Author: Kyle Lagunas

Kyle Lagunas is the Head of Strategy & Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research. He’s spent over a decade studying innovation cycles in HR and talent technology—with leadership roles in both the solution provider and practitioner space—and brings that breadth of experience and insight to his work advising vendors and practitioners on the ever-evolving world of talent. He’s a transformational talent leader, top industry analyst, and non-nonsense strategist with a reputation for bringing a fresh perspective to the table.

Before joining Aptitude, he served as the Head of Talent Attraction, Sourcing & Insight at General Motors where he led the go-to-market functions of the company’s global talent acquisition and played a pivotal role in transforming their recruiting strategies and processes. At Beamery, his role as Director of Strategy put him at the intersection of customer experience, sales and marketing, and product.

At Aptitude, Kyle brings together all aspects of his career to bridge the ever-growing gap between talent leaders, their stakeholders, and their solution providers to power more meaningful outcomes.

Blog Podcast

From Burnout to Balance: Donald Knight on Resilient Leadership

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 19, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by Donald Knight, SVP of People and Culture at Warner Brothers and formerly Chief People Officer at Greenhouse Software. Donald is the kind of leader who doesn’t just talk the talk‌ — ‌he walks it, even when the ground is on fire. We dive into what it really means to be a people leader at an HR tech company, the rise of fractional HR leadership and why finding your village is critical to thriving in this ever-demanding profession.

Donald Knight reminds us that HR leadership isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s also one of the most rewarding paths you can take. From navigating the complexities of HR tech to embracing the flexibility of fractional roles, Donald’s insights are a masterclass in resilience, authenticity and leading with purpose.

Do You Walk It Like You Talk It?

Donald breaks down the complexities of being a people leader at an HR tech company into three main layers, and honestly? It’s a balancing act like no other.

First, there’s the classic responsibility every CPO has: shepherding culture and supporting your people. That’s nothing new. But in an HR tech company, everyone on your team has some level of focus on delivering value to HR leaders and teams. “There’s a tendency for everyone to believe they’ve specialized in people, which I think is a good thing, at least aspirationally,” Donald says, with this caveat: “I do think that there’s some nuances around, have you actually walked in the shoes of the folks in the profession?”

Second, your peers aren’t just coworkers‌ — ‌they’re also customers. They expect you to advocate for their needs in product strategy meetings and even help them get better deals on renewals. “There’s an expectation from your peers … for you to be an advocate for them in those rooms, which I think is cool,” Donald says.

Lastly, you’ve got to be the face of the company. As a people leader, you’re expected to evangelize the brand‌ — ‌hopping on planes, speaking at events, and carrying the company’s message out into the world. That’s not just a bonus responsibility; it’s a core part of the role.

It’s a lot of hats to wear, but that’s what makes the job so unique‌ — ‌and uniquely challenging.

Why CPOs Deserve a Medal (or at Least a Nap)

Donald shared a moment that really hit home for me. He was chatting with a fellow CPO who told him, “I went fractional because I want to make more and do less.” Naturally, Donald was like, “Wait a second, unpack that for me.” And what she laid out is something every HR leader can relate to.

She explained that the role is already thankless in so many ways‌ — ‌you’re always doing critical work behind the scenes, rarely getting the recognition you deserve. Then you pile on the chaos we’ve all been living through: pay transparency laws, navigating reproductive rights access, contact tracing, return-to-office policies‌ — ‌the list goes on. Any one of those would be enough to make a sane person lose it, but these all hit HR leaders back-to-back over the last few years.

And it doesn’t stop there. Civil unrest, societal issues, DE&I pressures, layoffs, hiring freezes, hiring overages‌ — ‌plus the ever-complicated relationships with boards and exec teams. It’s not just a lot; it’s everything, all at once.

Fractional leaders have a chance to create impact across more than one organization, and to get the ball rolling in each of those places for a long-term successor to pick it up and run with it.

Donald sees this shift as an opportunity: “That’s why you see not just myself, but other leaders that have taken on either more responsibility or went to a company that’s even larger to help create more impact,” he says. “I think that’s why you see that, because that resiliency, there’s something about being forged through the fire.”

Finding Your Village: How Tribes Keep HR Leaders Sane

The last few years have been a trial by fire for HR leaders. But for Donald, resilience comes from the communities you build and the people who lift you up during tough times. He stresses that no one should navigate these challenges alone.

“The village of the leadership team that I was on, coupled with the village of the directs on my team, coupled with the village I had with people that sat in this role at other companies, that’s what made it easier to do the job every day,” he says.

Donald has found that the strongest villages extend beyond HR. “I’ve had the opportunity to connect with peers in other disciplines, meaning outside of people teams, outside of HR, and I’ve been able to connect with CEOs who value the profession,” he says. “And so I think while the forecast may look dreary or cloudy, there are bright moments and rainbows in this proverbial storm in other leaders.”

