+ years of experience leading Recruiting and Talent Acquisition across a wide variety of industries, I've seen enough hires (over 100,000 to date) to know that hiring decisions truly can make or break an organization. ✔ Identify opportunities to not only improve your talent practices, but also delivering tangible business results. We understand every organization is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all magic solution. So we listen first and identify the gaps and sticking points in your current process before ever recommending a solution. ✔ Bridge the gap from “traditional” to modern recruiting, without the painful learning curve. We believe recruiting, talent, and HR technology is a deep well of untapped business potential, and our mission is to help you identify and implement those hiring tools in a way that works for you. If you’re interested in learning more, you can reach me at: www.sagemarkhr.com ✉ ryan.dull@sagemarkhr.com

In this episode, Michael Gruber, SVP of Talent Acquisition at Compass Group, sits down with us to share a bit about his career and how he and his team have developed systems and processes that allow them to efficiently hire over 100,000 people every year. Michael got his start in HR during his time in the military, so it was a natural fit for him once he transitioned back into civilian life. After an interesting two decades, including joining a company in its first year and growing it to nearly 800 employees, he landed at Compass Group about three and a half years ago. Compass Group hires at high volumes — at any one time, the company has about 15,000 hourly jobs and nearly 1,000 professional jobs open. Michael shares how he and his team have implemented a technology stack to help them manage talent acquisition efficiently and give candidates a better experience. But, despite the necessary attention to technology, Michael reinforces the importance of relationships in recruiting. He closes with his thoughts on how TA teams should be building relationships to make their roles more effective. Wondering how to make technology work better for your TA team? Visit SagemarkHR.com. This episode is brought to you by SageMark HR. Sagemark HR can help you: ✔ Improve your talent practices and make better, more informed people decisions. After 20+ years of experience leading Recruiting and Talent Acquisition across a wide variety of industries, I've seen enough hires (over 100,000 to date) to know that hiring decisions truly can make or break an organization. ✔ Identify opportunities to not only improve your talent practices, but also delivering tangible business results. We understand every organization is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all magic solution. So we listen first and identify the gaps and sticking points in your current process before ever recommending a solution. ✔ Bridge the gap from “traditional” to modern recruiting, without the painful learning curve. We believe recruiting, talent, and HR technology is a deep well of untapped business potential, and our mission is to help you identify and implement those hiring tools in a way that works for you. If you’re interested in learning more, you can reach me at: www.sagemarkhr.com ✉ ryan.dull@sagemarkhr.com

In this episode, Victor Gaines, SVP Talent Acquisition at Aveanna Healthcare sits down with us to share his journey in the talent acquisition space and his perspective on the state of TA today, as well as where it’s headed. Victor describes his career path through companies like Cigna, McKesson, and Comcast, and how he ended up at a startup doing $1.7 billion in revenue and growing fast. He leverages his experience to help recruiting teams scale up, exploring the ways that automation can lighten the load of administrative work so talent acquisition professionals can bring added value to the business. Every industry experienced a different set of challenges through COVID-19, but healthcare took center stage. Victor talks about leading his team to meet the unprecedented hiring demand in a growing organization, crediting process improvements and disruptive technology for contributing to their success. Victor wraps the episode with his perspective on the future of talent acquisition, how COVID-19 will shape the future of work, and why continuing technological advancement will keep the recruiting industry on its toes. Closing with sage advice to earlier-career TA professionals, he says, “Embrace your superpower. You’re hired as a team leader for a reason. So lean in and be the experts.” Resources mentioned in this episode: Aveanna Healthcare Learn more about Sagemark HR at SagemarkHR.com. This episode is brought to you by SageMark HR. Sagemark HR can help you: ✔ Improve your talent practices and make better, more informed people decisions. After 20+ years of experience leading Recruiting and Talent Acquisition across a wide variety of industries, I've seen enough hires (over 100,000 to date) to know that hiring decisions truly can make or break an organization. ✔ Identify opportunities to not only improve your talent practices, but also delivering tangible business results. We understand every organization is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all magic solution. So we listen first and identify the gaps and sticking points in your current process before ever recommending a solution. ✔ Bridge the gap from “traditional” to modern recruiting, without the painful learning curve. We believe recruiting, talent, and HR technology is a deep well of untapped business potential, and our mission is to help you identify and implement those hiring tools in a way that works for you. If you’re interested in learning more, you can reach me at: www.sagemarkhr.com ✉ ryan.dull@sagemarkhr.com

On the Talent Acquisition Leaders Podcast, your host Ryan Dull of SageMark HR interviews today’s industry leaders in talent acquisition to discuss challenges, best practices, and what the future holds. If you are working in talent acquisition and have always wanted to sit down with your peers at other companies and pick their brain, this show is the next best thing. Topics for the show will include: recruiting, talent acquisition, recruiting technology, HR tech, and recruiting innovation. In this introductory episode, Ryan shares more about his background, and what you can expect on future episodes.  Join us each week as we bring you a new talent acquisition interview and extract their expertise. This episode is brought to you by SageMark HR. Sagemark HR can help you: ✔ Improve your talent practices and make better, more informed people decisions. After 20+ years of experience leading Recruiting and Talent Acquisition across a wide variety of industries, I've seen enough hires (over 100,000 to date) to know that hiring decisions truly can make or break an organization. ✔ Identify opportunities to not only improve your talent practices, but also delivering tangible business results. We understand every organization is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all magic solution. So we listen first and identify the gaps and sticking points in your current process before ever recommending a solution. ✔ Bridge the gap from “traditional” to modern recruiting, without the painful learning curve. We believe recruiting, talent, and HR technology is a deep well of untapped business potential, and our mission is to help you identify and implement those hiring tools in a way that works for you. If you’re interested in learning more, you can reach me at: www.sagemarkhr.com ✉ ryan.dull@sagemarkhr.com