EPISODE 188

 

[INTRODUCTION]

 

[0:00:06.1] RS: Welcome to Talk Talent to Me. A podcast featuring the most elite talent leaders on the frontline’s modern recruitment.

 

[0:00:12.8] FEMALE: We actually want to understand the themes of someone’s life, we want to understand how they make decisions. Where are they willing to take risks and what it looks like when they fail?

 

[0:00:22.7] RS: No holds bard, completely off the cuff interviews with directors of recruitment, VPs of global talent, CHROs, and everyone in between.

 

[0:00:31.1] FEMALE: Once I went through the classes and the trainings got the certifications through diversity and inclusion, I still felt like something was missing.

 

[0:00:39.7] MALE: Talent acquisition, it’s a fantastic career, you are trusted by the organization, you get to work with the C-Suite and the security at the front desk and everybody in between and everybody knows you.

 

[0:00:53.0] RS: I’m your host Rob Stevenson and you’re about to hear the best in the biz Talk Talent to Me.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

[0:01:00.3] RS: This kind of 10 years, 16 years and 30 plus years is somewhat unheard of. You mentioned, Shawn, you get some weird looks or reactions when people hear that but it would maybe be cause for pity if you have had the same middling job the whole time, right? Your careers have sort of progressed, you’ve grown to be able to attack new things. That seems to be the reason why you’ve been able to stick around so long, right?

 

[0:01:24.0] ST: Yeah, that’s exactly it. I tend to be in a job two years. Like, my model for jobs are; year one is learn and evaluate, year two is grow and build, optimize, and by the third year in a job, it really should be firing in all cylinders, which even three years is a long cycle time and I haven’t stayed in many jobs three years during my time at Liberty Mutual but yeah, exactly like what you said. I mean, I’m at the point, Rob, where I’ve maybe looked around and said, “I’ve seen this before in this job, what am I going to do next, how am I going to stay challenged, how am I going to grow?” I’ve been able to look internal to the company to see what’s available or as Loralie mentioned, maybe there’s a change in the business or an organizational change that provided a new opportunity.

 

We certainly have roles that stay the same, year over year and that’s really the core drivers in our company but just because of business is so dynamic and we have been in such a growth cycle, the last few years, it’s really created a lot of opportunity that I really haven’t felt the need to look elsewhere. Because as I mentioned, I like the long-term relationships, I really like the culture, as Loralie said and like you said early on, I like the people I work with. You add that altogether, it’s been a really good experience.

 

[0:02:40.0] LT: I think, one of the benefits of a large company too is even if the title or the job is defined the same, what might be going on, I can think of times in my career of what was going on in a claims organization and then maybe I moved and I was supporting the underwriting organization, which is the other side of the equation, they could be very different stages. One of them might have been reorganizing and sort of almost in like a startup or a refresh mode and the other one might have been dealing with needing to reskill people or do a bunch of hiring. Even though “the job” is the same, the work and the problems you’re solving are different and that variety makes that interesting, even if your title stayed the same for a period of time.

 

[0:03:22.6] RS: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m curious just because I don’t often get to speak with individuals who are part of such huge talent vehicles. I’m curious as how this sort of team is broken out, presumably there’s a few thousand people within the talent organization across Liberty Mutual. Could one of you maybe paint a picture of what this huge operation looks like?

 

[0:03:44.2] ST: Yeah, first and foremost, you know, this is a talent organization, we’re focused on our employee base, we think of our employees as our customers. We’re structured to mirror our business operation first and foremost whereas, I mentioned, we have our personalized business, we have business consumer business, we’ve commercialized. Loralie has the talent organization for our IT group.

 

In each of our business lines, we have our vetted talent professionals, the talent advisor, HR manager type of model that are really embedded in the business, helping drive strategy, understanding the needs of the organization in a very intimate way. We also then have our practice areas, other companies might call it “COEs” but where we’ve concentrated together like functions. In my case, recruiting, we have a centralized recruiting team where we don’t report line up to our IT Organizations, and Loralie and I are partners here, but we support the same business that Loralie has embedded in from a talent standpoint.

