Charting Career Growth with Erica Schroen, Sysco Labs

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:59.8] RS: Here with me today on Talk Talent to Me is the talent acquisition manager over at Sysco Labs, Erica Schroen. Erica, welcome to the podcast, how are you today?

[0:01:07.9] ES: Hi, I’m doing good, how are you?

[0:01:10.2] RS: I’m fantastic, excited to be speaking with you, your adorable puppy is just out of the frame, and you warned me that – is it, Jojo? Is that the dog’s name?

[0:01:19.9] ES: Jojo, yup.

[0:01:20.7] RS: Jojo might make a cameo so I’m officially okay with that, you know? I wish we had an extra microphone and we could be like, “What do you think about that, Jojo?” “Bark-bark.”

[0:01:28.3] ES: Yeah, right. She’s passed out right now so.

[0:01:32.2] RS: So we have a brief window of calm to record this and well, I think we’re at that point, people are always apologizing for like, “My dogs might run in, my kids might run in.” I’m like, “You know what? That’s a welcome cameo for me, I don’t mind seeing that.”

[0:01:45.2] ES: I know, I feel even bad when candidates are like, “Hey, is it okay?” and I’m like, “It’s totally fine” like, life is happening. My interview style is very conversational anyway so it gives me a chance to get to know them, what those external factors as well.

[0:01:59.7] RS: Totally and it’s a weird context shift, I guess we’ve probably spoken about this at length but just the notion that right now, I’m in your kitchen, you know? I’m seeing where you live and where you probably relax and like where at the end of the day, you’ll close this laptop and have a glass of wine and watch Netflix, I don’t know, I’m projecting what your life looks like but that is.

[0:02:18.2] ES: That is a thousand percent accurate by the way.

[0:02:19.9] RS: It’s just a weird context shift, it’s like you never had access to this much to like, your coworker or your boss or your colleagues’ lives, they’re being fused together so, all of the subordinate clauses we have to do with, “Hey, sorry, that my kids might run in” or you know, “Sorry, I’m having work done today” or “There’s someone mowing the lawn” — that are necessary just to get work done. I don’t know it’s very strange. I don’t have really a question or feedback but this is what we’re doing.

[0:02:41.9] ES: I know, especially in Austin because right now, we have construction on all four sides of us. So, I just want to get a nice breeze in, I have to shut the door, I have to isolate myself, and to be honest, I love recruiting in such a comfortable setting as my couch and living room. It just enables me to relax a little bit, to have a conversation, to let the ideas flow and it’s like my safe haven.

So, I love it, but I also have the opportunity to go on-site too so I love having an office to go to, to meet with people, especially, I’m new to a city. I don’t know if we talked about this but I moved to Austin about a year and a half ago. So I didn’t know one person here when moving and now I have a whole friend group. They just threw me a bachelorette party two weekends ago, so everyone here is just so accommodating, open to forming new relationships, whereas, in New York, we were not that way whatsoever.

[0:03:40.0] RS: Interesting. Yeah, how did you do that? I need some tips on making friends in my 30s.

[0:03:45.4] ES: Oh my gosh, it’s going to sound weird but Bumble BFF.

[0:03:49.2] RS: You did that? Okay, I’ve thought about that too. It’s like you know what? I’ll go back to the apps for a completely different reason.

[0:03:54.3] ES: Yes and I met my fiancé that way too, so it’s kind of like full circle, yeah. My friend’s cousin did it in Florida, made friends and I was like, “You know what? I got to do it, I got to meet some people.” It was really strange, almost dating friends, where I met two really great girls out of it, and from there, it kind of spiraled into friends of friends, people moving, I know this person and it morphed into this like, amazing friend group that we have.

[0:04:21.0] RS: Got it. I wonder what that’s like for male friendships on there. I wonder if it’s something different because I can see how women would be a little open to it, I don’t know, maybe I’m just gender norming here but I feel like it would be stranger for men.

