Devyn Mikell [00:00:03]:

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

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Steve White [00:00:13]:

My name is Steve White. I lead all of talent acquisition for an organization called BCU, formerly or known as the Boeing Employees Credit Union and put affectionately known to most people as BECU's Pacific Northwest based credit union, one of the largest credit unions in the country. We have 1.4 million members and about $30 billion in managed assets.

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Devyn Mikell [00:00:38]:

What is top of mind for you as a talent leader at your organization?

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Steve White [00:00:42]:

Currently, I'm focused on enhancing our employer brand and our candidate experience. Those things are really critical, but really instituting and implementing things like talent acquisition excellence. I'm really, really big on us showing up in an excellent way, and I want to make sure we show up in an excellent way in everything we do.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:00]:

What is something you wish you knew about leading talent that you didn't know when you first started?

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Steve White [00:01:05]:

That is the key of building a strong employer brand. Whether you're a recruiter, you're a coordinator, you're in talent acquisition operations, whatever it may be. Really building a strong employer brand, like every one of us participates and leaning into that and creating it and building it, those things are so critical.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:24]:

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

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Steve White [00:01:30]:

I think that there's no special sauce, right. But I would consider myself to be a galvanizing and tenacious leader. I do take it very seriously, right. In the role that I have to ensure that we are rallying ourselves around a cause, a vision, tying it and connecting it to the broader purpose of what we do in the organization that we love and support, and that we're following through on what we promised we said we would do.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:58]:

We made it to the last question, and this one's a fun one. What is the worst question you've ever been asked in an interview?

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Steve White [00:02:06]:

I'd say, why do you want to work for insert company? I hate that question. Why did you contact me? The candidate could respond and say, right. It is such an arrogant approach to interviewing and recruiting. We often, as companies, forget that the candidate is also interviewing us as much as we are interviewing them. And so we need to take a step back. We forget that the candidate should be the hero of the story.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:39]:

What's up, everyone? I'm Devyn Mikell, host of the higher quality podcast joined today by Steve White, head of talent acquisition at BECU. You just heard him on a Qualifi pre interview with me, but now he's here, joining me now live for a higher quality conversation. Steve, thanks so much for joining me today.

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Steve White [00:02:59]:

Thank you. Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited. I admire you, the work you're doing in the podcast. I appreciate you having me.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:05]:

Absolutely super excited. And like I said, you are the head of talent acquisition at BECU, and that's about as far as I want to get with your introduction. I like to let you do the introducing. So tell me, tell the audience where I missed. What we don't know about you.

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Steve White [00:03:22]:

I think if you ask most people, potentially my kids, my wife, they'd say that's pretty much it. So nothing else beyond that? No layer of depth beyond that. So. Kidding. Well, maybe not. Maybe not with my kids, maybe. But honestly, I've been in talent acquisition in the space for almost two decades now. Worked for multiple organizations.

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Steve White [00:03:47]:

I've worked in staffing right when I first came into the talent acquisition space. So many people who are listening right now probably have the same journey right into where they are in their careers, starting in staffing. I work for Apple one, which I truly love and admire. If you started off listening into the recording, I do reference Bernie Howroid, who was the founder and CEO of Apple one. Now it's run by his son and his wife, Janice Howroyd. And so phenomenal organization. Been fortunate enough to work for some great companies right throughout my career. So getting a great start there, being able to pivot working for organizations like pier one imports, Lockheed Martin.

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Steve White [00:04:26]:

Short time at Microsoft, although very impactful, even in a short period of time that I was there and then bringing that journey all the way to leading talent acquisition at BECU. So much of it, right, is being around great people. My time at Lockheed really shaped a lot of how I think and how I lead, how I think operationally and about work overall. And so kudos to the people there. Folks know I won't name long as I won't be able to. Really long enough people. Yeah, it won't be long enough, truly. But just that time there, right, the excellence, right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:05:05]:

I know we had talked a little.

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Steve White [00:05:06]:

Bit about this before, Devyn. I mean, the excellence that that organization demonstrates on a regular basis, it's phenomenal, right? Unmatched, right. By so many orgs, right. That I've ever seen or been around. Grateful to be where I am now and truly able to contribute to what we're doing. And one of the things I love, I'm a purpose driven individual. I like to consider myself a responsibility centered person. And that's what landed me right in the organizations that I've been a part of.