 

We just concentrated those resources into one team to build scale, build some efficiency, in the case of recruitment, make sure we’re showing up in the labor marketplace in a really consolidated way, being able to tell a consistent story. That model exists across many talent functions, whether it’s employee relations, compensations, we have a pretty robust analytics team, you name it.

 

I think there’s a balance between being really embedded close to the business, driving the strategy while then being backed up by what we call “practice areas” that are driving some functional expertise, whether it’s compensation recruitment. Does that resonate Loralie? There’s a couple of different ways to describe what we do.

 

[0:05:37.6] LT: Yeah, I think that was a great description. I know, sort of thinking back to many years ago when our model was different as a true generalist, I was doing recruiting and employee relations and that’s interesting work and there’s a lot of different things that you do there and that’s a different kind of variety. 

 

What I like about our model now is that, for me and with the problems that we’re solving and challenges that we’re working with on with attack organization, it’s kind of the best of both worlds where I don’t have to have that continual context shifting to help solve the problems and you can bring in additional support and resources with people who have deeper expertise and analytics or have a real passion for talent acquisition or thinking about that during the day. You arrive at better solutions I think when you’re able to have the scale and you’re able to have that kind of model.

 

[0:06:25.7] RS: I like how you mentioned, Shawn, that the product is people in a way, you have a service that you deliver to the rest of the company. I think that’s somewhat common at a certain size to envision or to approach the talent organization as if it’s a business within a business. Is that true for every department or do you think talent is uniquely positioned in its service and offerings to structure itself like a company within a company.

 

[0:06:53.3] ST: It’s a good question, Rob. My mind immediately went to I think it might differ at the industry level, there might be some differences through organizations and that’s just based in my experience. I think when we get to companies that particularly, Fortune 500, larger scale companies where there’s certainly profit abilities as a focus, you know, we have to think about ROI. We have to think about maximizing scale, otherwise, from an expense standpoint, we’re just not going to be efficient. In the case of Liberty Mutual, we’re focused on our customers at the end of the day, we’re a mutual company and I think we’re beholden to them to ensure that we’re operating the most efficient way.

 

I think that’s accurate from kind of your characterization of business within a business. My observation is, whether it’s talent, whether it’s other supporting functions, most large orgs have a finance organization or operations or what have you, that focus, particularly if you’re a for profit company, that business within a business mentality seems to be pretty prevalent. Particularly, if we’re focused on profitability and customer outcomes.

 

[0:08:06.2] RS: The proving of the ROI is an interesting one. Talent is often viewed as a cost center which I think is totally unfair because you’re bringing in the people who build the products that make the company money. How can that be costing the company money? How do you both conceive about just putting it into dollars and cents in terms of we made these hires, this is how our business within a business is profitable, this is how we’ve contributed to the bottom line.

 

[0:08:37.8] LT: It’s a common challenge because I think it is a fair point and having worked with groups that generate revenue for Liberty Mutual, it is a fair point talent isn’t directly generating revenue the way that a sales organization does. I understand the sentiment from that perspective. 

 

In thinking about talent as a business, some of the things we do are hard to quantify. If you think about things like, how engaged our employees are — and there’s a whole host of research that shows how more engaged employees drives better business results —Bringing that to the employees for Liberty Mutual or bringing that metric to employee sentiment for Liberty Mutual certainly is one of the things that we focus on. Being able to draw the same conclusions as the research does, approve out the same conclusions, sometimes is a bit more challenging and our analytics groups certainly help with that. I think, even things that are qualitative— if we tell the right story about our qualitative work, that can also connect and help the business leaders feel value in the work we’re doing. 