If leading through chaos has left you feeling singed, take heart: the fire doesn’t just burn — it forges.

People in This Episode

Donald Knight: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less sh*tty and who are brave enough to tell their stories: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap Media and hosted by yours truly, the ever-radiant Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, which as you know is the leading boutique research firm covering HR and transformation.

Special thanks to the team over at Glider AI. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I know I make this seem absolutely effortless, but the talent transformation ecosystem EP wouldn’t be possible without their support.

Kyle Lagunas:

Today I am chatting with a very special person, Donald Knight, who is the Group Senior Vice President of People and Culture at Warner Brothers. He’s out here proving that resilience isn’t just a buzzword: it is a lifestyle. From leading through uncertainty to finding new ways to create impact, Donald’s story is all about navigating the tough moments with authenticity, purpose, and just the right amount of swagger. If you’ve ever wondered how to build your village and keep showing up when the going gets rough, this conversation is going to hit you right where it counts. Let’s dive in.

Donald Knight, hello.

Donald Knight:

Kyle. Thank you for having me, man. This is pretty amazing. I know we’ve been working to try to figure this thing out.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know.

Donald Knight:

I’m excited that we were able to make it happen.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think actually you even had a baby in between us trying to coordinate a pod.

Donald Knight:

I had a phenomenal baby girl. Princess Avery.

Kyle Lagunas:

Avery.

Donald Knight:

Absolutely runs everything in my house. The world centers around her. She’s the first granddaughter on both sides.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, so everyone’s obsessed.

Donald Knight:

Lots of attention on Avery.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God.

Donald Knight:

Yeah, lots of attention. We’re playing Charlie Puth in the background.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s so cute. Well, I want to talk to you, because you’ve had this really interesting opportunity to work as not just a Chief HR executive, but leading a people team in a company that actually supports people teams, which is Greenhouse. And you recently left there, but when we started talking about what do we want to talk about, I wanted to lean into that, especially because of what we all were coming out of at that point, but do you want to talk to me a little bit, what is it like being a Chief People Officer in an HR tech company when everything’s literally on fire in HR?

Donald Knight:

It’s funny. So, let me preface by saying, I know Pat at UKG, Ashley at Workday, Heather formally at Gem, and Kara formally at Lattice, right? So, I will say that there’s a community of us that really rally behind one another to make sure that we’re supportive. I do think it is unlike any other CPO role in the sense that I think there’s three lenses that typically we have to operate through at all times. I think the first one is how do you shepherd culture and take care of your people? That’s rather consistent at every company. The nuance here though is because it’s HR tech, everyone in the organization is prioritizing on how do you deliver value to that group and to that leader? And so everyone… There’s a tendency for everyone to believe they’ve specialized in people, which I think is a good thing, at least aspirationally. I do think that there’s some nuances around, have you actually walked in the shoes of the folks in the profession?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Have y’all done it? Right.

Donald Knight:

But I think that’s a nuance, because everyone in the profession, at other companies, they’re looked at as resident expert on people. I think there’s a nuance there.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, you’ve got a whole culture of people that are supposed to care about the people function, right?

Donald Knight:

So, I think that’s a positive thing. So, I can honestly say that being at an HR tech company, people care about people, but how you express that care is probably going to be nuanced based on your experiences. So, I think shepherding that culture and those people, it’s just a very different role at an HR tech company. I think the second one is your peers then appear to lean on you to say, “Hey, how can you encourage the product to be better? How can you deliver greater value for me and my team?” If they’re up for renewals, they’re like, “Hey, how can you help me get a better price?” And they know that we’re feeling the same compression that they’re feeling in the market, where CFOs and boards are saying, “Hey, you got to really do more with less.” Right? So, I-

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, right. The jig is up.

Donald Knight:

… Yeah. So, I do think there’s an expectation from your peers who are now customers for you to be an advocate for them in those rooms, which I think is cool. I think that’s where the opportunities to be more commercially minded and help influence the product. And we had a phenomenal… Greenhouse, still has a phenomenal Chief Product Officer, although I’m no longer there, in Henry and I appreciate his patience with me and hoping to help try to influence that roadmap.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, why? Do you have some ideas? You got some thoughts?

Donald Knight:

I think the third thing though that is nuanced is then there’s also an expectation for you to be almost like evangelizing on behalf of the brand and all of the women that I just listed, they do that very well for their brands.

Kyle Lagunas:

And authentically.

Donald Knight:

Authentically. But that’s an added element, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Sure.

Donald Knight:

So, hopping on planes…

Kyle Lagunas:

And you say nuance. I also say pressure, too.

Donald Knight:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean especially you’re out there evangelizing. I have to wonder, do you have a bigger target on your back as a people leader? Are people looking at your Glassdoor reviews be like, “Well, is this guy practicing what he preaches out here?”