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Steve White [00:05:40]:

So many of the different things that I learned behind the scenes throughout the interview process or researching an organization led me to the companies that I ended up working for. And BECU. Right. Being here now is a purpose driven organization. Right. We've got this people helping people philosophy. Our new CEO has been here a year. As of this week, Bev Anderson is really, truly focused on taking our members on a journey to financial mean.

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Steve White [00:06:06]:

You know, being able to say, not just that we work for a credit union that's large, it's one of the largest credit unions in the country. We do all these things, but really saying what sort of impact do we want to make? It's not about revenue and profits and all these other things, but truly making a difference in people's know, that's phenomenal to me. And I love being able to contribute to an organization. I think big about talent acquisition, I think. And our vision at BECU, in talent acquisition or talent acquisition? Vision at BECU is we catalyze the growth and transformation at so. And then we go on to say, helping us to become the leading financial services cooperative in the nation is so big. And so if we don't do our jobs well on the front end, the company can't do what it desires to do. We can't take people on a journey to financial freedom.

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Steve White [00:07:02]:

Because if we truly believe that employees or people are the greatest asset in any organization, then talent acquisition is the most vital part of the. It is so critical for us to do our jobs well, and if we don't do our jobs well, the organization won't do as well as it set outs to do. Right. Or it's setting out to.

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Devyn Mikell [00:07:23]:

That was it. That's the podcast. No, I'm kidding. Thanks for joining me.

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Steve White [00:07:29]:

I appreciate you having me. I was so glad to be here.

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Devyn Mikell [00:07:34]:

There's so much gold in there, right. So, showing up excellently. I think you said it. And then you kind of just laid out, okay, what does that look like? Okay, what are we doing at BECU to show up excellently. You just said it. Can you say your talent mission again?

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Steve White [00:07:52]:

We catalyze the growth and transformation at BECU, helping us to become the leading financial services cooperative in the nation. And we go on to say, right further, Devyn, that we do this not just by filling a position or putting a butt in a seat. We do this through excellent partnerships and connections, candidate experiences. Right. And then taking a candidate and turning them into a great candidate, into a phenomenal employee who makes a significant and positive difference at BECU and in the lives of our members. Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:08:31]:

Gotcha. So where, if you're willing to share, where did you come into BECU and say, hey, we're not showing up excellently in this way right now. Our goal is this. Right? Where are we?

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Steve White [00:08:55]:

When I first interviewed for the role, there was our SVP and HR name is Paula Ramirez. And I'm comfortable saying this because Paula and I have had many of these conversations. And Paula was like, hey, you got it. You got to come in here and you need to make some changes.

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Devyn Mikell [00:09:09]:

Right.

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Steve White [00:09:09]:

And I was know I appreciate the feedback and I wouldn't have taken the job if not for her. True story.

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Devyn Mikell [00:09:16]:

Got it.

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Steve White [00:09:17]:

If she didn't tell me that we had challenges on the team, I wouldn't have taken the job. It wouldn't have been appealing enough to me. And so I came in, I was able to do evaluations, and I went around. I did talk to the team, connected with everybody on the team, did a listening tour with leaders in the business, with executives in the business, and I started to learn more about where our gaps were. And so a lot of it was know, we hear this all the time in ta. Oh, your team is, we can't, we can never hire fast enough. John Blastelika says that speed is the love language of hiring managers. I agree with that.

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Steve White [00:09:51]:

I think that that's so true. Hiring managers want things to go fast all the time. And so we see that happen, right. So often that hiring managers want things to go quickly. But there was some truth in us being really slow. Right. So we needed to go in and address that and find ways that we could actually figure out how to be faster. And it's not time to fill, but it's some lead measures.

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Steve White [00:10:13]:

Right. Some leading steps that we needed to take in order to demonstrate agility and speed and urgency. Right. Which I think is most important. That often gets overlooked. Like, we want to talk about the measure of speed, which time to fill, right. And some of these other things. But what about the urgency that it takes up front to deliver all of those things that are lag measures on the back end? And we weren't really demonstrating the right level of urgency.

