How Talent Leaders Can Help Job Seekers in an Unsettled Labor Market

BY Angelica Frey | January 15, 2023

The home-furnishing company Wayfair offers a wide selection of jungle gyms for kids, but it also offers a virtual version for employees that it calls the Wayfair Jungle Gym. Priding itself on its dynamic approach to career development, the company has moved beyond the climbing-the-ladder tradition to a non-linear concept that opens up more possibilities. “Internal mobility is celebrated here, and we encourage it deeply,” said Ankur Kapadia, Wayfair’s global head of talent acquisition technology. And I think it’s a combination of having that culture of internal mobility, the programs to support it, and also the technology to make it very easy for employees to understand what roles are available and where they might fit,” Kapadia told moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for Fast Company, during From Day One’s January virtual conference on talent acquisition during uncertain times.

From an employee’s perspective, making use of the Wayfair Jungle Gym is part of a trend toward career cushioning, which describes a proactive attitude towards one’s next move without one’s position necessarily being in jeopardy. It consists of shoring up reserves for whatever open positions might pop up, as well as planning to develop the opportunities they might find within the organization.

Concern about a looming recession is fanning the trend: on LinkedIn, Fast Company reported, posts about layoffs have increased by 20% year over year, while discussions about the recession saw a 900% uptick. At the same time, though, organizations are facing a talent shortage. “I was looking at some stats recently,” said Jackie Morgan, VP of global talent acquisition at the power-management company Eaton. “They’re projecting that by 2030, we’re going to have an 85-million-person talent shortage for the demand of jobs that are out there globally.”

It’s becoming more critical than ever for organizations to really understand what skills they are that they’re going to need in the future.

The Importance of Agility About Skills

Patti Clauss has been with kitchen and homeware company Williams Sonoma for 21 years and is now the VP of global talent acquisition. “I’m still doing some new and exciting things. So you know, the one thing I thought of was the path is not just up or down. You have to really be open to moving laterally to learn and to just go where you’re needed. I think that is very important for anyone at every level.”

Carrington Carter, the VP for talent acquisition and internal mobility at the insurance giant TIAA, shares this view. “Historically, as we’ve thought about career paths, they were essentially one directional: they’re primarily going up,” he said. “And I think the reality is that when we think about the trajectories of our careers and those paths, it’s going to require us to be a lot more agile. There will be opportunities to move up, across–and there’ll be enrichment opportunities.” This appreciation for agility reflects a reality where work, as a whole, is seen as more project-focused than defined by an actual title.

Similar to agility is adaptability. “Every company is gonna deal with disruptions that you can’t even fathom,” said Kapadia. “Create order out of chaos, break big problems into small goals.” 

The Importance of a Growth Mindset

Undergirding skills such as agility, adaptability, and the ability to navigate potentially tricky interpersonal interaction is a growth mindset. “[In] contrast with the a fixed mindset, those with a growth mindset typically see a challenge and get excited about that because they see it as an opportunity for learning and growth and development,” said Shauna Geraghty, PsyD, the SVP and head of global talent for the customer-experience company Talkdesk. “They are able to operate in a very fluid environment because that presents those opportunities for them to develop themselves.” It is something that can be learned. “It is coachable, it is something that you can train over time,” said Geraghty “And it is plastic, depending on the environment that you’re operating in.” 

The panel speakers, top row from left: Patti Clauss of Williams Sonoma, Jackie Morgan of Eaton Corp., and Carrington Carter of TIAA. Bottom row: Shauna Garaghty of Talkdesk, Ankur Kapadia of Wayfair, and moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company (Photos courtesy of the speakers. Graphic by Kristen Daniels/From Day One)

Eaton’s Morgan agrees with the sentiment. “You need to have the capability and skill set to continue to learn and grow. At Eaton, we have 10,000 engineers, and we don’t know what the next new product is–we’re inventing it now!” she said. “But we know we need people who are just naturally curious. They want to continue to look at things that they’ve never seen before, try things that they haven’t done before. We do a lot of work here at the organization to make sure that we’ve got the right environment for people who have a passion for learning where they can thrive.” 