Donald Knight:

I mean, absolutely, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

“Are they delivering excellence internally?” And you know what I mean? “How can they make me excellent if they’re not actually delivering on the home front?”

Donald Knight:

Yeah, I think there is a heightened sense of “walk it like you talk it,” and particularly in the down moments. So, when you’re growing the company at 40%, 50% year-over-year and everybody’s getting bonuses and equity-

Kyle Lagunas:

Feels good.

Donald Knight:

… values are going up, that’s a good thing.

Kyle Lagunas:

This is rah-rah.

Donald Knight:

I think the true test of the CPOs, and this is where my… I have a lot of empathy for those folks that sit in that role, particularly the role period, but then CPOs at HR tech companies, is think about the down moments, layoffs, heightened senses of churn, slowed growth. These are all things that most companies experienced over the last months, years. It’s a heightened sense when you’re then the CPO at an HR tech company because they’re like, “Hold on. Are you going to walk it like you talk it?” And literally people will pull sound bites from podcasts like this to say, “Hey, well, this is what you said when you met with Kyle.”

Kyle Lagunas:

All right, cut the tapes. I feel that. I mean, that’s rough, isn’t it? I mean, do you feel… Look, we have to sell authenticity, right? Everybody’s looking to see if you’re real, but can you be really real? Maybe with your peeps? Maybe that’s why you started with, “Here’s my tribe.”

Donald Knight:

So, I think to your point, tribes, I call it subscribe to that idea or villages, I would say the village of the leadership team that I was on, coupled with the village of the directs on my team, coupled with the village I had with people that sat in this role at other companies, that’s what made it easier to do the job every day.

And so I was just spending… I left LA to come here, and I was spending a lot of time with some of those folks in person, and I just wanted to thank them for the encouragement, because it is a very nuanced role. I think if I step back a little bit, I think the role of being a chief people officer at any company over the last five years is by far the hardest role, probably next to the CEO, probably the hardest role and I think having spent a lot of time with CEOs, especially some of the ones that were trying to poach me, I have a heightened sense-

Kyle Lagunas:

She popular, huh?

Donald Knight:

… Look, I thank the creator for the favor, but I will say the CEO role is more lonelier than I had anticipated prior to, and I think the CPO role is probably the next loneliest role. And so trying to find those tribes or villages, if you will, to help be supportive. I would encourage all CPOs, especially CPOs of HR tech companies, because you need it.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I mean, literally you can’t go it alone. You know what’s so interesting? In my podcast last season, I was talking to this guy, John Baldino, he’s the-

Donald Knight:

I know John.

Kyle Lagunas:

… Isn’t he the sweetest? Literally the nicest guy.

Donald Knight:

John’s amazing.

Kyle Lagunas:

But we were talking about complexity with compliance. Literally there is so much coming down, in North America at least, or especially, all of this hangover from COVID and the political strife. There’s just a bunch coming at HR, and he’s worried, because a lot of HR professionals, not just the exec leader, they’re out and they’re burnt out and he’s worried and rightly so. A lot of young people are like, “Hey, you know what? This is not for me.” Right?

Donald Knight:

Yeah. There’s a CPO who will listen to this, because we both know them, but I will preserve their anonymity. She told me yesterday, she was like, “The reason I went fractional is because I want to make more and do less.” And I was like, “Hold on, let me explore that a little bit. What do you mean by that?” She was like, the role is already very much thankless in many regards. And then when you add on the complexities, let’s set aside any of the regular drama of the role.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Of just the work.

Donald Knight:

Of just the work. You talked about compliance. We got pay transparency, access or the lack of access to reproductive rights, contact tracing and return to office. That all hit the same leaders over the last three to five years. That alone just, if you just bucket that in by itself, that’s enough to drive a sane person mad. And then you add on civil unrest, societal issues, DE&I, then add on reductions in force, layoffs, and then add on, “Did you hire too much or did you not hire enough?” And then add on board complexities.

Kyle Lagunas:

And then also add on navigating artificial intelligence now.

Donald Knight:

So, that’s the promise of the future that I hope we’ll make.

Kyle Lagunas:

Because you’re here. You’re still here, you didn’t leave. You’re actually going to an even bigger company.

Donald Knight:

Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right?

Donald Knight:

Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re like, “You know what? Let’s do more. Let’s do more and work more.”

Donald Knight:

Yeah. So, what I will say is I do believe that there are people in these roles right now, Kyle, that there, while they have been tested, they have proven to be resilient. And so such a time is this for those folks to be able to continue to rise to the occasion. And I think that’s why you see not just myself, but other leaders that have taken on either more responsibility or went to a company that’s even larger to help create more impact. I think that’s why you see that, because that resiliency, there’s something about being forged through the fire that you’re like, “Oh, I can see what I’m actually made of.” And I think that’s one of the beautiful things of being a CPO at a HR tech company. The takeaways and the learnings that I have from there has directly influenced the way that I’m navigating my current role.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re like, “You know what? Bet!”