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Steve White [00:10:37]:

The other pieces of feedback were ownership. Right. That we abdicated our responsibility. That was something that we needed to work on. Right. So there's some culture aspects that we needed to really solve for and change. And then there was a quality impact. And so we decided to really lean into some things that were really critical to us.

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Steve White [00:10:58]:

And think about how do we impact or really optimize our culture and then build our capabilities. We knew we needed to increase our skills within the team in order to grow the business and then really start focusing on the timeliness of our work, the quality of our work, and the efficiency of our work. And so those are things we just talked about all the time on a regular basis and really focusing on that. And thank goodness for great leaders, right, that I'm able to work closely with that, are on this talent acquisition team that do a phenomenal job of leading recruiters, engaging with the business and really helping us to shift that perspective, which we've done a tremendous job of. We still have a long way to go, but we've seen a tremendous amount of.

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Devyn Mikell [00:11:44]:

You know, and I think about some of the things you just said is, I was just talking with Darian, our CEO. I say our CEO. He's also my brother. Yesterday I was like, yeah, I mean, everyone looks at speed and quality on this kind of binary. It's like either this or that. And sometimes I feel like speed can equal quality.

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Steve White [00:12:05]:

Right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:12:05]:

So when you talk about urgency, your best talent is getting sought after from other places. So if you're slow, you're probably not getting your best talent.

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Steve White [00:12:13]:

Right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:12:13]:

So have you seen that kind of play out? Like, hey, when we're more urgent with the best candidates, we win better talent and we have better quality.

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Steve White [00:12:23]:

Oh, 100%. Especially in places like in the tech space. Right. Man, so many people can resonate. This will probably resonate with so many people. You've got candidates who are really strong in a role or skill category that's highly sought after. And if we have hiring managers that are moving slowly or recruiters that are moving slowly and not as responsive to the candidate or the needs of the business as we need to be, we'll start to lose candidates. And we've seen that happen, right? We've been in situations where hiring managers need to see that one more candidate and then the candidate that they really liked, but they didn't want to make a decision on quickly enough because their ego has got in the way of them actually making a decision too quickly because they needed to have one more interview or to be able to control the process a little bit longer.

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Steve White [00:13:13]:

Or even a recruiter who doesn't really focus on the time to deliver the first qualified candidate to the hiring manager, that early lead measure, then by the time they get around to finding an individual that has already applied, or maybe that the sourcer is sourced and handed to them, that they forgot to actually look at or engage with that individual has found their other opportunity. And we've seen that happen a couple of times throughout the year, even in the previous year within our organization. And those are the things we're really working to solve for. Right. And eliminate. So we don't have those issues, but software devs, cybersecurity engineers, those types of folks, they don't wait. Right. They're moving.

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Steve White [00:13:59]:

They're highly sought after. And there's organizations. We have to be quicker. To your point, from a quality perspective, we have to be quicker because we're organization, especially outside of the Pacific Northwest, that's not really well known. And even inside the Pacific Northwest, there are Microsoft, there's the Amazon, there's the other right that sit there that we need to compete against. And we need to be very quick to market or to deliver a value proposition to those candidates in order to secure them before they can get snatched by those other companies. What value are we delivering to those individuals? Speed has to be right in order to fully deliver on the quality.

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Devyn Mikell [00:14:37]:

Yeah. Darren has a theory that it's really about being first to offer, and it might be theory, it might be a little bit of data behind it, but the reality of there's some high percentage of candidates, they take their first.

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Steve White [00:14:53]:

Yeah. Yeah.

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Devyn Mikell [00:14:54]:

Bec might not be as household name as a Microsoft, but they offered me first and it was within what I was looking for. So I took.

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Steve White [00:15:06]:

If we could do that and couple that with really great engagement and couple that with a great micro value proposition to that candidate. Right. All those things we can deliver. Right. There are sometimes candidates or recruiters who are probably listening are thinking, I was first to offer in some of these situations, and a company came and gave them another offer, and then I didn't win or land the candidate, but how engaged was recruiter? How engaged was the hiring leader? What value proposition did we offer that candidate? So if you can couple those two things, right, the really strong engagement value proposition being the one and then being first to offer, you're most likely going to win that campaign for.

