Devyn Mikell [00:00:04]:

Hey, this is Devyn Mikell with the Hire Quality podcast. Super excited to be interviewing you. So could you introduce yourself, your role in the company that you work at?

Jeff Greene [00:00:14]:

Yeah. Hi. My name is Jeff Greene. I am the Vice president of Talent Acquisition Strategies and Operations for Trinity Health and I'm excited to be here.

Devyn Mikell [00:00:23]:

What's something unique about you as a talent leader at your organization that makes you a perfect fit for that job?

Jeff Greene [00:00:29]:

One of the things that I wish I knew when I first started leading teams is that you don't have to like everyone to see the strengths and the skill sets of what you need in your team and for each other. You can't just keep trying to find the same person over and over again. Difference is beautiful. And those skill sets, I think, really help enhance the team and really the team not just the leader, but the team develops the team. And so being able to make sure that your teammates and the people you surround your team with are also going to develop them even beyond whatever you can do and maybe even what you like or what you feel strong at. And so now when I think about building teams, I really focus on trying to find people that are going to, I guess, enhance the skills of other teammates and challenge the team so that we can all be better as a function and as a team and celebrate each other as we kind of learn and grow as a team.

Devyn Mikell [00:01:28]:

What's up, everyone? So excited to have you here today with us on this episode of Hire Quality. Super, super excited about this episode specifically because I'm joined by Jeff Green, who you just heard in that interview before. Jeff is the VP of Talent Strategy at Trinity Health. And I'm totally underselling what that means. So I'll kick it to you, Jeff. Super excited to have you here, but just add a little sizzle to your introduction because you know yourself.

Jeff Greene [00:01:51]:

Yeah. No, thanks, Devyn. It's great to be here. Yeah, I am, like you said, the Vice President of Talent Strategies and Operations with get to basically I get to deal with all sorts of innovation, program work, but also just how we do things, how we do things better, and how we can just get better and craft what we do in a new way. So really happy to support the team. Excited to be here and have this conversation a little bit more.

Devyn Mikell [00:02:16]:

Awesome. My first question is, because you have a long title, tell me what every part of that means for you day to day, like, what's expected of you from I can make a lot of assumptions about the talent strategy side. Right. But then what's the operations side mean?Jeff Greene [00:02:33]:Yeah, I mean, we're a big organization. We have multiple locations throughout the states. We've got all different types of business within our business. And so a lot of what I get to do is I get to support all of our different talent leaders, talent teams in states across the country. But in supporting them through programs, we may be standing up to find new talent differently, develop talent in some ways we do a lot of work around process improvement because let's be honest, we're in the business of people, right? Which means things are changing all the time and we got to be really agile on that. So I get to work a lot with a team of people that get to strategize on how we can do things different and challenge the norm. And that could be anything from how are we screening candidates, should we screen them this way, should we screen them at all? What are the things that are adding value to the process or not? And also how do we find new talent? I mean, let's just talk it straight. Like how do we find talent when it's tough to find people? And all of that along the lines of also supporting leaders to develop their own teams and figure out how are they developing their teams and supporting the business more.

Jeff Greene [00:03:46]:

So it's pretty varied every day, all the time, but it's a lot of fun and it challenges you to be creative for sure.

Devyn Mikell [00:03:56]:

Do you find yourself again, I'm not making any assumptions today, actually. I'm just going to ask the question, do you find yourself hands on executing anything or is it more so you're working through a lot of people all the know?

Jeff Greene [00:04:09]:

I do find myself executing things. It's one of those things to where I enjoy it and I think it's important to be able to zoom in and out a lot as a leader. When you think about getting dizzy on the Google Maps and you're zooming all the way in to the yard of your neighbor versus all the way out to see how far is it going to get from New York to La. I think it's important to do both every day, all the time. And so, yeah, there are times where we may be challenging a process and I need to dig in and say, what's this really look like? How many clicks does it take for our TA partners to actually execute this? Is it going to make sense? Is it going to be cumbersome? So we'll get all the way into the detail sometimes even on things like reporting out and creating voice and advocacy for our team and our function. I like to put my hands to that stuff because I like to be able to feel like I know really well what it is I'm advocating for, what I'm fighting for. So there are times where I'm going way into detail and other times where it's really about empowering my leaders around me that honestly challenge me all the time to be better. And so I think it's a balance every day.