Donald Knight:

Well, so then-

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, look, I am not a cynical person, but I am a very empathetic and sensitive person, and I am a little worried about morale in the HR organization, broad brush, just the profession. But you’re giving me hope. Is there cause to be hopeful here? It’s been rough. It’s been rough, and we’re not even done. Do you feel hopeful?

Donald Knight:

… I do, because I believe I’ve had the opportunity to connect with peers in other disciplines, meaning outside of people teams, outside of HR and I’ve been able to connect with CEOs who value the profession. And so I think while the forecast may look dreary or cloudy, there are bright moments and rainbows in this proverbial storm in other leaders that I have found the optimism, right? Our CEO is one of them.

My onboarding process and even the way that I navigated the first few weeks, I was able to observe how much we’re a priority at our company. And I think I have other friends, like a good friend of mine, Gianna Driver at Lattice, they have a new CEO and Sarah Franklin. Sarah Franklin prioritizes the people function. She understands the competitive advantage that you will have when you have a phenomenal people team. So, I think those are the bright spots, right?

That’s where the optimism is, and I think that’s where it’s on us and really thankful for folks like yourself who are using your time to be able to say, “Hey, I’m going to make sure I focus on the research.” So much so that if you want to be able to demonstrate that resiliency and continue to face that storm every day, I got your back with this data. And also if you’re saying, “No, I need to go fractional.” Can I use this data to then be able to create even more impact in a short amount of time that someone else can then pick up the baton and carry it on?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, sure.

Donald Knight:

So yeah, I think it’s a great time to be in the profession despite how hard it is to be in the profession.

Kyle Lagunas:

And look, if you made it this far, you’ll make it even further. I mean, I’m glad to hear it. I hope that it plays out that way for most and that you’re not just one of the blessed ones, although you are blessed and highly favored. But I also think that it truly is inspiring, because I know several of the people you’ve mentioned and the mission’s there. The passion is there. And I honestly feel like if I’m seeing… And I am seeing more people at that exact level going fractional, not just because they want to work less, … I’m not going to take their words away from them, but it’s like, “I want to do more and not work more necessarily. I want to have impact here and here I’ve actually figured I have a skill set, I have a competency that can have a lot of value in a lot of places. I’m going to step up and do that.” That’s relatively new for us. You have to be all in at that level for a lot of opportunities.

Donald Knight:

Yeah, I totally agree. I think two things I’ll leave you with is at our organization, we have almost five former CPOs.

Kyle Lagunas:

Really? Okay.

Donald Knight:

Almost. And the ones… The cool part is in each function that they’re in, they have up-leveled the function when they arrive, so I’m told by my peers. So, I do think that there’s this living life on purpose and still finding ways to create impact, particularly at a larger scale, I think is pretty phenomenal. I think the second thing I would say is my former Chief Revenue Officer in Sean Murray, who’s a phenomenal human being, he used to be the Chief Revenue Officer at Salesloft. And I think the cool thing about that is he walked through this before.

What we’re doing for our discipline and being a CPO at HR tech company, he had done that being a Chief Revenue Officer at a sales organization and the cool thing about it’s now he’s a CEO, and so what it tells me is that resiliency will play out over time to be able to help you create even more impact, and you might even get a more outsized role to be able to drive those types of successes and wins and so I think that’s where my optimism lies, is in those leaders and in those examples.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. It’s not just blind aspiration.

Donald Knight:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s informed, as we would expect. Well, dude, thank you for spending some time with me.

Donald Knight:

No, thank you for having me.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m literally so excited for this next role for you. I hope you don’t forget us little people.

Donald Knight:

No, there’s no such little people and no, we’re connected, man. Thank you for having me for real.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

Donald Knight:

All right.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ll catch you later.

Okay, that is a wrap y’all and if you’re anything like me, you’re going to need a minute to digest everything Donald just laid down, because whoa. That was a lot. We covered burnout, the rise of fractional leadership and why it’s critical to roll with your tribe or your village, whatever vernacular works for you.

Honestly, if leading in HR today feels like getting thrown into the fire, Donald just reminded us, or at least me, that sometimes it’s the fire that forges you. I’ve got so many notes from this conversation. Big love to Donald for keeping it real with us today and for reminding me that it’s okay to want more impact without selling your soul. If you made it this far, you’re already ahead of the game. That’s all the time we’ve got for now. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, rate and review and tell your fellow humans, because this realness isn’t going to spread itself. Catch you on the next episode of Transformation Realness. Until then, keep it real and keep it moving.