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Devyn Mikell [00:15:49]:

Yeah. No, yeah. That makes a ton of sense. And you said it kind of alluded to it. BECU is not big, not small. I feel like you guys are kind of like in the middle, I guess, for the audience. So they just have a crystal clear vision. What's the makeup of your talent.org, your talent acquisition.org specifically, to be clear.

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Steve White [00:16:16]:

That clarity is so important. I hear you. I appreciate that, too.

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Devyn Mikell [00:16:19]:

I really do.

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Steve White [00:16:20]:

So makeup of the talent acquisition.org we've got a talent acquisition leader. I'm going to call out names. I love these people and I'm so grateful to have them on the team. So it's Kent Hopfinger, who has been with BECU for about seven years, comes with a lot of recruiting experience in the financial industry or financial services industry space and has a tremendous amount of value to their organization leads. Our high volume recruitment. So like the things that the customer facing roles, right. The mortgage lending people, our neighborhood financial centers, the people frontliners, the frontline folks. Right.

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Steve White [00:17:04]:

The heartbeat of our organization. And so the member consultants, the people you're calling when you have a challenge, an issue or need in the contact center. And Kent's really led this organization super well. And so we've got high volume recruiters and a coordinator right in that space that Kent leads. And I love it. And I want to parenthetically say this because I think it's so important that Kent has a strong focus on the business performance, right. So we're focusing on things like how well is a contact center doing with their average speed of answer and the net promoter score and those types of things, right. Because we know that, again, we catalyze the growth and transformation at BBCU.

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Steve White [00:17:45]:

So if we're bringing the right talent in, we're going to meet the needs of the business.

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Devyn Mikell [00:17:48]:

So y'all are looking at that metric.

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Steve White [00:17:50]:

As well like you're part of.

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Devyn Mikell [00:17:52]:

Gotcha.

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Steve White [00:17:52]:

Got it. Absolutely. And the report that Kent gave me on Wednesday, it had a graph in there that included where we were year to date and it also had a celebratory moment that know we're killing it. Right. So super excited about that. And I'm glad that we're know, focusing there because it shows that we're not just trying to put buttons and seats, we're trying to win the day for the organization. We are focused on leading people on a journey to financial freedom. Right.

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Steve White [00:18:21]:

So through talent acquisition, that's so critical. So that's the first piece. Second piece is the corporate and technology which is led by Kim Chanthorne. And Kim has done a phenomenal job leading corporate technology. Also not an easy space, but all the things like software devs, all those sorts of things. And then anything internally or things that we're filling within the corporate space, you can imagine what that could be. Credit risk officers, all sorts of things that land in the financial services arena. And Kim has done a phenomenal job partnering with the tech group, with the HRBPs in that area with compensation to ensure that we're being competitive and really securing the talent in that area, and we're doing a phenomenal job there.

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Steve White [00:19:09]:

Really proud of the work that has been done in the transformation that she's done since joining BCU, only in February of this year. So great work. And then we've got Marvin Smith, who many of our listeners would probably know. Your listeners would know. Marvin's been in the talent acquisition space for many years, has led and been a part of talent acquisition and sourcing. He's our sourcing senior manager in sourcing and external talent engagement is what we call it. And so Marvin has worked at Lockheed, Microsoft, the Gates foundation, and done phenomenal work in each of those organizations. And we're lucky to have him here as well.

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Steve White [00:19:51]:

And so he's done a great job in building our sourcing organization and external talent engagement organization within our group. And so we really started to shift how we engage with hiring managers as a result of the partnership between Marvin, Kent and Kim and the teams that they have and the individuals on their teams, because they are able to connect with hiring managers upfront on all of our requisitions. We're small enough to be able to do that. Some people who are in some of these large organizations are like, that's impossible. We're small enough to be able to do that where we have a sourcer on what we call a recruitment strategy consultation call with a hiring manager we don't like. I despise the term intake. Yeah, intake drives me crazy. I will get on the soapbox for a quick second, if you'll allow me to.

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Steve White [00:20:39]:

So it reminds me of my wife and I, and this always reminded me of going to the hospital. Right. We've got three offspring, is what I like to say. A son and two daughters. Our son is 23, so I can't call him a kid anymore. He's all past that. Right. So I can't say we have three kids.