[0:04:31.1] ES: Yeah, because the guys do ask me that. I got to say, the guys that I know have met through, we do kickball tournaments and when they go to the gym and just, activities like that, but I agree, I feel like it might be a little bit different for you.

[0:04:44.9] RS: Well, you may have convinced me though. I may have to get around this and report back, so I can find some community here in Denver, Colorado but at any rate, Bumble, notwithstanding, I would love to learn a little bit more about you, Erica, would you mind sharing a little bit about your background and how you wound up in your current role at Sysco Labs?

[0:05:01.7] ES: Yeah, I feel like everyone answers this the same way. We all kind of landed in recruitment, but my story is a little bit more different. I went to school for education, always wanted to be a teacher. In my program at the University of Delaware, a lot of people got to go abroad so you’re abroad the first semester or maybe a month or something and my program just didn’t have the option to do that.

What I did was after graduating, I moved to Munich, Germany. I became an Au Pair, I taught the English language to my four little German girlies and I took care of them by day and by night, and by weekends, I was off, jet setting to a different country somewhere in there I met Au Pair friends as well, so I made this little girl gang group and we would just travel around, go to October Fest, go to all these different places.

So I loved being the girl’s caretaker. I loved being kind of like their older, bigger sister but at the end of it, I was just so drained and exhausted from living with them to spending every minute with them that I couldn’t talk to a child for like a good year. So I came back to Jersey. My friends all moved to New York City, they all had these jobs and I was just so jealous. I never pictured myself ever making it in New York City, to be honest, especially with the teacher’s salary and I had student debt, I had bills to pay, and my dad was kicking me off payroll.

So, my friend, she’s like, “Hey, you have a good personality, you could talk to people. I recently joined this agency, I think you would be really good at it.” So I went in, first interview I ever had in my entire life went into the city. I couldn’t tell you how nervous I was because I just felt so out of place but a lot of the things, I learned at education applied to recruitment. It’s very sales-y, you know?

I had to sell to children why they had to listen to me and why the material that we were learning was so important and then, I applied that to recruitment. I was working for Frank Recruitment Group, a third-party staffing agency. It was more specialized though, I was only specializing in SalesForce recruitment in the northeast region, so Boston territory and it was a great learning experience to learn about different businesses.

It could be end-users from a startup to a thousand-person company, to partners, I just got so much exposure to different groups and a lot of it was selling them. A lot of it was selling them why they needed to work with me, why was I the industry leader, why were they going to pay me a percentage of someone’s salary to find them.

Maybe they already had HR or recruitment team setup. It was very much me, pitching to them why my services were different and more unique and niche, and then, vice versa on the other end, I had to sell my services to candidates. I had to sell why they should be working with me, why they should trust me, do I have their best interest at heart?

So, I loved playing that matchmaker, hearing the candidate and hearing the client, and putting those pieces together was like a fun challenge for me. Yeah I got my start in staffing and then after four years, which felt like, I feel like everyone in staffing can say this, it felt like almost dog years, so it’s like, triple the amount, I just got burnt out. I started from commuting from Jersey to New York City as just another recruiter. That commute was two hours each way.

So I was living with my parents, I was making base salary. So I was looking at all these people around me living in New York City, having such a fun time, I was like, “Okay, you know I’m going to hit the grind button” and every time I make a placement, I made commission. So worked my way up, became top global biller, I think two years in a row. I was winning trips like incentive trips to South Africa, to London, going to fun fancy dinners, outings, receiving gifts even at one point.

So I felt like I achieved so much, I got to place so many amazing people. I got to meet so many amazing people, I got to attend conferences, I got to go to Dream Force and at the end of that, I was exhausted. I wanted to work for a company internally, there was plenty of companies that was representing that maybe I was myself bought into but another candidate might be bought into that but I knew deep down, I was like, “I’m going to try my hand at internal because if I truly like a company and I want to sell that culture and what we’re promoting, I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of that culture as well.”