This is less of a burden than it seems. “It doesn’t have to be all the way to I have to have the big ideas. Share, don’t be afraid,” said Clauss.

Creating an Inventory of Skills

You know those seemingly arcane personality tests? They can be quite revealing in terms of skill sets. “I’m personally a big fan of skills assessments, like things like StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs. I think on both sides of the equation, I think companies should absolutely sponsor these things. And I think employees and candidates should take advantage of them,” said Kapadia. “I think it gives you really good insight into what your natural talents are, and what roles might be the best fit for you, because it’s where you’re using your strengths the most.” Since assessing skills is a core competency for recruiters, Geraghty suggests that applicants should ask them, “Why did I stand out to you?” They won’t reveal your score card, she said, but they can say, “This is where you stood out compared to the talent pool–you might want to leverage it.”  

TIAA has a similar feedback strategy built within its guidelines. “We have an expectation within regulatory guidelines, and are prepared to provide feedback that is value-added, not to focus on why someone got the job, but to observe what we can learn through experience,” said Carter.

“And it’s not just about the what, but about the how,” said Morgan. “Someone’s ability to be successful is how they do it as much as the tangible outcomes. When we’re assessing a talent, what we’re looking at are the behaviors. We want to see that people have the passion, the desire to learn, the ability to be efficient and effective. And even if the outcome wasn’t successful, what did they learn?”

Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

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Improving the Talent Pipeline, from End to End