 

Just a quick example over the course of about the last year or so, members of Shawn’s team and my team has been partnering to rework some of our selection processes. Some of the outcomes that we were driving for, were better time to fill, having a steadier flow of our engineering candidates, and things like that. Being able to put a dollar sign to, “Have we saved time or not?” isn’t per se what we were trying to measure but we are looking at, “Is it creating a better manager experience and a candidate experience? Are our hiring managers, feeling like their time spent hiring, bringing in the talent that we need, is being used efficiently and is being used in a way that they feel good about the process too?” Because it can be the most efficient process in the world that works great from a talent and talent acquisition standpoint, if hiring managers hate it or there’s things they don’t like about it, it’s not working for them, that’s not the right process then, even if it is the most efficient process, sort of cost effective, efficient process.

 

It’s thinking about those different dynamics with the work we do, I think that this can be difficult to quantify in business terms that resonate with the business leaders and they understand how they’re getting value out of it.

 

[0:11:00.7] RS: Could you give an example of maybe a talent process that you thought was really clean and was just, for whatever reason, hated by a hiring manager? Not to put you on the spot. I’m curious how that would be the case if it looks like it’s a really optimized process and yet you’re dealing with this person who is like “Meh, I don’t like it.” 

 

[0:11:16.8] LT: One example that comes to mind and, Shawn, you may have other ones, there maybe things that make the process easier for the recruiters. It might be a hiring manager fill out a form with all these information on the reacquisition you need. We do that, it’s sort of getting the right mixture, right? If the hiring manager feels like they’re doing all the work just so the recruiter doesn’t have to spend time asking them questions and putting it on the form, you may have the balance off where it’s a little too far into manage your self-service. 

 

Shawn had mentioned earlier, there’s complexity to the problems we’re dealing with. Getting that right balance of what’s the right amount of efficiency for all the steps in that value chain if you will; What’s the right amount of efficiency and what’s the right experience for the recruiter? What’s the right efficiency and experience for the hiring manager? Same thing for the candidates. That we could have assessments that take two hours for a candidate to take that we think are great because it gives us a bunch of information to work with and the candidates just drop out because they don’t spend two hours filling out forms for us. It’s those types of dynamics that listening to, and this is the customer the selection process—

 

[0:12:28.7] ST: Loralie, you brought up candidate assessments, that’s certainly one thing, Rob, that when you asked the question, that was going through my mind. I’ll just chime in with – when we think about ROI for talent processes, at this point, I have two lenses on it. One is the transactional lens which is how do processes and practices show up for individuals? Loralie gave great examples for hiring managers and candidates and how do we make those the most palatable and enjoyable by our customers. 

 

The second lens, which more – in my opinion, speaks more to the ROIs, it’s kind of the global lens, right? In a large company, when we may have – I’m thinking of the number 60,000 transactions every year that makes up our recruitment organization, we want to get each one of those right, but then there’s also the portfolio of transactions and you can kind of manage ROI both at that micro transactional level but then at the larger level, to ensure that the right systems are in place or guard rails and so that you’re staying down a path that maintains desired ROI.

 

It is challenging because your point about talent being an expense center is well taken and my view, obviously a lot of passion for talent acquisition and recruiting, you can’t put a price on making the best hire because one hire could really change and shape an organization. 

 

I’ll just share one quick anecdote, Loralie, I don’t know if I ever shared this with you but, Rob, I had this job and I think I had to present to a bunch of sales managers of hiring in the sales field and some of the challenges and tactics and all of that. I was really proud of myself because someone was talking about the importance of sales in an organization and the line was, “Nothing really happens in an organization until you make the sale,” right? You got to make the sale and then everything comes after it. I really liked it because the thing that came to my mind was, “Nothing happens until you hire the person that makes the sale.” At that time, you know, it’s just this one instance it really led to some good dialog talking about the value of spending the time, putting an investment, getting the right people.