Devyn Mikell [00:05:22]:

Yeah, I think one of the things that makes you admirable, right? So, like, our audience is recruiters who are aspiring, right? And that's why we're here to one, you've said it give people a way to get a seat at the table. I think that's something it sounds like you're an expert at. Right. So not everyone knows their data, knows their metrics. And I think that's one of the weaknesses of talent acquisition that I've seen with a lot of leaders is like, I'll ask you, what does time to hire look like for your company? And they'll have no answer. Or they'll be like, I could get it, but I don't have it at all. I've talked about this on other episodes, but what is your take on data and how that has driven you to provide more value to the organization and showcase that you're providing more value to the organization?

Jeff Greene [00:06:08]:

Yeah, well, Devyn, it's a good question. I think we're all talent professionals on this, right? And I think the same way we talk about things like your resume gets you an interview, but then you got to deliver in that interview. I think data gets you to the table, but you still got to deliver once you get to the table. And so sometimes it's about knowing what your data is, but sometimes it's also about knowing why the data is what it is or how to define it. One of those big, bad words that everyone talks about in talent is vacancy. And that's a hard thing to define sometimes. What does that really mean? And I think we can all memorize a statistic, right, and we can really drill it into us and our teams, but being able to say, what's that really mean? What's behind that? What's the definition of vacancy? That's where you really get to where you see people grow, right? People really grow. They get recognized, respected. They become really good consultants for the business. I think a lot of what we try to do is to make sure that we talk about data, but then to really say, okay, so what do we do with it? What story is data telling us? And there's almost always a question behind every number, and I think that that's a good thing. I don't think we should shy away from it, but it's an important part of what we do every day.

Devyn Mikell [00:07:27]:

Yeah, absolutely. I do want to take two steps back. One, I think the audience deserves to know a bit about Trinity Health and what the magnitude of Trinity Health is, because that'll help them understand how complex this thing can get. So why don't you share a little bit about kind of the quick what we don't know about Trinity Health?

Jeff Greene [00:07:47]:

Yeah, no, absolutely. So Trinity is a healthcare organization. We have hospitals, we've got continuing care, we've got clinics. If you have a sore throat where you might go. We've got operations across I think it's 26 states at this time, I'm hesitant to say because we keep growing and we keep changing, and health care is one of those things that we all need. I think sometimes we hope that we don't need it, but there's a lot of touch points in all of our lives where we end up experiencing the need of health care in some way. And so we have locations across the country, all the way from California to New York to Florida, all up and down the Midwest, all over the place. We have just over 120,000 colleagues, so we're a pretty large organization, and that's not even including some of our providers, meaning like, our physicians, surgeons, and other apps or advanced practice providers.Jeff Greene [00:08:41]:So there's quite a few different pieces that we're looking at. I think we're over 90 hospitals now across the country. So it's a big organization. Again, we continue to evolve and grow in that. But we have been an organization that's operated in a lot of teams, and over the last handful of years, we've really started to come together more and have a very focused effort as a full team across the country now.

Devyn Mikell [00:09:09]:

Got you. Yeah, see, I couldn't have done that. So that was step one and then step back, and the second one is the fun one, which is I love talking about the journey. Right? So there's two things that I've met a ton of recruiting leaders, a ton of recruiters. That either it's one of two routes, either they kind of always wanted to do this in a way that they were like, I hated the job search, and so I wanted to do this, or they're like, I have no idea how I ended up here. I just fell into this. So for starters, tell me if you fall into one of those two categories, and then let's go back to the very beginning of where this started and the journey to where you are now.

Jeff Greene [00:09:47]:

Yeah. I had no plan to be in this field. I had no plan to be functioning this way or even in healthcare, even in this industry. And I didn't start that way too, which we can talk more about. But no, it was not a plan. It wasn't something that to be honest, I even knew when I was going to school. I didn't even realize that this was a profession. It wasn't something that I thought I could do in advance in, so I kind of fell into it.

There was a series of decisions that got me here, but it was not a plan. It was not something that I had in front of me.

Devyn Mikell [00:10:23]:

Got you. I guess. What did you study in school and where were you headed?