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Steve White [00:20:54]:

That would just be unfair to him. Heck, unfair to my daughters, too. They're 17 and 15. So we have three offspring. Right. And so our youngest has actually been going through some health challenges. She had some when she was younger, so she's going through some right now. And so we just had this morning an intake over the phone with the hospital registrar.

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Steve White [00:21:14]:

She has to go for a procedure here soon. And so one of the things that, that intake was so stale, so sterile, so dry, that all they wanted to know was, what are the issues? What's going on? So they can pass that information on to the right people as recruiters. We're not taking and gathering information to pass it on to the right people. We are the doctors and the nurses. We're diagnosing and prescribing. We're not the people who are just taking information and passing. No knock on those. I'm not trying to knock that role.

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Steve White [00:21:48]:

I'm just saying that that's not the role we play as talent acquisition professionals. We are the diagnosing and prescribing individuals in that scenario and not the people who are actually calling to see if you could pay for your visit or to provide the information so it can be passed on to the doctor. So I digress. I apologize. So they're involved in every recruitment strategy, consultation, the external talent engagement team. So then we can gather information, build out a certain level of knowledge bank and a repository of information for these roles. Plus, we share great market insights about the role. Share insights about the addressable market.

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Steve White [00:22:30]:

Right. How many individuals are available with this skill set within the states that we hire in because we hire in seven states. Got you higher across the entire United States. And this is even for corporate side?

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:46]:

Even on corporate side.

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Steve White [00:22:48]:

Okay, got it. So it's smaller for a high volume because of where our neighborhood financial centers or our branches are located. And so even for corporate, we only hire in those seven states because smaller organization, not a huge employee relations or HRBP team. So try to keep that employment law down so we don't have to know every law in every state with the fewer people that we have.

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Devyn Mikell [00:23:14]:

Gotcha.

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Steve White [00:23:14]:

So, yeah, we're showing up in a way that's really demonstrating value to the organization, and we're seeing hiring managers just flip out over it. So that structure has really helped us. One of the things I saw and identified when I first got here was that we were doing quite a bit of executive search, but we were doing it through external executive search firms. And so that is obviously a cost to the business that is unnecessary. And so we hired an executive recruiter. Her name is Sydney Fagan, and Sydney's an absolute rock star. And so she has come in and just really made a phenomenal difference in how we recruit within our. She's building strong relationships with our executive management team.

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Steve White [00:23:56]:

Right, sea level. And then she's executing on recruitment along with the source that she's partnered with is just. Bethany Boots is an executive sourcer who we were able to pull into our organization recently in a contingent or contractor capacity. And so she's done a phenomenal job. Right. So we've added that executive recruiter and a recruitment function which has helped our, it's just helping our tremendously. It's saving us a tremendous amount of money and stewarding the members money that our members. Right.

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Steve White [00:24:28]:

As a financial services cooperative, that's important. The stewardship of the members money is so critical. So we're able to do that. We have a talent acquisition operations function of our too. So really building out and continue to refine what our structure is. But that's really, we have a program manager, I'm sorry. Who handles intern and employee referrals. So those things know the different parts of the organization.

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Steve White [00:24:57]:

Under Marvin, we've got talent intelligence and external talent engagement. So there's the aspects of how do we evaluate what the market's doing and compare that to what we're doing.

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Devyn Mikell [00:25:08]:

Yeah, still a lot of people. I mean, that's a lot of, it's not small. Definitely not small.

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Steve White [00:25:15]:

How many people, total people in their organization? We've got about 27. So it's not by any stretch, I'm going to say this out loud. Hopefully it's not to my detriment. We're about 1% of the organization.

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Devyn Mikell [00:25:33]:

Got you. Right.

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Steve White [00:25:34]:

So when you look at that, we're about 1% of the organization. The organization is roughly about a little over 3000 people. So we're right there. Right on the 3000 people. So we're right there. About 1%.

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Devyn Mikell [00:25:43]:

Do you see two questions? One is, do you see this? Are you guys going to stay right around 3000? Or is it like you've joined and they have this plan to double in the next three years and it's like, oh, what are we going to do? That's a whole plan. We got to create type deal? Or is it like, kind of, here's where we want to be?