Despite layoffs in the technology sector, the labor market remains tight. Organizations that prioritize the experience of the candidate throughout the onboarding process stand the greatest chance both of improving the talent-acquisition pipeline and hanging on to talent. As the head of talent acquisition and university relations at BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer, Crystal Lannaman was faced a unique set of challenges over the last two years, as phrases like “the war for talent” and “the Great Resignation” became common parlance. “The pressure comes from the manufacturing side,” she said during a recent From Day One webinar titled “Improving the Talent Pipeline From End to End.” “How do we make and increase awareness of the lifestyle of the manufacturing environment?” she continued, noting that it’s not something that candidates and job seekers see as a traditional path to a six-figure salary. The difference lies in the values beneath, and in ensuring the value proposition matches the candidate, so that they receive what they expect. “It’s talking about the purpose,” echoed Deb Hallmark, the senior director of talent acquisition at CEC Entertainment, which includes brands like Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza. “Not a lot of people think they’ll have a career in hospitality,” Hallmark said.  “When you think about the emotional connection, we’re memory makers [through the experiences offered at Chuck E. Cheese]. They see it, we call it out.” Organizations Are Steadily Xhanging the Paradigm  TIAA, a financial-services company, is trying to find a balance between the brand’s ethos and how to appeal across demographics. Angie Wesley, TIAA’s SVP and chief global talent acquisition and workforce strategies officer, singles out women, early talent, and people wanting to return to work after a forced or voluntary hiatus in the past two years. “As we think of how we can appeal to different audiences, we’re thinking of media strategy and think of how we can push info to people,” she said. “The candidate experience is paramount.” Digital technology and data play a leading role. “If we think of what we do in HR in general, we have to change what we do in talent acquisition as well: we have to live in this hybrid world,” said Karla Samdahl, the VP of global talent acquisition at Cisco. “We’re digitizing our platform even more; the candidate experience has changed. Interviews are on video, and how we look at assessments, how we interview, and related conversations are different. Now that we’re offering online platforms, we're providing opportunities in different ways.” At CEC Entertainment, Hallmark described the last 14 months as being spent in focus groups, both internally and with candidates, studying what was working and what was broken. “We also studied data, data, data,”  she said, actively measuring the past six to eight months. A study and data-heavy approach is crucial in global companies such as Western Union, where James Stirling, who leads its global talent Acquisition team across 45 countries, says that the process is “no one size fits all. It varies from one country to the other: it's important to understand nuances.” Upskilling, Reskilling, and Reframing Internal Talent Transferable skills, or a transferable mindset, has also been a main focus at TIAA. Wesley says that they’re very active in recruiting early talent in business and wealth management. “We need that younger generation to influence their generation to think about their future,” she said. “You don’t need someone with experience, you need someone with the drive to understand that purpose.” For this reason, “[At TIA] we also set clear messages around how talent moves in certain areas, where mobility is going to be more fruitful,” she said. “There’s career mapping that crosses over other leaders.” You can start in customer service and end up working in data science or portfolio management. Webinar speakers, top row from left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company and Angie Wesley of TIAA. Middle row: Crystal Lannaman of BASF, Deb Hallmark of CEC Entertainment, and Karla Samdahl of Cisco Systems. Bottom: James Stirling of Western Union (Image by From Day One) “Promotional velocity is crucial,” Samdahl said. At Cisco, leaders want people to see a career progression, so they focus on how to strengthen the existing foundation, how employees navigate how they see their path. “Upskilling and reskilling is key,” she said. They have three-term rotational projects, where employees can step into specific roles every 18 months, with managers looking in and exposing them to a new skill set. “We have a variety of calibrations, but how do we get out of the cycle of leaders wanting to hold onto high-performing talent?” Stirling said. The solution, for him, is giving executive recruiters more access to real-time data: someone might be ready for a move, and while it's not in that same structure or department, they can be moved and promoted somewhere else. “The focus is on internal talent getting ready for their next-level role.” ‘A New Assessment of Where We Are’  When it comes to workforce development and reaching out to external candidates, awareness is key. “In manufacturing, we struggle to find women,” said Lannaman, returning to her earlier point. This difficulty is sometimes attributed to the work being shift-based, but other shift-based professions like nursing do not have this same problem. “It’s more about thinking about a new assessment of where we are,” she said. “We’re partnering with middle schools, high schools, and college to bring awareness of what this work can be.” There is a three-pronged approach to this process: outlining the purpose, explaining what the so-called “package deal” is, and addressing the skills required, with an emphasis on transferable skills. Samdahl outlines that “years in a role” are now less important than a specific skill set. “Even though they had a two-year sabbatical, they still have a trajectory of aligned skill sets,” she said. “Our recruiters have become talent advisors, being able to influence hiring managers.” The internal versus external hiring dilemma remains a complex question. “One of the things we're seeing in an industry, when we think of our job description, is that we’re deliberate in what we need vs what we like,” said Wesley. For instance, at TIAA, they dropped education requirements, and realized it’s better to find someone who can perform at 75% at first and then improve to 90% than it is to wait six months for a 100% fit. “It’s not always a single hit, it does not have to be in the bullseye,” she said. “Internal growth, whether vertically or laterally, can allow new growth to come in externally.” Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Boston.