 

[0:14:45.5] RS: Yeah, exactly, which came first, the sales contract or the job offer? Come on. I do so appreciate using qualitative and anecdotal evidence in supplement of course to your data, you have to have all of your numbers and you have to tell a story about performance with numbers, but I found particularly with like CEOs or really, senior leadership, a good amount of them do appreciate a good story and sharing a great candidate experience or sharing a success story of like, we – this sales person, we brought them in and now they’re doing a couple of million of dollars a year, right?

 

It sounds like that’s kind of been part of your approach and sort proselytizing the value of the organization. Do you both like, kind of both sides of that, do you like the qualitative and quantitative approach or am I alone in that?

 

[0:15:33.7] LT: I like both and I’ve had mentors over the – I think I have a natural affinity to it because I like the facts and figures and the – how data leads me to ask different questions. The stories make it real, they make the number real and they make sure that you’re not using the numbers to sort of tell a different story than reality and take them out of context. I’ve had many mentors and managers over the year that have encouraged me to lean into that because of how well the pairing of those two things work.

 

One without the other, the sum of the two is greater than I think the individual components has been my experience.

 

[0:16:12.0] ST: Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, you really need both perspectives to get the complete story. Even, again, going back to recruiting and talent acquisition, we do quite a bit of survey work for candidates and getting back to how’s the process, how’s your experience, how did it make you feel when you were doing it in Liberty Mutual? No surprise to anyone, we get higher scores from our candidates who received job offers than our candidates who don’t receive job offers and often times, that’s a very experiential outcome. 

 

The process and the people involved can be the same but to get two very different outcomes and we can measure that and put the right quantitative measures behind that as much as we want but if we don’t’ take the time to think about the qualitative, which is the impact and the feeling and the experience, we really – we just don’t have the full story for what our candidates are going through. Small example but as Loralie said, I completely agree, you need to have both to get the balanced perspective.

 

[0:17:12.0] RS: Yes, I really do like that approach. You have your data and you have your numbers, heavy numbers forward examples and then your anecdote is like, is in support of it, it’s like, one story that’s like, this – as we seen in the data, this thing over here happened, right? Either one of those individually would be either in the case of data, maybe stale or in the case of the anecdote like fluffy and maybe not representative of the whole. Yeah, I do so love that approach of putting them both together and I think it doesn’t matter what size organization you are. I think talent folks are going to contend with that wherever they are, right?

 

[0:17:49.4] LT: Yeah, I agree. I think one way of thinking about it is data often times is your “what” and the anecdote is the “why”. Having the “what” and the “why” paired together on any topic really makes the connection and gives the whole picture. 

 

[0:18:04.1] RS: You two are at interesting points in your careers where I suspect a lot of you are day-to-day, a lot of your jobs is being in meetings, making decisions. I assume your calendars look very stressful, looks like a three-year-old’s Tetris board and so what I’m curious about is, so as you are both task with being more tactical and sort of determining the direction of the massive Liberty talent ship, what are the considerations you both make in terms of how the company needs to grow? Perceived needs of the business? 

 

How do you sort of think on a macro-level to be able to determine what are the specific things that talent organization needs to do to meet the needs of the business?

 

[0:18:49.6] ST: Yeah, I’m guess I am happy to start. Rob, and that’s a great question. You brought up decision making, which is a large part of my role right now and I’d imagine my peers across the talent organization. The first thing I go to is decision making rarely if ever happens in a vacuum. Because of the complexity and the different drivers and the business issues and everything that takes place at a company, there is a level of consensus building and now informing other’s agendas, grabbing opinions. That to me is equally important and an equal part of my job is actually making decisions, which is really understanding how those who would be impacted by decisions or how about those who are asking for decisions, what is their role and how can they inform the direction that we take different initiatives? 