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Steve White [00:26:00]:

You know what I haven't heard like a numerical value on where we want to be necessarily. There are some ambitious goals. Right. To continue to grow the organization in order to support that mission of taking members on a journey to financial freedom, giving people more access. Right. Access to financial services and so being able to serve all the different markets from the underserved to the affluent, and then also small and mid sized businesses as well. So there's still more growth to be done within our organization. That numerical, the number of employees we haven't really set, but we want to make sure we're serving our member base really well.

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Steve White [00:26:46]:

And so if that takes a larger number of internal employees to do that, I could see our CEO and our board really being supportive of that in order to get us there but I haven't heard of numerical value quite yet.

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Devyn Mikell [00:26:58]:

Well, the thing I point out, I think is really cool is how much joy you can hear in your job. It sounds like you truly enjoy what you're doing, which is really dope. And honestly, candidly, probably not very normal, unfortunately, especially in talent, because there's so many things in the way.

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Steve White [00:27:18]:

Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:27:18]:

So like you said earlier, if we're going to steward our members on their financial journey, that starts with our talent, right?

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Steve White [00:27:26]:

Yes.

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Devyn Mikell [00:27:26]:

And seeing it as when I first started Qualifi, there was someone that actually mentioned that it's like the actual most important role in the company becomes talent acquisition, if you think about it the right way, because it's a gatekeeper, essentially, like, who is bringing people to this organization to run the machine. And so you see it that way. Have you run into issues where the business, other parts of the business don't see it that way? How do you get a seat at that table?

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Steve White [00:27:57]:

Man, that's a great question. And, yes, I have. And my first thought around that is, what do I need to do differently to get them to believe differently?

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Devyn Mikell [00:28:12]:

Right.

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Steve White [00:28:12]:

What do we need to do differently to get them to think about this differently? And I believe that our CEO does think differently. She's really expressed an appreciation for our internal talent acquisition organization, which I'm super grateful for. We've got a new chief people officer that is demonstrating the advocacy for talent acquisition, which I think is important. So I think we're well positioned to have that seat at the right tables and to be a strategic partner to the business with support of the highest levels of the organization. Now, I think we've positioned ourselves poorly historically to be left out of the right conversations. And so when we look at what we do as a transaction. Get a job, fill a job, get a job. Fill a job, get a job, fill a job.

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Steve White [00:29:07]:

This is why when I first took over the organization, we were called recruiting operations. I hated that. I'm not doing that right. What does that even mean? And then people in the organization are like, oh, recruiting operations. And so it just looks like we're just doing, hey, throw it over to the fence to them, let them work on it, and then we'll figure it all out. We'll strategize around it and then give it to them to fill it, and then we'll move on. When we talk about strategy again, we'll let them know once we've come up with a plan and we're moving away from that. But the mindset still, it takes time to shift it.

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Steve White [00:29:46]:

It has not completely shifted yet, but with every conversation, I am working to shift that thought process and that narrative, right. And so I had a conversation with some leaders at our sea level last week while in Seattle, and one of the things I was telling them is that when we talk, right. I want to talk about what big rocks you're focusing on. What are the next two to three years looking like for you? What products? What sort of things are you working on within your business that are going to be critical? Not so we can focus on talent. I was like, our conversation around talent will either be secondary or potentially tertiary. And one person's eyes got really big, like, and they're like, aren't you the leader in talent acquisition? I'm like, yes, but if we focus myopically on getting a job or what jobs are you hiring for, then we're going to have a transactional relationship. I am no different than the barista you got coffee from this morning. I am no different.

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Steve White [00:30:50]:

Like, you're getting your pumpkin spice latte from me. You're walking away. You don't care. You're not thinking about me again. There's no strategy in you getting your pumpkin spice latte. You feel like, I can make it or the Starbucks down the road can make it, right. There's no difference in how we interact. I want it to be very different.

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Steve White [00:31:08]:

I want to understand your business, and then we want to be able to contribute to your business, not just fill seats.

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Devyn Mikell [00:31:16]:

Right.