Versus, just being the person outside looking in, so yeah, I switched over to internal. I got my start in New York City with wheels up and then when I moved to Austin, I just wanted to be closer to a company so that’s why I switched again to an Austin-based company called Sysco Labs and that’s how I’m here.

[0:10:08.2] RS: What was the bug for you that made you decide to stick with it? Because like you say, most people fall into this accidentally, the agency beginning is super common but I’m sure it was more than just that you are good at it. What made you want to stick around and forge a career in this space?

[0:10:25.3] ES: I was so competitive because I grew up with two older brothers so constantly, I was competing with them to be the best, like I had to tie my shoelaces before them. It was always something that I always had to impress people. So, at staffing, it was very much a competitive space, it was very male-driven and I wanted to change the narrative and be like this female force that, “Hey, you can’t mess up me, I’m going to be better than you” type of mentality.

That’s what kept me going for sure and then yeah, I just found out I was good at it. I felt like the way I was connecting with my candidates was more honest and more not-metrics-driven. So, with staffing, it’s like, “How many calls did you make? How many dials? How long were you on the phone for? Who did you talk to? How many resumes have you sent, interviews, all those KPIs?” I just at that point, didn’t matter to me.

I was just like, it’s not about that. Like yeah, at the end of the day, do you want to keep that data because it is very helpful, but for me, it was about placing the person where they wanted to grow and learn and see their next step. So, I loved facilitating that and it’s kind of like you feel like the most popular girl in the room, like, you’re placing all these people and you know everyone from the individual contributors to the leaders, to the high managers, the stakeholders, to even C-Suite.

You got to meet so many different people, so I loved it because every situation was different, conversations, I could talk all day, so I just loved constantly learning from others as well.

[0:11:59.5] RS: You rattled off a bunch of those KPIs and like you say, there’s a place for them, they’re important to monitor but companies, certainly agencies, don’t report on satisfied candidates, right? There’s not a number that says, we got someone their dream job and they’re really happy and they set edible arrangement because we changed their life and now, they have an awesome salary and they paid off all their debts, et cetera, right?

That’s not really collated but that feels like the reason why people stick around in this job for so long. In addition to the mastery, to being good at it, in addition to kind of falling into it and realizing it was a good way to make money and forge a career, that feeling never goes away, right? Because if you’re good at your job and you continue placing people.

[0:12:39.0] ES: Yeah. I mean, I always smile when on a Friday I’m giving someone an offer letter or extend in the group. I feel like Santa Clause. I’m like, “Oh my god, yay” I get to be like that positive moment in their life of like opportunity for the next stage, so I love that feeling, and like you said we weren’t measuring.

I mean, there were some customer satisfaction scores of your service to them but what was that really measuring? It was very transactional in staffing whereas here, it’s those personal relationships. It’s seeing someone start as that individual working their way up or working their way to a different side of the business and it’s just – it’s seeing that whole journey, it’s so fun to see.

[0:13:21.8] RS: Yes, there’s candidate MPSs, there is a way to put a number on happiness and success, right? But none of that will ever compare to just that three-line testimonial, you know? That you pull out of your email or you pull out of a Slack and you message to the team and you’re like, “Yeah, this is why we do it, this is why we fight” because we get to like you say, be Santa Claus, I love that.

[0:13:41.5] ES: Yeah, I mean, it’s a very thankless job, right? Recruitment, it’s nonstop especially right now, it’s go-go-go. The only downtime seriously is Christmas, which is coincidental to that Santa Claus metaphor but no one wants to talk to me over the Holidays so it’s constant. You do have to find something that keeps you going. I mean, I would look deep down, especially on those two-hour car rides from Jersey to New York.

I was like, “Why am I doing this? Yeah, for the paychecks, yeah, for this but there has to be a deeper meaning to wake up every morning and do this kind of schlep.” So yeah, it’s definitely for the people, whether they realize it or not, it’s behind the scenes of me like, “Oh” giddy for them and then it’s onto the next, you got to keep moving.

