This week we welcome Scott MacGregor to the podcast. Prior to entering the world of talent acquisition, Scott spent 17 years as Chief Revenue Officer for Flo-Tech, where he saw the company grow from five employees to more than 300. Along the way, his experiences with recruiting systems and processes led him to believe that talent acquisition is fundamentally broken, which inspired him to start his own talent strategy firm, SomethingNew. Scott is also the proud Founder & CEO of the Talent Champions Council, a private membership community designed to mobilize expertise in talent strategy from the best in corporations, the military and professional sports.

Topics include: the value of applying first principles thinking to talent acquisition, why traditional recruiting fee structures are illogical, the “epidemic” of treating recruiting as a cost center, the disconnect between the importance of HR and its lack of attention from the C-suite, why many recruiters lack the skills required to effectively vet job candidates, what professional sports and the military can teach us about recruiting, how to use scorecards to make data-driven hiring decisions, the importance of investing in employees with robust onboarding and training programs, and the post-COVID outlook for talent acquisition.

This week we welcome Lindsay Pedersen to the podcast. Lindsay spent her early career as a brand manager at Clorox before starting her own brand strategy consulting firm, Ironclad Brand Strategy. Her recent book, “Forging an Ironclad Brand: A Leader’s Guide” provides an accessible overview of what branding is (and isn’t) and offers a multitude of real world examples to demonstrate how strong brands help businesses make better decisions—from product design, to customer experience, to talent acquisition.

Topics include: the various meanings and incarnations of “brand,” the concept of brand as a relationship between a company and an audience (i.e., customers, candidates), the distinction between “functional” (rational) and higher order (emotional) benefits of a product or service, the connection between strong brands and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, how strong brands serve as “north stars” to guide business decisions, the recent emergence of “employer brand” as a concept and its connection to an organization’s consumer brand, the value of having a singular unified brand for both employees and customers, the challenge of rehabilitating a brand with a poor reputation, the four P’s of positioning, and the importance of building strong connections between talent acquisition and marketing.

This week we welcome Hung Lee to the podcast. With more than 20 years of recruiting experience, Hung is the creator and curator of the wildly popular “Recruiting Brainfood” newsletter and community, and Founder of Workshape.io, a next generation matching service for tech talent.

Topics include: the origin and growth of Recruiting Brainfood, the historical nature of resumes, alternative approaches to visualizing the interests and goals of tech talent, the inherent subjectivity of words and the implications for recruiting, the switching cost associated with moving away from the resume, employee experience and career pathing, the shift to remote work and the digitization of workforce behavior, opportunities to automate the ~170 unique tasks of a recruiter, and the use of AI for sourcing, scheduling and sentiment analysis. 

This week we welcome Aaron Kraljev to the podcast. Aaron began his career at Wells Fargo, where he served as VP - Marketing Program Manager for the Student Banking Program, before transitioning in 2009 to lead the organization’s employer brand and candidate advocacy program. At the time, the concept of employer branding was still in its infancy, uniquely positioning Aaron to watch the industry evolve alongside his own career. Today Aaron brings his employer brand expertise to Fisher Investments, where he serves as Group Vice President for Talent Acquisition and  Employer Brand. 

Topics include: the recent history of employer branding, the connections between consumer marketing and talent acquisition, the challenge of translating talent acquisition concepts and nomenclature to marketing “speak” (and vice versa), the growing importance of data in employer branding functions, approaches to measuring ROI of employer brand investments, the tradeoffs of outsourcing talent acquisition efforts, the hidden costs of making bad hires and leaving positions unfilled, the future of job boards, and the value of a strong consumer brand for talent attraction.

This week we welcome Vivek Ravisankar, CEO of HackerRank, to the podcast. Vivek co-founded HackerRank in 2012 with the mission of using skills assessments to match developers with the right jobs. Since then, the company has helped more than 2,000 organizations go beyond résumés and ‘pedigree’ to find talent with proven programming skills. 

Topics include: the advantages and limitations of using résumés in hiring for technical roles, the issues with relying on educational or career ‘pedigrees’ as proxies for technical skill, the biases introduced when screening based on measures like GPA, why software development has been one of the last fields to “digitize” its screening processes, the role of emotions in making hiring decisions, the hidden costs of communication when hiring a remote workforce, the meaning of culture and the implications for remote workforces, the necessary ingredients for creating a thriving tech eco-system, how a city’s “vibe” dictates which industries will thrive there, the attrition problem facing engineering departments, and the ways in which technology can enable career development within an organization. 