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Steve White [00:31:16]:

And so I think we've contributed historically, we've contributed to the negative perception or thought process around talent acquisition in agreeing to just get a job and fill a job order and not asking for that seat at the table. Yeah. The order taking, the mentality. Right. And we need to ask for that seat at the table. And in some situations, be willing to earn it. Right. And then be willing to sit down and continue to add value in that seat.

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Steve White [00:31:49]:

Right. And not just sit there and order. Take or take your order or not have a point of view. Right. And share that point of view that is aligned with the priorities of the organization. For ta leaders out there, how many of us know the priorities of our, right? That's a very important thing. And are we aligning our talent acquisition strategy to those priorities? And if not, we should be thinking differently. And when I talk to our CEO, one of the things that I'm like, I'm going to run down the four priority.

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Steve White [00:32:19]:

Here's what we're doing. Here's how that's aligned to the priorities that you and your leadership team has set for the organization because that's critical and important to how we do our work. And if we're not doing that, we won't get the seat. Right? We won't get the seat. I think Tim Sackett had written an article about a year ago about why hiring managers don't want to talk to us as, and, you know, sometimes we get offended by it. But if the hiring manager doesn't feel like we're adding value to the conversation, then, yeah, that conversation ends quickly or gets rescheduled or canceled quite often. So when those types of things happen, we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing differently or how can we show up differently? And that's where I give. When I mentioned Sydney Fagan, that's an executive recruiter on our team.

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Steve White [00:33:07]:

She's phenomenal at that. Right. She can engage anybody in an organization at any given time for a long period of time. Even if you say, like, this person is not targeted, Sydney is going to lean into that conversation, draw the most out of them. They'll be talking for 30 minutes next time you check. So those are huge. Value adds. Right.

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Steve White [00:33:27]:

To the organization. And people start to look at it and feel like, oh, jeez, this talent acquisition team is different. I'm connected to them because we're asking the right questions. Right. We're drawing information out.

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Devyn Mikell [00:33:39]:

Yeah, like you're actually partnering. It's a title until you make it really happen. And then it's like, oh, I see now what that means.

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Steve White [00:33:49]:

Come on. And that's the thing. Oftentimes we do want to change names for the flavor of the week, for cuteness of the way it sounds. But one of my favorite leaders says it's hanging on the wall but not happening down the hall. Right. And so, like you said, if we're not doing it, it makes no difference.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:09]:

Right? Exactly.

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Steve White [00:34:10]:

People don't believe.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:11]:

Exactly. Well, awesome. I'm going to transition us to the question of the week so you have a feel of why we do this. This is an opportunity for our audience to get involved. They get to take a little interview like you did, but except it has one question, answering the same question that you do. And if question wins, they get a price. So, audience members, if you are hearing this, the link is in the show notes down below or to the side or wherever direction you get a description, it's there, but you click it and you put your information in and you answer the question. And I get it.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:45]:

So, Steve, you get first pass since you're so. All right, here we go. In a competitive job market, how do you strike a balance between speed and quality when it comes to hiring decisions?

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Steve White [00:34:58]:

The biggest thing is, and I can't take credit for this, I've learned some of this from John Blastalika's master. Right? He talks about this a lot as it relates to speed, quality, diversity, and our team went through a talent advisor training with recruiting toolbox this year. I felt it was super valuable. As I mentioned, we were talking about optimizing our culture, building our capabilities. As part of building our capabilities, we wanted to talk. We've gone through multiple things over the past year to upskill our team, and that was one of them. And so one of the things I've encouraged our TA leaders and recruiters to go into meetings and ask is, what are you optimizing for? What are you optimizing for? Because it is so important for us to know, like, we could be trying to fill a role fast, but if the hiring leader isn't just trying to fill it quickly and they're just like, man, I'm so focused on finding the right person, I'll take as long as I need to find the right person. And we're like, all right, we're going to find the right person next week.