 

Although decision making is a big role, the actually bigger role I think is taking the time to understand, as you said, what the organization really needs and being very thoughtful about the decisions we do make. I think that’s part of the Liberty Mutual culture. Loralie, I don’t know if you agree with that but finding some level of consensus with multiple stakeholders where we may not get it right all the time and not a 100 percent of those involved might be satisfied with decisions and outcomes but we really want to operate to ensure that we have all opinions present, when we make large organizational decisions that are going to impact many people, if that makes sense. 

 

[0:20:26.5] LT: Yeah, I would agree and, in particular, not only for myself but I think for all of the leaders at Liberty. I think to Shawn’s point that focus on collaborative decision making, which is different than everyone has to agree for a decision to be made because there are times where you just cannot satisfy sort of every single perspective, but making sure that you take the time or have the conversations and are open to listening and asking questions like, “What are we missing or what is the real challenge here?” 

 

To really think through, because many times, what seems obvious at first may not be the best or fullest course of action and one of the questions that my boss will ask— And it is timely right now when you are talking about decision making and thinking about the course of the company because we’re in the heart of our 2022 planning and so there is a lot of these conversations going on right now. My boss has asked the question of our leadership team more than once, “A year from now if you look back, what are we going to regret not doing?” 

 

Sometimes those kinds of questions where yes, you are trying to look around the corner and you are never going to have full certainty but thinking about a question like that often for me helps pierce through all the volume of information that we’re sorting through to feel more comfortable with my team of, “Okay, this is the thing that feels like we’re going to regret it if we don’t get it right and do it well for the business” because of what we’re hearing from our leaders, what we’re seeing in our data and all of those elements. 

 

[0:22:00.7] RS: They call that the pre-mortem, right? How could this fail? How might this die, right?

 

[0:22:05.1] LT: That’s right, yeah. 

 

[0:22:07.0] RS: I’m so interested just in the tactical and the planning piece of it. For my heads of talent out there, my directors of recruitment at maybe small to medium size companies, who are in the weeds, who are staring down the barrel of making 50 hires with a team of three, something like that, it can be easy I think to get bogged down and just role-filling but there is this need to zoom out and be strategic. I’m curious what both of your advice would be to individuals who are contending with this really lofty headcount goal but also can prove their value by zooming out and be strategic, how would you kind of balance that? 

 

[0:22:46.7] ST: I guess how I would answer it, and I really appreciate the question focused on filling jobs because that’s what I spend my days doing right now, but there is a balance between the transactional piece of recruitment, which is working with a hiring manager to fill a singular job and then having that overarching strategic approach. I don’t think one could live without the other, particularly when asking the question of, “What’s the value being driven here?” 

 

How are getting value? Whether at the role of the recruiter that is individually working with the hiring manager to make a hire or a recruiting manager or a leader, I think there has to be a conscious effort to find that balance. Otherwise, particularly now in 2021, recruiting organizations are drowned in open jobs and requisitions and that’s true most years in most cycles were you know, you have a peak volume and the time for the strategy work isn’t there. 

 

I think the tip that I would bring is ensuring that having strategy and a well-thought out strategy, it has to be part of all recruitment organizations, whether that exists on the individual recruiter desk or whether it exists on the leader level for a large organization. Time and intentionality has to be spent in defining that strategy. What is it that the recruitment organizations stands for? Because that bit will help define services to the managers to set clear expectations as to what they can expect when they are working with a recruiter to hire. 

 

Then as importantly, if not more importantly, to think about the approach to the marketplace. Companies and individuals and recruiters cannot do everything but having a clear thought out strategy for what are the areas we’re going to go after, what are the candidate markets and pipelines, what are the relationships we’re going to have and what are the frameworks that define those as we think about going to the external market? Having that in place really helps set course and direction. 

 

Nothing is ever set in stone but having the intentionality to go after strategy once, twice a year or three times, once a quarter, whatever makes sense for anyone’s business, like I said, that can happen at the recruiter desktop level, that can happen at the recruiter leader level, but taking that second to have that proactive forward looking approach really will help define the day-to-day because that will make interactions easier. It makes, “Where am I spending my time? Where am I spending my money? Where am I spending the conversations with higher managements to conversations with candidates?” It can really help set the path forward and define how an individual recruiter operates or a recruiting team. 