This week we welcome Francis Suarez, Mayor of Miami, to the podcast. Mayor Suarez made news in recent months with his Twitter activity promoting Miami as the next Silicon Valley. We sat down to discuss the tweet that went viral, how Miami is capitalizing on this “lightning in a bottle” moment, and the city’s efforts to build a workforce development pipeline for tech talent of the future.     

Topics include: the efforts of local governments to attract employers and employees, the concept of employer branding as applied to cities, Miami’s divergent approaches to tax and public safety policy, the role of a mayor as a city’s chief brand ambassador, Miami’s pitch for Amazon’s HQ2, the issue of gentrification, Miami’s ongoing campaign to re-brand itself as a new tech hub, and how the city is cultivating tech talent of the future with its “Miami for Everyone” initiative.  

This week we welcome Ashutosh Garg to the podcast. Ashutosh is CEO & Co-founder of Eightfold.ai, the first Talent Intelligence Platform to address the talent gap by harnessing the power of AI and search, and Founder of Bloomreach, a leading vendor for Digital Experience Platforms. Prior to founding these enterprises, Ashutosh managed Search and Personalization efforts at both Google and IBM Research. With 6000+ research citations, 50+ patents, and 35+ peer-reviewed research publications, Ashutosh is one of the world’s experts in machine learning.

Topics include: hiring for potential vs. hiring for past skills and experiences, the connection between hiring for potential and diversity, the limitations of resumes and their modern-day equivalents, the growing problem of attrition, the mismatched incentives between advertisers (employers) and job boards, the importance of viewing talent acquisition and talent management holistically, the concept of a “half-life” as applied to skills, the hyper-specialization of jobs, “good” attrition vs. “bad” attrition, augmented intelligence vs. artificial intelligence, the importance of transparency when deploying AI-powered solutions, the rise of remote work and its effects on pay parity and talent pools, and and employer branding for cities. 

This week we welcome Alysha M. Campbell to the podcast. With more than a decade of experience as both a recruiter and HR business partner, Alysha is currently Founder and Principal of CultureShift HR, where she helps companies utilize and engage their best talent while creating diverse and purposeful work environments that help businesses grow and thrive.

Topics include: the meaning of culture in an HR context, understanding culture as the “why” behind a business, the difference between company culture and employer brand, the “checkbox” mentality behind many HR initiatives, the effects of remote work on company culture, approaches to setting realistic goals for diversity and inclusion, the importance of building new pipelines for under-represented STEM talent, and how to measure progress on DE&I initiatives.

This week we welcome Laurie Ruettimann to the podcast. As the face of the popular “Punk Rock HR” podcast, Laurie will need no introduction for many of our listeners. Laurie began her career working in HR operations and recruiting for such organizations as Monsanto, Alberto-Culver (now Unilever), and Pfizer, before leaving corporate America altogether to speak truth to power through her websites (The Cynical Girl and Punk Rock HR), podcast, public speaking engagements, and books. Launching on January 12th and available now for pre-order, Laurie’s latest book, Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First And (Finally) Take Control of Your Career, is an essential guide for employees hoping to work more effectively and approach their jobs in a smarter (and healthier) manner in the new year. 

Topics include: the importance of personal accountability in fostering positive workplaces, the practical meaning of empathy, why HR initiatives often fail to live up to their promises, the pitfalls of asking for employee feedback without a process in place to implement change, how to retain control of your time as a job candidate and employee, the need for “un-sanitized” feedback on employers, how the independent workforce is shifting the employer-employee power dynamic, universal basic income as a tool for employee (and entrepreneur) empowerment, HR as the intersection of work, power, politics and money, surveillance capitalism, and the future of remote work.

In our final episode of 2020, we are guest-free and share our reflections on Change State’s second year in business, the lessons we learned along the way, and the topics and trends we’ll be watching as we look ahead to the new year.

Topics include: Change State’s growth during a pandemic year, the value of founder-created content for organic business growth, the challenges of starting a content engine from scratch, our approach to hiring our first employee(s), soft vs. hard skills in making hiring decisions, the difficulty of writing high quality job descriptions, the meaning of company culture in start-ups with minimal headcount, the pros and cons of the gig economy, the bane of Powerpoint presentations, the economic ripple of effects of remote workforces, and employer branding for cities.