Jeff Greene [00:10:28]:

Yeah, so way back, I studied public relations, and I studied psychology and philosophy. So I was double majoring, doing multiple different little things here and there and really focused on the humanities. And I was really interested, looking back it's funny, I should have put it all together, but I was really interested in people. Honestly, I was interested in how people communicate, how people think, and what kind of makes people tick. And that was a big part of really digging into philosophy, psychology, communication. And I went really strong there. But I thought I was going to go into PR. That was where I really thought I was going to be. I was absolutely headstrong that that was the career path for me. Towards the end of my college years, I actually started doing some externship stuff and realized really quickly that a lot of the PR day to day for whoever knows how long in your career was not going to be for me. It was something that was going to be draining enough that I was going to potentially not make it in that industry. And so I actually just spoke to friends, spoke to mentors, and many people said I should try out HR. And I thought, oh man, all I know about HR is these like, isn't it just really policy heavy? I don't think I'm going to like any of that. And got to dive in first to higher ed and higher ed recruitment in particular. And I really fell in love with it. I mean, ultimately, being able to communicate and work with people and to be able to provide a service to people in an area that maybe is stressful for a lot of people was really attractive to me. And so I decided to go headstrong in there, jumped into recruitment and just found myself kind of continuing to grow in that space year after year and jumped around in a couple of different industries before I landed in healthcare.

Devyn Mikell [00:12:23]:

Nice. Is healthcare your favorite or is this kind of where you found success? Oh, it's both.

Jeff Greene [00:12:30]:

You know, it's funny. My favorite would be hard to say because there's good and bad about all the industries that I've been able to be a part of. But in higher ed and in kind of like big retail and in nonprofit and in healthcare, those are kind of the places I've been. Healthcare is so dynamic and it's an area where there's more of a cause or mission behind what we do. And that's been really great for me. Now it's not known to be the area that necessarily moves the fastest or maybe it's even the most innovative at times. But I learned a lot outside of healthcare and then I've learned a lot within healthcare. So I think I love healthcare.

Jeff Greene [00:13:16]:

I can't really imagine stepping out of it now. But it took me going through some of those other industries to realize what I was strong at and what made me tick before. I probably couldn't settle in healthcare if I wouldn't have done some of those other things first.

Devyn Mikell [00:13:31]:

That's fair. No, that's definitely fair. I mean, it's all about the path. And you mentioned there's different steps along the journey that told you what you were great at, which segues perfectly to a question I like to ask, which is like, what are you great at? There's great as the leader, but I almost want to go more like, if you were a recruiter today, what are you great at that made you now a leader, if that makes sense.

Jeff Greene [00:13:55]:

I will take it all the way back to kind of like my own belief and some core beliefs I have about people. And one of those things is that people can be successful in multiple areas and in multiple jobs if they are given the right support and the right goals. And I really firmly believe that, which means, you know what? We all have times where we think we would not be good at that, or we tried it and we realized we weren't good at it. Right. And I think that one of the things that has always been a strength of mine that I think leads into being a leader as well, is building teams. And I think that even as a recruiter, when you're maybe not selecting your own teammates, but you are building a team of a different department or a leader that you're supporting, being able to articulate who's going to be successful and how and to really unpack that more and help set people up, I think is really important. And that's something that I think, for me, I found success in, honestly, and I found a lot of fulfillment in that. That makes me so happy to see people that you hired that maybe themselves were even questioning, like, I don't know if this is the job for me, or I saw the job title and I wouldn't have ever applied.

Jeff Greene [00:15:11]:

Right. But to be able to say, here's what we're looking for, this is what it sounds like you're looking for, so let's go ahead and see if we can explore it a little bit. And there's just been so many great successes. I think one of the coolest things that a recruiter can do is to see a hire that they made progress up because it means you set them on the right path.

Devyn Mikell [00:15:31]:

Right?

Jeff Greene [00:15:31]:

And I think that that's such a cool thing, and it's something that I really try to strive for, but it sounds funny, but you got to be able to read people, and you got to be able to communicate those things well. And I do think that's something that some people are naturally a little stronger at. But I also think it's something that you can teach. You can absolutely teach people how to do that well. So I think that's been a critical thing for me, and it's something I look for, for sure in my teams.