[0:14:25.9] RS: Yup, exactly. So, would you explain a little bit the relationship that Sysco Labs has to the greater Sysco ecosystem?

[0:14:34.5] ES: Yeah, so, everyone, and if you don’t’ know, Sysco is a global foodservice supplier so maybe listening to this, people will start to see Sysco trucks everywhere because that tends to happen when you are like, just be like, “Oh wow, Sysco trucks are everywhere, delivering food to my restaurant” or to this hospital.

Yeah, Sysco corporate being, Fortune 100 company, a big behemoth of a company, labs for it were just kind of like this subset of Sysco technologies. So, Sysco Labs primarily focuses on the innovation and the eCommerce experience within Sysco’s Technologies. So, we have CX which is customer experience which I focus on and then we have BT studio which is our business tech focus on the internal applications.

So, for CX, we look at the whole eCommerce experience for a customer and when I say customer, it could be anyone from your local mom and pop shop, like a pizza shop, all the way up to multi-units to global chains to hospitals, restaurants, you name it. They go into our product offerings, and they get to shop around, they get to browse catalogs, they get to purchase their food, their beverages, their supplies like meal kits to go that are so popular, to even industrial equipment, some of the hospitals and university utilize us for.

So we’ve created and digitized that whole ordering purchasing, pricing, to shipping it to your door or at local. So we look at that whole experience and we’re trying to figure out how to simplify it. What’s the best way to get food on plates? How do we simplify that? How do we enable our customers to go in, shop around, come to us for pasta? Okay, are they coming to us for the pasta sauce? Why not? How do we enable that? How do we drive that change management? So that is what my team focuses on.

[0:16:33.0] RS: So Sysco Labs is like a startup a vacation of Sysco, they have created this to solve a very specific problem in the more agile way?

[0:16:40.7] ES: Yes, yeah and we’re very agile. So the difference is like, corporate, you think of traditional, you think of red tape and all that stuff but they’ve been such a great resource, especially for me. You know, I got into this and of course, I had X amount of roles I need to fill but they looked at me, they’re like, “Do you have the necessary resources? Are you set up for success? Okay, if not, how do we help?”

So they’ve always been, “How do I help?” kind of lens versus companies I have worked at before, which is, “What are you doing?” kind of lens-like, “What are you doing to help us?” and of course, they ask me those questions too but it’s very calming to know I have a corporate backing and stability behind me.

[0:17:25.6] RS: Yeah, so you kind of get the best of both worlds a little bit with, look, you have the agility of a smaller team but the resources of a big company. Is that the case? What kind of resources do you get from the creator at Sysco team?

[0:17:36.4] ES: Yeah, so say I am having trouble placing and finding candidates for a specific role or maybe it is multiple roles, they come in they’re like, “Hey, do you need agency help?” I don’t see it as a sign of defeat. I see it as expanding our net even more because a lot of people don’t know about Labs. A lot of people do know about Sysco but we don’t have a lot of brand awareness.

So any way that I can help get our name out there more and educate and show and tell more people, amazing. So I go to them for agency help, I go to them for any creative ways we could recruit. I partner with our communications team, they help me even device messages that are just more unique and getting even on LinkedIn like, “Do we need to post more? Do we need our Sysco employees to help us promote more roles?”

So they just supply me with so many tools like that. If I want to attend any recruitment things, of course, that is more remote right now but any sort of conferences or anything I want to be a part of, so yeah, any roles that, “Hey, do we need to look at contract?” they are always just there providing another option for me.

[0:18:44.7] RS: Got it. You mentioned that they kind of support with any creative recruiting attempts, do you have any examples of campaigns that you’ve run in coordination with them?