Angelica Frey November 20, 2022

Anticipating the Job Skills of the Future

In response to the tight labor market, especially in the tech sector, cutting-edge companies are investing more in training their current workforce to meet employment needs of the future. Four HR executives at forward-thinking organizations discussed what they anticipate to be the job market needs around the corner with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, who moderated a From Day One webinar titled, “Anticipating the Job Skills of the Future.” The speakers focused on the fast pace of change, especially in digital fields. “Customer service has completely changed during the past few years,” said Judith Almendra-Rodriguez, VP of global human capital and talent acquisition at TTEC, a customer-experience tech and services company. While communication and service orientation are still key, now this role also requires complex problem solving, analytical skills, and a lot more cognitive flexibility. “The basic [customer service] things have been completely automated,” she said, “So now, you are dealing with a much more complex interactions, and multiple software. And as the market got tighter, there became a lot more jobs available than people looking for those opportunities. It’s an area that we need to continue to upskill.” This is the kind of transition HR managers and other business executives are trying to anticipate. The mass exodus from the office to work-from-home brought about other changes too. “The last two years taught us the importance of the ability to inspire and lead teams, and manage through significant change,” said Giselle Battley, senior director and global head of early-career talent at JLL, a commercial real-estate services company. She anticipates those trends to persist in the future. Rachel Lipson, co-founder and director of the Project on Workforce at Harvard University’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, flagged resilience as another skill that became a “must-have” during the pandemic. Tamara Jolivette-Smith, director of HR at Houston Methodist, one of the largest medical centers in the world, added that having an open mind about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is crucially important. “Embracing how that applies in your organization is also a necessary skill,”she said. McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza asked what kinds of jobs and job functions are most in need of upskilling. Lipson pointed to the tech sector in general as the toughest talent to hire, but added that companies need to also think about future needs. “The jobs that are growing the fastest now and will continue to do so are those jobs that have a mix of technical and soft skills,” she said. “So not just pure programmers or pure data scientists, but dual players who are needed to deal with humans and work in teams–and lead and manage–but also have strong technical competencies. Building skills like communication, management and teamwork, and leadership are going to transfer easily from role to role and also persist over the course of someone's career.” Expert speakers, top row from left: Rachel Lipson of Harvard University and Giselle Battley of JLL. Bottom row: moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Judith Almendra-Rodriguez of TTEC, and Tamara Jolivette-Smith of Houston Methodist (Image by From Day One) How can organizations identify specific skills that need updating within an organization?Almendra-Rodriguez pointed out the importance of a robust assessment tool. TTEC launched a platform tool that combines performance management, talent assessments, mentorship programs, rotation, and e-learning into one single platform. This tool allows for self-assessment or peer-assessment. Jolivette-Smith said that Houston Medical relies on a partnership between HR leaders and executive leaders, as well as employee focus groups, to get an understanding of where the skill gaps are and develop a plan for filling those gaps. As far as how the actual training gets done, Battley explained that JLL has several initiatives. “We have a very robust learning and leadership development team that is constantly working hand-in-hand with the business to identify what the key skills needed are, and what the learning journey should be within each of our business lines,” she said. JLL recently created a talent-partner role, which focuses on understanding where the skill gaps are, where the future of the business is headed with our current talent landscape, and helping to bridge all of those things together. McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza brought up that a strong culture of DEI in an organization be a huge talent attractor, and asked how that can be used for recruiting. Lipson, who has studied this, explained that creating opportunities for work-based learning, especially for those who might not have had the economic opportunity to achieve an advanced education, needs to be more of priority for companies in attracting and keeping a diverse, skilled workforce. “We can learn from other countries that have invested much more heavily in apprenticeships,” she said. Battley added that it’s important for companies to walk the talk of DEI by offering in-house training and also  promoting from within. More than 80% of JLL’s leadership team has grown within the company, based on a continuous commitment to employee development, she said. “It’s key that we actually execute the StrengthsFinder assessment for early-career professionals early on in the recruitment process,” added Almendra-Rodriguez. “We need to show our commitment to understanding where their strengths and not necessarily just their gaps are, and show our commitment to continuing to work on their strengths along the way.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Lever, which provides employers with recruiting software. Jennifer Haupt is a Seattle-based author and journalist.