 

[0:25:28.8] LT: You know, I agree with Shawn. I think the art of finding balance is definitely part of it, and balance not in pure equality but making sure that in any given week or in a month, that you’re doing some of both. You’re not sort of taken out of the world of talent and use some comparison with our engineering teams when they are doing their planning increments, they’re thinking about, “When are spending time on maintenance or fixing bugs?” or things like that as well as, “When are we spending time or how much time are we spending on building the new features?” and those sorts of things. Typically, what the ask is from the user of those systems is the new features, less so on maintenance. Hopefully, some of the maintenance is even behind the scenes. The teams need to do both and understanding that if you spend too much time in one area and not enough in the other, you have to pay for it at some point in the future and so figuring out that right mixture over the course of, like I said, a week or a month or something like that. 

 

For me, I find sometimes that for myself and even for some folks that I mentor, the word “strategy” sort of takes on this connotation that it’s this, you’re thinking giant enormous world-changing thoughts and there are times probably where that’s the case but strategy can also be, “I thought about what’s the problem we’re trying to solve, how am I going to close that gap and I am looking where I’m walking instead of where my feet are at right now too.” Sometimes bringing a strategy down out of the stratosphere into that sort of next layer beyond the tactical is helpful as well to think differently about, “How do I find time to do that?”

 

[0:27:19.4] RS: Yes, so important but also so simple to how do I find time and if you are looking at your calendar and it’s just phone screen, phone screen, interview, interview, one-on-one, one-on-one, one-on-one and there’s no gaps in your day and you’re time is sort of just decided for you really by other people in your organization putting time on your calendar, then you’ll never do those things, right? You have to kind of protect your time by dedicating this period. If strategy is important to you, you’re never going to – it’s like, “Oh wow, I have two whole hours that I can just do work now” that’s not going to happen probably. 

 

There is this whole I want to say movement but like trend I guess of people getting rid of their to-do lists in favor of just like an incredibly rigid schedule and if it is on my to-do list, I put a block of time on my calendar and I’m going to work on that and you know, there is a privilege in that. It’s like, “Oh wow, it must be pretty, this person clearly has giant gaps in their calendar where they can just drop stuff” but the point is, if you don’t dedicate time to it, you won’t never actually do it, right? It’s as simple really as being protective about your time and figuring out okay, asking those stakeholders in the company some of these questions and being deliberate because it’s so easy to fall into the day-to-day sort of blocking and tackling. 

 

[0:28:34.5] ST: Without a doubt Rob, this was a lesson I learned several years ago where I thought it was a luxury. I would block an hour during the week to do my thinking and get the to-do list together and invariably I would schedule the meetings over that. Even what’s popular thing in the last couple of years is ‘no meeting Fridays’ or ‘no Zoom Fridays’ but it’s interesting, whenever I’ve tried that the time just gets filled up. So, to your point, it’s so important to like I said, the intentionality in blocking that time to be able to think, to be able to reflect, to be able to think about what’s coming next versus living within the moment. 

 

You also mentioned the recruiter job, that is really hard to do when you have to get through X amount of candidates in Y period of time but finding that discipline, you know, I think good recruiters are able to do that. They’re going to swap out the interview time to have some planning and reflection time and that helps with that overall balance between the relentless execution and having some overall strategy but it’s tricky. Maybe that’s another podcast talking about time management because it’s certainly hard. 

 

[0:29:41.0] RS: Yeah, definitely. The no meeting days, I think we’ve moved past those, this is how you – right? We’ve proven that they don’t work. The reason I saw about the no meeting day was this guy is like, “We have no meeting Thursdays at our company.” I have 13 meetings on my calendar today. When I asked why people are like, “Oh it was the only time that everyone had available.” Yeah, I mean at a certain point, this is how work gets done. 