[0:18:53.0] ES: Well, so I’ve run it within Labs not like in a bigger corporate setting. So yeah, we promote on LinkedIn all the time. We also have a relationship we’ve built In, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with. It is basically just another site for people to go to, so they have one for Austin, they have one for other main hubs in cities and it’s a place to share job knowledge, to share what roles you’re looking for.

To share what is going on in the market trends. So it is just like this little community within your city, so I partner with them on that. I didn’t know about it in New York City. When I got to Austin, they’re like, “Hey, a lot of Austenite’s, you know they go to this Built In site.” I’m like, “Amazing” so I am constantly learning from other people here. Creative also helps me with selling points, you know if there’s something that I was sold on, great.

You know, I wrote that down, I have it in my spiel but are there other things I could highlight? We helped volunteer at the Austin Central Food Bank, that’s amazing. Some people love to be a part of that sort of community around Austin. So I partner with them on a lot of tailoring and how do we promote that and how do we get that out to candidates and an audience.

[0:20:05.5] RS: Got it, so what’s the make of the team over there?

[0:20:08.6] ES: So it’s me as the lead recruiter even though I hold the talent acquisition manager title but I oversee the whole interview process, the whole candidate process, onboarding to offers to pairing up with my stakeholders on, “Okay, what roles do I need to prioritize? How do we strategize on that? What are the best solutions? How do we go after this?” and then I have coordinator who helps out with all the interview scheduling.

All the new hire, onboarding, just to make sure that that candidate is going through the process of the interview process thoughtfully and that keeps going if we do hire them to the onboarding process. So she is an amazing facilitator of setting them up with everything that they need and then I have an additional contract resourcer to help me with more of just sourcing candidates for all these roles.

[0:21:02.8] RS: Got it. So you mentioned you’re tweaking a lot of interview processes, training, et cetera. Did that have to be built from scratch for Sysco Labs or was some of that inherited?

[0:21:12.5] ES: I inherited a lot of it but there was always ways that we could improve and that was kind of the first conversation I had with hiring managers was like, “Hey, what’s working and what’s not working and how can I help change that?” so looking at the interview process, was “It working? Do you like it? What are your thoughts?” Just getting their honest feedback and I think you can only do that when maybe someone new takes over, I don’t know.

So I was really looking at that, looking at all the processes really and seeing, “Hey, was this working? Was this not? How can I be the best partner for you?” because, at the end of the day, I am representing the hiring manager. They are giving me requirements and I’m their eyes and ears with the candidates, so I have to look out for what they’re looking for at the end of the day. So when I came in, yeah, it was a lot of inheritance but it was a lot of, “Okay, can we do this differently?”

Maybe they were used to hearing no for things that they would ask, “Okay, might not be a yes, and let’s figure it out” so I know they had limitations on how many roles they could post before me and I was like, “Well, let’s post more. Why not?” Why not just tell candidates of what we’re looking for? Yes, we can’t post for all 40 X roles that we have. I definitely don’t want to spread myself way too thin but why don’t we open up that at least halfway.

So it is really cool to kind of see them open to me and be honest and be like, “Hey, I really like these aspects, we could definitely adopt this but I would love to change X, Y, or Z.”

[0:22:45.6] RS: What did they say wasn’t working when you initially did that conversation to them?

[0:22:49.1] ES: I think like going back to the posting thing. It was like a why not in my brain versus what was the roadblocks to not posting all the roles. I don’t know, I can’t really answer that in more detail as I want to.

[0:23:04.0] RS: That’s fine. What if I ask you this way, when you are having those conversations with hiring managers about what is and isn’t working, what are the things you’re listening for? What is sticking out to you as they’re sort of giving you the state of the interviewing union or the state of the recruiting union as they see it?

[0:23:18.1] ES: Hiring managers, everyone is so different, right? But it is funny to see because you pick up on patterns for sure. You have one hiring manager saying, “Oh yeah, I was used to getting five resumes a week.” Amazing, let me look back and see if that was actual reality and I feel like sometimes it’s like at the brunt of it, at the forefront. It’s like their first frustrations with whatever is going wrong in their book.