Jennifer Haupt December 28, 2022

To Retain Workers, Help Them Grow Their Skills

Despite their economic burdens and climbing inflation, many U.S. workers now care as much about career opportunity as they do about compensation. If employers are to hold on to talent, they’ll have to move beyond the short-term shock of the Great Resignation and focus on long-term employee career growth. “Workers are reassessing their career choices and evaluating whether their employer is really investing in their professional development. Learning new skills is a key sticking point, regardless of generation, for retaining talented people,” said Lydia Dishman, a staff editor at Fast Company, who moderated a conversation on career growth and employee retention, part of From Day One’s November virtual conference on upskilling, coaching and recognition. The consensus among panelists was this: Chuck the orthodox career ladder and let employees define their long-term success. One of the panelists, Shaun Mayo, the chief people officer for the Arizona Cardinals, brought up the notion of serving the “whole person” in the workplace. What began as a call for the psychological safety of marginalized workers has expanded to include supporting working parents, facilitating better work-life balance, and now, considering employees’ long-term career development. The skills gap is growing, and both employers and employees are increasingly aware of the need to stay current. Workers aren’t necessarily looking for vertical career growth, the speakers emphasized. The ladder is less relevant now, and professionals are looking for the chance to pursue their own brand of career progress, said Dishman. “This notion of traditional career paths seems to be becoming obsolete, that you're just not there to climb a ladder, that you can spread out, maybe take a few steps back, go forward in a different direction.” Kaelyn Phillips, director of global talent development at the job platform Monster, noted that this concept of what she called a “squiggly career” isn’t new. To help staff members imagine where they might move within Monster, however non-linear the path, the company has made role requirements and core competencies ultra-clear. For example, if an SEO analyst at Monster wants to transition to sales, they can readily find a list of the skills they should develop and the competency level they need to achieve. Speaking on career development, top row from left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, Shaun Mayo of the Arizona Cardinals, and Mark Kaestner of Graphic Packaging International. Bottom row: Kelly Rider of PTC, Kaelyn Phillips of Monster, and Benedek Frank of Bravely (Image by From Day One) “It gives people the opportunity to go in and make their own career, which is not something that you can do if there's a ladder,” Phillips said. “We're seeing people moving to different types of careers, and it makes it so much better for the people involved because they genuinely love what they've chosen. That means they're going to work that much harder, they're going to be more interested, they're going to be more engaged, and they're going to be more connected to the organization because we fostered their growth and their passion.” “We have to be careful that career development doesn't equal career progression. Everybody wants to be valued, respected, do meaningful work, and be developed and invested in, but not everybody wants to become a VP or the CEO,” added Mark Kaestner, the VP of talent development, learning, and diversity and inclusion for Graphic Packaging International. “Some people want to grow where they're planted, and some people want to progress.” Mayo has done the same at the Cardinals, where, he said, the results have been illuminating for everyone. Workers are now looking at their job experiences differently—holistically, as a means to an end they define, he said. “It started to change the conversation and really opened up people's eyes to say, ‘My career path does not need to look like this, it can actually go horizontal to get these different experiences that I know in the long term will get me to where I want to be.’” When Benedek Frank, a coach and trainer at the coaching platform Bravely, works with clients, he too asks them to define their own success. The further out they can envision their future, the better. “Those people who are able to imagine something and keep to that goal over a longer period of time are much more likely to reach that goal than those people who don't have such an image in their minds,” he said. “Work must start on the individual employee's part by thinking about his or her own intentions and interests.” Software company PTC’s chief learning and talent officer Kelly Rider said people managers need to be coached in this direction. “We develop that mindset of managers really seeing the benefit and value of honoring somebody’s professional career development,” she said. That has to be an intentional process, because it doesn’t happen by default. “Line managers are not mind readers,” observed Frank. “The biggest mistake that I see clients making is that they assume the line manager is going to not only guess what they want and what they're capable and skilled to do, but also offer them this opportunity. And this almost never happens.” When it comes to training employees in ways that grow their careers, Kaestner believes soft skills are most important. “Universal skills and experience are what allow you to move to different areas of the organization. Learning agility, rational risk taking, problem solving, innovative mindset–those are skills that we need regardless of the role.” At PTC, Rider focuses on adjacent skills. Her company implemented an AI talent management platform, Eightfold, and hopes the tool will help employees find their next career within the company. “We’re trying to use it as talent mobility, so we can get people to see what their skills are and maybe consider a completely different role in a different environment they may not have considered before.” Sustaining workers’ enthusiasm for career development within your company requires encouraging them to bring to work what they personally value. Rider asks staff to think about what energizes them, what gets them excited about their job, what ignites their passions. Benedek does the same: “I help my clients by saying, ‘Okay, what is it that has caused you great joy and satisfaction in your previous professional lives? Something that interests you so much that you want to move into that area.’ That's where you'll be much more motivated.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a writer, editor, and content strategist based in Richmond, Va.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 30, 2021