Devyn Mikell [00:15:58]:

Got you. I have to imagine, as you practice that skill, building the team, even as a recruiter, right. So your team might look like a coordinator and a hiring manager, right? So I have to imagine the potential challenge of hiring managers in the sense of, hey, I only want people that have done the job right. Like, that a maybe at this point it's maybe an assumption, but I feel like hiring managers want people that they are proven already. So how have you navigated getting them to come down from like a very.

Jeff Greene [00:16:33]:

Tight oh, Devyn, that's such a good question. There's a couple of different things that I look at. One is really simple. Sometimes I start by talking with the hiring manager about their own journey, kind of what you're doing right here. And I try to remind them what journey they've been on to get where they are and to recognize that there are people like them or people that are not like them, but have also come up and developed similarly so that they can start identifying those key things. So even when you start digging in with the hiring manager about, let's talk about how you got where you are, I just want to get to know you a little bit more. Start talking about their education, what they learned, their first job. You can start saying things like, man, it sounds like you really value resiliency because you pushed through on this really tough job for three years.

Jeff Greene [00:17:24]:

You were in this job that you weren't sure you liked. Is that something you value? Do you think that's important? And then you can bring that into your screening and who you're presenting so that you can make sure that they kind of stay open. And it's kind of like if a parent loses touch with what's like to be a kid, sometimes you got to talk about your childhood, right? Another thing that I talk a lot about is that sometimes you got to get a hiring manager to forget who was just in the role. And the way that I like to put that got use an analogy, and it's a little cheesy, but you use this analogy where you say someone says, like, Devin, as a hiring manager, you could say, man, I just had this really great person that worked for me. We promoted them up or they left the organization or whatnot it would be like if you said, man, I had this amazing chocolate chip cookie yesterday and I'm just craving it again, right? Like right now I just want that cookie again. And I think to myself, I can't get you that cookie. There's no way I'm going to get it. Now, I could give you ten chocolate chip cookies right now and none of them are going to quite be the same.

Jeff Greene [00:18:29]:

Now, maybe one's going to be better, but if you got this headstrong in your head, no, I want that exact one I had before, you're not going to get it. Right. So I think as a recruiter, a lot of times our responsibility is to say, you know what, Devin, I'll give you a chocolate chip cookie, right? But I'm also going to give you a hot fudge sundae and a piece of pie and a piece of cake. And then you can actually make a decision on, okay, I actually just want something sweet. I guess I didn't necessarily want the cookie, but I want something sweet. And now I can make a better decision, which is not necessarily trying to match what I had before, because one of the things that we find using that same analogy, but let's shift it to people that love shopping. At some point in time, you're going to be getting knockoff after knockoff after knockoff because you're never going to get what you had originally. And I can't tell you how many times you look at leaders that have had turnover all of a sudden, and they're a good leader, but they are seeing turnover after turnover.

Jeff Greene [00:19:28]:

And as you dig into it more, you're like, oh, well, it's because you wanted this person and we didn't get you that person, but then the next person, we didn't get them that either, and then we didn't get that person either. And now we're three or four people down the line. We've got this watered down version of what you actually need. So sometimes as recruiters, we got to say, okay, let's hold up, let's pause and let's talk about what you actually need right now. And it's hard to get people to open up sometimes about that, but I got to tell you in the same way that sometimes we as the employee don't even know what we're capable of. Leaders don't know what they can support or not support. And half the time they have the skill set, they just don't have the time or capacity to support what they think. And so you got to kind of open their eyes a little bit.

Jeff Greene [00:20:22]:

But all of that only happens if you're really relational, right? It only happens if you as a recruiter have a good relationship with that hiring manager. Even when you don't have a requisition open, even when you're not doing anything with them, checking in with new hires, trying to make sure that anything that's a top priority for their business, you're keeping up with, those are things that will, I guess, give you access to be able to have these deeper conversations with them down the road.

Devyn Mikell [00:20:52]:

That is good. It's like the truest form of talent acquisition, partner. That's why that's what it's called. And I feel like it's going from just recruiting to partner consulting, like you've said before.

Jeff Greene [00:21:06]:

Yeah, well, you know, at one point, right, not that long ago we were a staffing function, just said, give me a body to do X. And then we kind of moved into like, we're recruiters, meaning we're going to get people excited about whatever it is. But now, as you're truly a talent acquisition partner and you're needing to partner with the business, you've got to be better about placing the right people at the right time with the right leaders. And if you can't do that, you're just going to see volume and you're just going to churn through that. And especially in healthcare. But this is true in a lot of industries. We can't afford to do that anymore. And so it does kind of challenge all of us, I think, to, I guess, be better and just be more intentional about all of that, right?