Whether they’re not seeing candidates, they’re not seeing qualified candidates, the interview process is taking forever or we’re not getting feedback in that. Whatever the case may be, it’s kind of just taking that all in but not taking it too seriously like verbatim and then digging through what is actually the core of it, right? If I look is it, “Oh, you’re not getting back to me within a day or a week and that’s why we’re losing candidates.”

We are not losing candidates because we’re not being competitive in the market and we’re not moving fast enough, Mr.-Hiring-Manager you’re not getting back to me in this crucial time. So it’s kind of just going back and pealing the layers away and just making it as simple as possible for them and just educating them like, “Hey, this is the reality, this is the market, this is what I recommend and if we don’t see eye to eye on that then, I don’t know, you’re not really going to see any candidates from me.”

So it’s just being real with them and being honest and transparent I feel like has helped me be successful and a lot of people do take to that more than not.

[0:24:46.1] RS: I think that’s good advice for any time you have a request for anyone for any reason, particularly when you are managing up with even someone a little more senior than you though is you just have to make it easy as possible. Whatever it is you need someone to do, you need them to not work hard to do you a favor. So what did that look like? Can you give me an example of what the hiring manager’s whether it was interview feedback or what was your approach to making things seamless for folks?

[0:25:11.5] ES: It’s almost even just saying the words like, “I’m on your side, I’m your partner.” It starts with that. It’s just like, “Hey, I’m here to make your life easier” that is like my shpiel every time because it’s true. I am here to make your life easier. I am here to help vet candidates and narrow them down so you have just these people to choose from and if it’s not working, it’s not working. Then we’ll go back to the first stage of the reqs gathering but at the end of this thing, I want you to have candidates to pick from that you are torn between.

You’re like, “Oh I don’t even know who to pick. They are so close and close” so just breaking it down and telling them I am here for you because you have a job to do, I am here to be the recruiter and I feel like a lot of hiring managers take things on like when I came in, they were working directly with the agencies. They were helping with the corner to schedule things. I was like, “No, no, no, you should not be doing any of this.”

I will take this process over, I don’t want to bother them until there’s a candidate that’s worth their attention and time. So that can be an example. I think another example was a hiring manager at a previous company, he would call me, he would say, “Where are my resumes?” it was like one of those hiring managers and I took off the day. I was physically driving to Texas from New York City and I was like, “Hey, I could work on this tomorrow with you, I am driving” and his response was, “Well, are you really driving, or are you in the passenger seat and you can hop on a hotspot right now?” I was like, “Okay” so –

[0:26:42.8] RS: That’s a boundary pal.

[0:26:44.7] ES: That’s a boundary but also I think it’s just telling them, “Hey, there is no update” or “Hey, I did X, Y, and Z in the backend” because if they don’t hear from you for that week, they’re thinking it’s not important to you, you are working on someone else’s role, someone else is getting interviews, it’s kind of just making sure that communication piece is there. So, I feel like that’s what I’ve learned the most is it’s those constant check-ins.

Whether you like it or not you got to do it and you got to let them know the progress and the pulse of what’s going on and if you guys do need to make any changes to the requirements, to the process, to the end of the process, with salary and if we are being competitive, that is a bigger issue. I have realized it is better to speak up sooner rather than later.

[0:27:29.3] RS: Yeah, you just got to make them feel special a little bit, right?

[0:27:32.3] ES: Yeah, sure.

[0:27:33.5] RS: Also in a remote capacity, you know, if they saw you in an office every day and they’re like, “Oh there’s smoke coming off here because of the keyboard, she’s crushing it” then they probably will be less concerned but I mean, it’s a silly thing. It’s an optical thing but it does unfortunately make a difference.

[0:27:48.3] ES: Yeah, it does. It’s just I rather over communicate than be silent and then just pop out of nowhere. So it is very much reiterating this is a partnership, we have to work together.