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Steve White [00:36:04]:

And the hiring manager isn't optimizing the recruiting process for speed, then you're going to be spinning your wheel. You have to know that up front. The alignment piece is so critical. And then the other piece is if the hiring manager is optimizing for speed and we've just got off of that engagement with the hiring manager who's optimized for quality, and we've set our sights on optimizing for quality and not for speed, then we're like not engaging enough with that hiring manager, our follow ups aren't right, our rhythm and cadence of communication with that leader is off, then we're going into that engagement wrong and misaligned right with what their needs are. And so each time we're going into a conversation with the hiring, for me, the most important part of the process is the time we speak with the hiring leader. Got you. There's no more important aspect of that conversation or of the recruiting process. What we call the recruitment strategy consultation, that is the most important piece of the process because that's hire.

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Steve White [00:37:05]:

We get alignment with the hiring manager. We can learn from them and we can help share information with them. And so we're setting expectations in that conversation too.

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Devyn Mikell [00:37:15]:

Right?

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Steve White [00:37:16]:

But if we're not getting the right information from them, understanding what they're optimizing for speed, quality, diversity, whatever it may be. Then we're setting ourselves up and the candidates up. So people want to talk about candidate experience a lot. And I'm like, yes, candidate experience is critical. I'm big on candidate experience, huge on it. And anyone joining the conversation after listening to the first part of this would know that I'm big on candidate experience. I think the candidate should be the hero of the story. I believe that.

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Steve White [00:37:45]:

However, if we're not engaging well with the hiring manager, we're not going to create a candidate experience. My thoughts a great employee experience starts with a great candidate experience. But a great candidate experience starts with the right hiring manager engagement. And so if we're not engaged well with the hiring manager, all the other things can easily fall apart in luck. Sometimes it can look okay, but consistently it will not go well. And so understanding what the hiring manager needs up front is the most important part of the process. And then we can determine, okay, what does that time frame look like? What does speed look like to this fear? What is our follow up going to be? And then showing up with the right level of data, right understanding historically, how long has it taken to fill some of these roles? So if the hiring manager does want to optimize for speed, and we could say, well, the last five times we filled this position, it has taken us an average of 85 days. So here's what we need to do differently.

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Steve White [00:38:52]:

What are you willing to commit to? What trade offs are you willing to make in order to get us from 85 days to try and fill that's fire.

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Devyn Mikell [00:39:03]:

Whole thing was fire. And I appreciate, honestly, I appreciate how you think, how you deliver. I've learned a ton from this podcast and I think all of our audience will and so would love to give them opportunity to follow you and stay in touch if they feel inclined to. So how would you like for the world to know how to reach you in future states?

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Steve White [00:39:27]:

I'd mentioned earlier to everybody that I have a 23 year old son. He's a lot smarter than I am, but he's 23. So I am getting upward in age. So I'm not on any other aspects of social other than LinkedIn. So if you follow me or connect with me, not follow me, but connect with me on LinkedIn. Steve White there's probably a couple of those on LinkedIn, but Steve White I do look similar to what I do now, probably a few pounds lighter than my picture. But if you connect with me on LinkedIn, shoot me a message. Otherwise you can send me a message directly.

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Steve White [00:40:09]:

stevewhite@becu.org please connect. I'd love to connect personally with anyone who has any thoughts, questions, perspectives, differing opinions. Anyone on my team knows that I believe in healthy tension, so I'm all about understanding anyone's differing perspective as well. So look forward to connecting with anyone who's willing.

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Devyn Mikell [00:40:34]:

Awesome. Well, you're here to, folks. Steve's open. He's been open to me. He'll take you up on that, I promise. So if you like this episode as much as me, and I'm sure you did, make sure to like and subscribe because there's going to be many more that come so you never miss a beat. But until then, it's been great to have you, Steve. Thanks again for hopping on and we'll be back with more and maybe a part two in the future as well.

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Devyn Mikell [00:40:58]:

Who knows? So appreciate you and have a good rest of your day.

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Steve White [00:41:01]:

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me, man. I want to say this real quick. I appreciate you. I value you and admire the work that you're doing. Not just with the podcast, the podcast is fired, but with the work that you're doing with qualifi. Man, you are outstanding and the tool that you have is phenomenal. And I truly appreciate the work that you're doing in the ta space.

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Devyn Mikell [00:41:21]:

Absolutely. I appreciate it as well.

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Steve White [00:41:23]:

Awesome.

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Devyn Mikell [00:41:24]:

Well, I'll see you soon.

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Steve White [00:41:25]:

Thank you, sir.

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