Tags burnout, fractional leadership, HR Technology, Leadership

Blog Podcast

From Shiny Objects to Real Solutions: Rebecca Carr on TA Tech

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 17, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by the fabulous Rebecca Carr, CEO of SmartRecruiters, to talk about shaking up talent acquisition with personalized hiring workflows, API-first platforms, and tools so intuitive they feel like unlocking your phone.

With a deep history in product innovation and a fresh CEO perspective, Rebecca is laser-focused on three themes: meeting users where they are, empowering creativity through smart systems, and designing recruiting tools that keep pace with the speed of work today. Hiring shouldn’t feel like a chore — and Rebecca is here to make sure it doesn’t.

From making managers’ lives easier to scaling for global needs, Rebecca’s vision is exactly what this space needs right now. If you’re ready to reimagine recruiting technology for today’s fast-paced world, this episode is a must-listen.

Hiring Should Feel Effortless

Recruiting tech has evolved, but let’s not kid ourselves — it’s still clunky in too many places. It’s a pain Rebecca is all too familiar with herself, from her background in TA and experiences building out the SmartRecruiters team. “I’m hiring a CMO. And I’m an ATS creator — and the last thing I want to go do is log into my ATS and provide feedback,” she says. “I just want to do it in Slack or I want to do it on my phone or something like that.”

That’s where SmartRecruiters is flipping the script. Rebecca’s focus is on meeting users where they are‌ — ‌whether that’s integrating seamlessly with Slack, Teams or even a retail manager’s phone. It’s about cutting out unnecessary steps and making hiring feel natural.

“We’ve invested a lot in the tech stack so that our customers can customize user experiences,” Rebecca says. “Because change management is hard. The last thing your users want to do right now is [have to] sit on a webinar and learn how to use their recruiting tool.”

API-First Platforms: Building Smarter, Not Bigger

Rebecca knows that trying to do everything for everyone is a recipe for mediocrity. Instead, SmartRecruiters is leaning into its strength as a recruiting workflow orchestration engine, partnering strategically to bring the best tools to the table.

“If I could snap my fingers and do one thing to SmartRecruiters right now, I would make it 100% API-able,” Rebecca shares. Customers love what SmartRecruiters offers but need flexibility to tweak it for regional quirks. Her answer: design systems. You don’t like that box? Delete it. Want to make it work with ServiceNow? Done. It’s all about giving users the power to create experiences that fit their world, not the other way around.

This approach isn’t about shiny object syndrome: it’s about intentional partnerships that align with a shared vision. Rebecca’s goal for SmartRecruiters is to provide solutions for high-volume, high-velocity hiring at a global scale. “I’m a recruiting workflow orchestration engine,” Rebecca says. “My specialty is orchestrating a beautiful recruiting process.”

Innovating for a New Era

Rebecca’s leadership philosophy is as modern as her approach to tech. She understands that great innovation starts with the right mindset‌ — ‌and the right people. “We’re in an interesting moment. The people that approach with creativity are, generally speaking, people that are innovators at heart, creatives at heart, and those are great product and engineering leaders,” Rebecca says.

That’s why she’s focused on building a team that not only dreams big but executes with precision. “I have invested a lot in finding the right people to be the product and engineering bench,” she says. “Because it’s not even about building innovative products, but also doing it in a really efficient way.” For Rebecca, innovation goes beyond ideas — it’s about transforming them into scalable solutions that drive measurable impact.

At SmartRecruiters, this spirit of innovation touches every part of the business, from reimagining talent acquisition strategies to addressing global challenges and fostering strong customer partnerships. The result is a forward-thinking organization equipped to tackle today’s complex recruiting landscape.

Rebecca isn’t just making waves in talent acquisition. She’s redefining what’s possible. From personalized hiring workflows to API-first platforms, her vision is turning recruiting from a clunky chore into an intuitive, user-friendly experience.

Like Rebecca says, “We’re back.” And honestly? We’re here for it.

Catch this episode for all the tea on the future of recruiting tech, and as always, stay bold, stay real, and keep making work better for everyone.

People in This Episode

Rebecca Carr: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness. It’s the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world work less sh*tty and have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real. It’s produced in partnership with RepCap and hosted by yours truly, dazzling, defiant, demonstrably insane, Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation.

Get into it!

Today we’ve got Rebecca Carr. Yes, that Rebecca Carr, who is now rocking the CEO title at SmartRecruiters. She’s been a product leader, an innovator, and now she’s in the driver’s seat to make some serious moves in the world of talent acquisition. From creating ATS magic to spearheading new strategies, Rebecca is here to push the boundaries of how we think about hiring.

And spoiler alert — incremental change just isn’t her thing.

Also, featuring my very good friend and dear business partner Madeline Laurano, who as you know is the founder of Aptitude Research. All right, well, so I have to say, isn’t it wild that all three of us, Rebecca, Madeline, and I, live in the Boston area, but we had to fly all the way to Las Vegas to see each other in the flesh? And somebody got stuck in a middle seat again, but I digress. Let’s focus on what really matters, big ideas about the future of work. Let’s dive in.