 

You have to be strive to be a company that has less meetings not a company that just like tries to take a day back. Well, Shawn and Loralie, we are creeping up on optimal podcast length here. Before I let you go, I’m going to put it on the both of you to sort of help us slide into home here. For our friends out there on podcast land tuning in, what some advice you would give to them to make sure that their own goals and motivations and growth is being prioritized by the company and what advice would you give them to sort of build the career and be deliberate about their own growth? 

 

[0:30:40.2] LT: Well, I think for me the best advice that I got, which I will pay forward is particularly a talent role, make sure that you always understand how you’re adding value to the business regardless of what level talent role that you’re at. If you’re a recruiter and you don’t feel like you can answer that question, you need to be able to answer that question because you’ll start showing up differently or if you’re a HR manager and you don’t feel like you can truly answer that question and ask for feedback from the people that you’re working with because they’ll help you. You learn a lot. It might pinch a bit when you get feedback but you’ll learn a lot doing that. I think that is the most important advice in terms of thinking about the role you’re in and how it connects to the company. 

 

As you’re thinking about it that way, that will also— I found for me, then helps me understand what I’m looking for next in a role because of the feedback I’ve gotten of, “Oh, I haven’t had the opportunity to work with a particular function or work with a particular phase of an organizational change” then I’m better able to ask for development in that area and then my manager in the company are able to help me find that. 

 

[0:31:53.3] ST: I think, Rob, I will answer that in two ways. One is pretty simple but it hits close to home to me is as a professional, don’t be afraid to push yourself outside of the comfort zone. Pivotal moments for me over my career, especially big ones that we talked about early on, was when I took a job in human resources as a recruiter. We’ve all had those experiences I thought maybe be there for a year or two, we would be onto something else but I honestly found something in talent that I’ve really loved and made a career out of it. I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t, I think at that time, just courageous enough to try something different, so it is kind of old advice or all of that, but I think it still rings true. So kind of simple there. 

 

Then I think the other thing I would say is, particularly when anyone is thinking about career, to me self-awareness is the trick and being able to understand and take the time to really think about where you’re the happiest, where you’re the most successful. To Loralie’s point, where can you add the most value and how do you do it? What are the environments that you feel like you are contributing the most, are making the most difference? It’s as simple as making a quick top 10 list, you know, this is what I want and this is what I don’t want, but it all starts with taking time to really focus on the self-awareness as you plot out different career steps or the capabilities to acquire or the new things to try your initiatives to take on. 

 

Fortunately, right now it’s a pretty robust job market. There is a lot of opportunity for everyone out there and I think rather than they apply for a job and going after the next thing, you know just doing that quick check to understand what makes yourself tick and where you feel most successful is super helpful for jumping into a job search. I know I’ve done that several times through my careers, that’s how I found Liberty Mutual many years ago and that’s how I’ve navigated different roles while out here but it’s always proved out helpful. It doesn’t take a lot of time, it’s just making the time like we talked about. 

 

[0:33:53.7] RS: Got it, well this has been such a delight catching up with you both and learning from you, hearing about your experience, and hearing all of your wisdom. At this point, I would just say thank you both. Thank you, Shawn, thank you, Loralie, for being here and for sharing everything. I really loved meeting with you today. 

 

[0:34:07.0] ST: Thank you very much.

 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

 

[0:34:11.0] RS: Talk Talent to Me is brought to you by Hired. Hired empowers connections by matching the world’s most innovative companies with ambitious tech and sales candidates. With Hired, candidates and the companies have visibility into salary offers, competing opportunities and job details. Hired’s unique offering includes customized assessments and salary bias alerts to help remove unconscious bias when hiring. By combining technology and human touch, our goal is to provide transparency in the recruiting process and empower each of our partners to employ their potential and keep their talent pipeline full. 

 

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