Devyn Mikell [00:21:53]:

For sure you alluded to it earlier. Healthcare in all senses, it's not just talent acquisition, but can move slower than other industries, but it's also, fun fact, more resilient than other industries. So kudos to healthcare. But anyways, the question I have is do you see right now places that are broken in your own function? Not everything is perfect anywhere. What are those hot button places that you're like? Hey, this is an area of concern for me and we need to fix it if there's things that you can share with the audience.

Jeff Greene [00:22:29]:

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think one of the things that comes to mind initially is that we need to be more intentional as an industry about partnering with key, I guess, organizations that could be academic partners, nonprofit folks, and even government agency. We've got to be more intentional about developing the right talent to be able to fulfill the needs in front of us. Because frankly, we don't have enough production of talent to be able to fulfill the need across the industry that has nothing to do with any one organization. It's really healthcare at large. And I think that there's so much opportunity to do that better. And the areas where we are seeing success in that. It's hugely successful.

Jeff Greene [00:23:21]:

When you're able to target a population of people that have barriers to be able to get certification or licensure of some sort and you can figure out a way to resource them with a school or with a company to be able to develop themselves and then see that they're ready for that next step is a big deal. Just thinking that there's all these people sitting around thinking, man, I guess if someone offered me that job, I'd be interested, is not really where we're at. Across the country, unemployment rates are pretty low right now and those will fluctuate. They'll go up and down, of course. But regardless, in a highly skilled industry, it is really hard to get people that have the right credentials and the right experience and training to be able to jump into some of our key areas. So it's honestly the thing that probably keeps me up the most at night is like, how can we do that better? And we're doing it so well in many of our markets. But they're small programs, right? And to do something national, it's really hard. It's really hard to do.

Jeff Greene [00:24:31]:

But I think that it will really help us as an industry, just provide better care to all of us.

Devyn Mikell [00:24:38]:

Right. Honestly. So if I'm hearing this correctly, right, you're trying to go the future of your work is we're talent acquisition. Right now we're moving to a world where it's talent creation almost. It's like we have to find people that have complementary skill sets, maybe don't have licensure, and find a way to get them licensure, essentially. Right?

Jeff Greene [00:25:01]:

Yes. And I would also say I think our future is two pronged and it is development and it is also attraction. I think we are in a spot where we have to get more creative and more mature in how we reach people. There's so much noise, there's tons of stuff out there. How do we reach people in a more intentional way and in a way that feels like we actually see the person? And it's not just about spam, it's not about cold calling only. It's not about these big blast emails. It's about reaching people in a more intentional way. And that is causing us to have to get digital and more sophisticated than what I think the function has always been in the past.

Devyn Mikell [00:25:47]:

Right. Which means probably more investment in like I can't imagine that five years ago, even people were thinking they needed to be good at Facebook ads, in recruiting, for example. Right. And I wonder if there's a world where that's just the table stakes for recruiters. Or would you rather see the world where it's like, this is just a role that we have on our team, or everyone should play that role.

Jeff Greene [00:26:13]:

That's an interesting question. I do think that there's place for people in Ta or in talent acquisition that doesn't require that. But I would venture to say ten years from now, I don't know that we could say the same thing. If we're trying to predict out what that's going to look like, I think that's going to be hard. I actually think one of the hardest things for many Ta professionals, even the people that just randomly find themselves in Ta, is actually being able to put a plan to paper. It's really typical that talent acquisition folks can talk about what we're going to do and even execute it, right. But to be able to say, let's put a plan to paper, meaning let's create content, what's the actual content going to say? What's the plan for it? What's the timeline? What are we investing and hoping to get out of it? Those things are hard. I mean, it's like creating little business cases and everything, right? Which also means that when you start thinking about who's going to create a Facebook ad or what's your own brand as a Ta professional and do you take into account your own SEO or anything along those lines? Man, it's a totally different game for a lot of people.