Welcome back to Transformation Realness Live from HR Tech. I brought an extra special friend today. Hi Madeline.

Madeline Laurano:

Hi, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

How you doing?

Madeline Laurano:

I am good.

Kyle Lagunas:

Are you ready to interview one of our favorite people?

Madeline Laurano:

I am. I’m very excited for this.

Kyle Lagunas:

I am too. Hi, Rebecca. Welcome to the show.

Rebecca Carr:

Hi. I’m happy to be here.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s so weird that we all live in the Boston Metro…

Rebecca Carr:

We do.

Kyle Lagunas:

… And we’re seeing each other in the flesh in Las Vegas. What are we doing here?

Rebecca Carr:

I know.

Madeline Laurano:

Kyle and I have not seen each other in person in months.

Kyle Lagunas:

Literally.

Rebecca Carr:

Really? Seriously?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, well, Boston’s like the best city to get together in too.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. There’s literally always traffic. I left my house at 5:30 or 5:15 yesterday morning, and there was traffic.

Rebecca Carr:

Really?

Kyle Lagunas:

What are we doing here?

Rebecca Carr:

There was none when I was getting- I think we were on the same flight, by the way.

Kyle Lagunas:

Delta?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah. 7:00 AM?

Kyle Lagunas:

I was dead.

Rebecca Carr:

I didn’t catch you, but I was like, I think I saw you running through the airport and I was like, I wonder if he was on my flight and I didn’t say hi.

Madeline Laurano:

He was in the middle seat.

Rebecca Carr:

That would’ve been-

Kyle Lagunas:

I was in the middle seat.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, no.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like a peasant.

Rebecca Carr:

To be fair. I’m on a middle seat going home. I wanted to go direct.

Kyle Lagunas:

Don’t they know how important you are?

Madeline Laurano:

You’re a CEO.

Kyle Lagunas:

Speaking of important.

Madeline Laurano:

I am.

Kyle Lagunas:

Mama’s got a new job, right?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah. It doesn’t feel that different.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s like Facebook official now.

Rebecca Carr:

It is. It’s Facebook official.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, talk to us about it.

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, I’ve been with this company for so long. I started in 2014, ran product, launched the original product, went through all that hiring success phase. Remember the book?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Rebecca Carr:

And all the conferences?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Rebecca Carr:

It was great. Left. Came back two years later. Ran product at a interesting moment. We were going through a lot of transition. Jerome had just stepped down. CEO- doesn’t feel that different though. We’re such a good community within SmartRecruiters. Our people are really high tenure, lots of passion for this space, lots of former recruiters, people that have a lot of customer empathy. It feels right and this is a critical moment for us, too.

We have to make some changes as it relates to how we think about the recruiting space. There’s a lot of urgency around adopting new technology, and I want to be a leader there. I don’t want to sit around anymore and wait to make some incremental change to a button or a color. I think we need to do something really different and that’s what we’re out to do.

Kyle Lagunas:

We love TA. It’s where we’ve always lived. But it’s also probably the most crowded corner of the market.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s changed now, but if you had a use case, you got $20 million seed round to build an AI-enabled enterprise-grade platform, BS BS. For you all to stay the course, we were here for it, but you also, you want to change the course, right? You want to be a part of catalyzing that change?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Talk to us about it.

Rebecca Carr:

We’re… In my session in a little bit. I’m going to talk a little bit about the journey generally speaking of ATS. Like my first ATS that I built, the customer use case was I need to be organized. That’s all I care about. I’ve had so much paper, I have no idea what to do with it. No one’s helping me, bring it online. It’s how the Teleos of the world show up and things like that.

But tech just listened, delivered, but didn’t strive to do better until customers showed up and said, by the way, I’m in a war for talent. You need to be in the cloud and lower cost and more collaborative and easier to use. Thus, the SmartRecruiters of the world show up and they do a good job.

But now the whole market is stalling and trying to wait and see what AI and intelligence do for it. Meanwhile, user expectation — candidates, but also hiring managers, people in the field — is accelerating past us. I think we need to start thinking about hiring as not this long process where you have to click through a bunch of buttons, but how is it personalized, adaptive? How does it meet your flow of work? I am hiring a CMO right now. I’m ATS creator.

Kyle Lagunas:

We know somebody.

Madeline Laurano:

We know somebody.

Rebecca Carr:

You know somebody?

Madeline Laurano:

We do.

Rebecca Carr:

Give me referrals.

Madeline Laurano:

We have a good recommendation.

Rebecca Carr:

I’m hiring a CMO, and I’m an ATS creator, and the last thing I want to go do is log into my ATS and provide feedback. I just want to do it in Slack or I want to do it on my phone or something like that. That is very common. TA teams have been reduced by near 50%, at least in our customer base. Hiring managers have to do a lot more and they have to do it faster and there’s a lot of urgency around their hires and tech isn’t showing up for that moment.