[0:28:00.3] RS: Yeah, that makes sense. Well Erica, I am curious just to hear from you what is next in your career? How are you sort of charting out your growth? I don’t want to hear you say like, “Oh, well when I leave Sysco Labs in six months…” don’t do that but just as you think about up scaling, adding more responsibilities or experiences to your tool belt so that you can forge a career in the space, I assume you want to stay in the space.

Maybe that is not the case, I don’t know, how are you kind of charting it? How are you thinking about your own career growth?

[0:28:25.9] ES: Well, I definitely want to stay in the space, it is definitely food and technology combined, which I love. I don’t know how anyone cannot love that.

[0:28:34.9] RS: We mentioned the Netflix and wine earlier.

[0:28:36.9] ES: Yeah, exactly. I think so right now we’re good, I think, at least from a creating perspective but say we do get an additional ten to 20 roles and yeah, I need another sourcer. I think hiring managers and other people think recruiters and I know I could handle 20 roles at a time but are they going to get the time and care that they need in order to find the right person. So as our req loads grow, I definitely think another sourcer we’ll need to add on in the future.

Okay, there comes the question of “Can our coordinator handle three recruiters?” If not, do we need to add another resource for her? So I am very thoughtful of how much people can handle. I never want someone to feel the way that I felt where they just felt like they were drowning and even when they felt like, “Okay, I hired five people, great.” Okay, no, you still have 20 X roles to fill. So I get that feeling of wave crashing over wave.

So it’s kind of assessing, “Okay, can two recruiters work on X amount of roles right now with the coordinator? If not, do we need to add another recruiter?” Do we need someone to concentrate more on the senior manager level roles and then the other concentrate on the individual contributor roles? So it’s a lot of nuances with that, so I definitely want to keep growing in that aspect of mentoring these more junior recruiters.

My coordinator, he’s a year in, so I just think about myself when I was this scrappy little staff recruiter in New York City and how much I learned from the other recruiters around me on the floor. I truly learned the best way from listening to others and picking up on, “Oh I really like what they said to that candidate or that client. Oh I really love that question that they phrased” like it’s really picking that up and now with fully remote, he’s not picking that up.

So, I want to coach and mentor as much as I can, whether it is him monitoring calls or me showing him the ropes, whatever that might be, I definitely want to improve and grow on my leadership skills and how I could help be a partner versus “Do this because I told you to” kind of approach. So that’s just like me thinking about my team but for myself, I definitely want to go into the more creative side of recruitment for sure.

What that looks like, I have no idea yet. I feel like recruitment it changes month over year. It is constantly evolving. So I have loved evolving with recruitment. I started off cold calling. If I could call a person nowadays, I couldn’t do it. I would just hang up on myself because I could never do that to someone. Also, I feel like people get those things blocked all the time now. So I don’t even know if I would even be successful.

So, looking at how far recruitment has come in just five to eight years, it’s mind-blowing to me. So constantly just being on the cutting edge of like, “Okay, what is working? Is it LinkedIn recruiter? Is it these other platforms? How can I be different a little bit?” So following the trends and thinking outside the box a little bit in a creative way, I definitely want to grow more in, and then just talking to you too.

It’s just like it’s really cool to like hear you and hear this podcast and hear others who are in my boat or have been in it for 15 plus years to relate to them in some aspect, it’s so fun to hear and I am still learning. I’m never not learning, so to even listen to some of your podcast too, it’s been so helpful for me and eye-opening too.

[0:32:17.4] RS: I’m so glad to hear that. I am so pleased that it’s been useful and Erica, I don’t think we’re going to find a better bookend for the show than you pleasing me. So let’s tie a nice bow on this thing. Erica, this has been fantastic. Thank you for being here and sharing with me. I’d love chatting with you today.

[0:32:30.9] ES: Oh my god, thank you. Thank you so much.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:32:35.7] 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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