Jeff Greene [00:27:29]:

And I can't even remember the statistic exactly, but I read something recently that talked about. How this generation right now that's in college, most have at least three burner email accounts at least. And you know what's crazy about that is then you start thinking about things like not only is that just more noise and more data out there, right. But it also means, like, why are we spending so much time trying to email people that don't know you? They're getting ads for everything. They're probably not looking at half of it and it's just creating more noise. So it's stuff like that that says, yeah, we got to be able to create meaningful content and reach people in a meaningful way, but also where they're at. But I also think that we got to be careful that we don't just live in this past world that's not going anywhere, right?

Devyn Mikell [00:28:21]:

Yeah. That is crazy. I had one email, I have one.

Jeff Greene [00:28:27]:

Email that I've had for I don't know how many years, but that's just not what our target talent population, that's not their world that they're living in. And so that's going to cause us to evolve. Right. And that means that we can't just keep doing the same thing and expect that we're going to get the same results that we did maybe five years ago.

Devyn Mikell [00:28:47]:

Right. Honestly, well, I appreciate this and I would go on forever, but I know we have to keep an eye on our time. So we like to do a segment. It's called Question of the Week. And the reason we do this is because you are going to get the first shot at this question, but the audience gets to participate in an interview just like you did in the beginning. And so the link for those who are listening will be in the description to this question where you can go and give your best answer. And if it's great enough, we will put it on the show and we'll give you a special gift from Qualifi. So anyways, your question, Jeff, is simple but could be profound.

Devyn Mikell [00:29:27]:

How do you stay ahead of the curve in terms of talent trends? Short and sweet, but I'm curious to know your take.

Jeff Greene [00:29:34]:

There's going to be a lot of people that talk about newsletters they subscribe to or different accounts that maybe they follow and those are all good and we need to do those things. I think if I think about staying ahead, I'll be honest, I think my thing is don't disconnect from any population of people. The easiest way for me to stay up to date on what's going on is to talk about it with people, people that are experiencing it. Now, I just had a conversation with a couple of my friends that are buddies of mine from childhood and they have made job changes recently and are kind of looking on different things and understanding what's their experience like, what are they doing, what's the pain point, what would be helpful. Those sorts of things are really important to me, and I think that they help us stay rooted in what the problems are and also what still works. The truth is that people still want to talk to a person. They don't want to only get automated messaging. Right.

Jeff Greene [00:30:33]:

There are things like that that I think you could read every article about AI out there, and it still may not get you ahead of the fact that people are people, and we got to make sure that we're addressing that. And so I make an appointment to not only round with my teams at every level, even at the most individual level, to just find out what they are dealing with and what they're experiencing. And it's not about a problem or a success always. It's sometimes just about like, what do you have on your plate? Let's talk about it, and what are you hearing? So, honestly, we got to be open to feedback, and I ask for it, and I think that that is the best way to learn. So staying ahead of the curve for me is go seek out people. We can read books, we can listen to every single article that we've got out there. But the truth is that you got to go meet some people. You got to go talk to them, ask them questions, and that's the easiest way at all levels of your career that I think you can stay in tune.

Devyn Mikell [00:31:40]:

I love that, the ears to the ground approach. Yeah. It's like listening to customers. For me, at the end of the day, my data that I have access to is the best data that I can.

Jeff Greene [00:31:49]:

So, yeah, that's right.

Devyn Mikell [00:31:51]:

Well, I greatly appreciate your time, Jeff. I guess this is your time to let the audience know I know that they have much to learn from you and can continue to follow your journey. How would you suggest they do that and stay connected with you?

Jeff Greene [00:32:03]:

Yeah, I mean, it's cliche because, of course, many of us in talent are online, but absolutely feel free to connect with me. Reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. Very active on that. Also, you can find me pretty easily on a lot of social channels, too, if you are interested in any of those things. But even if you Google me, getting back to SEO, I've got a very basic website that also allows you to get in touch with me. If you want to connect more on anything, happy to do so. We're in a dynamic field and love meeting people and hearing the journeys of where everyone's at, so would love to connect.

Devyn Mikell [00:32:40]:

Awesome. That's great. Honestly, you gave more than most people did. So appreciate everyone listening today. If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a beat. And don't forget to answer the Question of the Week, and we'll see you on the next episode.

Jeff Greene [00:32:54]:

Perfect. Thanks, Devin. Bye.