I think that this next generation for us is going to be about that. Meeting the users where they are. It’s going to be about more personalization. We’ve invested a lot in the tech stack so that our customers can customize user experiences. Because change management is hard. The last thing your users want to do right now is also sit on a webinar and learn how to use their recruiting tool. They just want to just like the same way you open your iPhone and suddenly face ID exists. That’s what they want hiring to feel like.

Kyle Lagunas:

But they do want to come to a webinar of research-

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yeah. That maybe.

Kyle Lagunas:

…with Madeline and Kyle at Aptitude.

Rebecca Carr:

Of course. But certainly not on how to create a job. No, that feels bad.

Madeline Laurano:

That feels bad. It’s interesting because, let’s talk about ATS market for a little bit. We all love it. We have been in the ATS market for a long time. SmartRecruiters has taken different approaches. I think when SmartRecruiters first came out into the scene, it was the cool provider. Everybody would talk about, okay, you can invest in your HCM suite, you can get a best of breed, traditional best of breed, or you can get the cool provider at the time, and that was SmartRecruiters.

Things have shifted in the market and we’re seeing a lot of companies saying, okay, we’re just going to go with our HCM provider. Now we’re seeing new providers like Paradox and Eightfold launching ATSs. The market’s changing quite a bit even though it’s stale. We talk about [inaudible] right now. The approach for SmartRecruiters, in the past, you’ve taken was to build this huge ecosystem of partners, build out a marketplace.

Then you went in a different direction and said, we can actually do all those things as well. You built programmatic, you built sourcing, you built a lot of these capabilities in one platform to do more with less. What do you see as you look at your new announcement in SmartRecruiters and the new vision that you have? Is it going to be a partner ecosystem? Is it going to be, do everything and partner where you can?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah. Two comments on that because when you describe it that way, it sounds like shiny object syndrome, which frankly is we’re not alone. There’s a lot of vendors in the market that I think-

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s a lot of shiny stuff right now.

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, exactly.

Madeline Laurano:

And you’re responding to what the buyers are looking for. Sometimes they’re looking for one at the time and it shifts.

Rebecca Carr:

Or just investments in adjacencies. Some of our direct competitors have gone in directions where I’m just like, oh, I wouldn’t have thought about that. But it’s an opportunity to respond to customer need and they run at it. For us, a couple of things. One, focus is going to be important for us in the next chapter. We have a problem to solve, but we can’t solve that problem for everyone. I think the approach we’re taking with this product strategy is, how do we think about specifically high-volume, high-velocity hiring at a global scale and how do we make that more agent-enabled?

Not just for the candidate. Candidate engagement, candidate experience, obviously a lot of opportunity for AI. But for the hirer, like the store manager sitting on the ground that doesn’t care about the recruiting tool, but they care about hiring. It’s a more focused strategy that I think is not something where you see as many of the HCM providers, because in those circumstances they don’t have the big Workdays. Or if they have the SAP, they don’t engage with it. Because decentralized has not historically been a real vertical for them.

The other way that I think about it is, I’m a recruiting workflow orchestration engine. My specialty is orchestrating a beautiful recruiting process. I’m not going to be a specialist in people analytics, even though that’s important to understanding how you should use a recruiting workflow effectively. I’m not going to be a specialist in job distribution or programmatic advertising or in Zoom interview transcription.

Probably just not going to be where I go. But there are great best-of-breed vendors out there that my UI should be able to adapt to so that I can give a great experience at scale like that, leveraging the best of a lot of people. But that’s going to require that I don’t just go and see, hey, anybody that wants to can be a partner of SmartRecruiters and all of you are going to have the same experience.

I’m going to have to actually go and build relationships with people in a more focused way to say, does your product strategy align to mine? Are we going to go to market together effectively? Are we going to make sure our customers are mutually successful? It’s a more strategic way of approaching ecosystem, but it’s one that I’m very open about. It’s critical. It’s just not going to be the same way that I think we did it the first time, which is here’s some APIs anybody’s that’s interested.

Kyle Lagunas:

I feel like we saw that play out really well. I felt like the intentional ecosystem design. I was at Beamery when this happened. Workday had just invested in Beamery. Paradox was coming up, HiredScore was coming up, and the three of us were going to market together to Workday customers. They were like, well, great. Part of the pitch here from HRIT was, we’re going to go on Workday recruiting, but then we can build our own preferred tech stack on top of this. Look, we have these partners that all do different things. I think the intentionality is, I absolutely love to hear it. You also were one of the first providers to really lean into the hiring manager. Do you remember their hiring manager mobile app?

Rebecca Carr:

Oh yeah.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Isn’t so fun that mobile apps are coming back?

Rebecca Carr:

There might be better applications of that in the future.

Kyle Lagunas:

I hope so. I hope so. Not that it was bad before.

Rebecca Carr:

No.

Kyle Lagunas:

I actually think it was HR Tech, like 2012 or something that I did a writeup on that when I was a blogger.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yeah. That is why H&M and Primark and people like that buy SmartRecruiters, because none of those people are sitting at a desk. They need something.

Kyle Lagunas:

Guess what? Those are still enterprise companies. We’re not talking about solving problems for just a small franchisee.

Rebecca Carr:

No, actually, where we have accelerated as a business over the last several years is really international scale. We are as much a European company as we are a North American company right now. It has to do with a decision, frankly, that Jerome made a long time ago where I thought he was crazy. He’s like, “We’re just going to go global really fast.” I was like, “Oh, but we haven’t conquered one market yet.” He was like, “Nope, we’re going to do it anyway.” As a result, we’ve been very successful at supporting multinational, and that is a hard thing to go do. Even if the best competitors on this floor decided they wanted to lean into that, it would take them years to really establish. Me keeping that gap is important. You’ll still see us lean into international, international, international.

Madeline Laurano:

You don’t just have customers that are international customers. You have feet on the ground, you have conferences that are international.

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, conferences. Yeah, we just launched those again.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. I’m so glad.

Rebecca Carr:

I know. They’re so fun. We throw a good party here at SmartRecruiters.

Madeline Laurano:

You throw a great party. Are you going to be doing analyst days at these conferences?

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yes. Well, we did one day this year. We did EMEA. We’re doing APAC in two weeks and next year we’ll do more. We’re going to extend them out. The content’s fantastic. The energy’s good. It’s who we are. As much as we’re a vendor to a lot of our customers, customer relationships have always been a key pillar of our success. We really enjoy spending time with them, and I think that those conferences are a good opportunity for us all to come together and celebrate.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, it’s community. Are you seeing as much? Because Rebecca had mentioned maybe I want to do this in Slack. Maybe I don’t want to log into my at ATS. I’m seeing a lot more vendors that are like, you know what? Remember UX/UI was a big thing? Now they’re like, you know what? We actually want to be interface agnostic. Bring your own interface, choose your own engagement portal. However you want to come, we’re ready for you. The API strategy shifts not just to background check providers and assessment providers. It’s actually into these enterprise systems.

Madeline Laurano:

100%. I think I got an email from a corporation a couple of weeks ago and they saw a big HCM provider announced a collaboration tool, but it wasn’t integrated with Teams. For them that was a deal breaker. It is, and I think with co-pilots, what we’re seeing with a of co-pilots and assistants right now is it’s great to have in the product, but what value [do] you get out of having that in your work tech?

Rebecca Carr:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes. That’s a layer into that orchestration concept. It’s like, I’m orchestrating? Then I’ve got to account for anybody’s user preference.

Rebecca Carr:

If I could snap my fingers and do one thing to SmartRecruiters right now, I would make it 100% API-able. I’m close. I’m getting there. It’s part of the strategy. But really our customers are saying, “I thought- I love you guys. I thought I could buy a fully productized end-to-end and I could push it out to my field, but the reality is in this country versus this country, I do need that box gone. How do I get rid of it?” Well, design systems. You can just delete it or create your own experiences. You can push them into platforms like ServiceNow, is a good example.

Madeline Laurano:

Where they spend their time.

Rebecca Carr:

Where they spend their time.

Madeline Laurano:

It makes complete sense.

Rebecca Carr:

That is a big- where with our announcements this fall we’re launching with a bunch of design partners and a big piece of what they’re leaning into is that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, Rebecca, your history in the space I think really sets you up as a chief executive officer at this time. You are not coming in with just completely fresh eyes. We do need to know the space. There are some that come in and they pound their chest about we’re not HR people, we’re not TA people, we’re technology people. It’s like, well, that’s cool, but right now you need to know what your customer’s up against.

Rebecca Carr:

You got to learn from the mistakes of the past right now.

Madeline Laurano:

You’ve got the expertise. I have a question-

Kyle Lagunas:

You need to know the market in ecosystem. Yeah.

Madeline Laurano:

I have a question about this new role for you. Because we’re seeing more CEOs that are coming from a product background and that’s not something we’ve seen before. That would be like, wow, now there’s a lot of, Paradox, Adams had a product, so we’re seeing a lot of examples of that now. We’ve got AI and generative AI now completely changing how you think about tech. How does this change how you approach your team and who you’re hiring? Are you looking for a completely different skill set than you were as head of product now as CEO? Or is this just an extension and an evolution?

Rebecca Carr:

Well, certainly I feel like I have invested a lot in finding the right people to be the product and engineering bench. Because it’s not even about building innovative products, but also doing it in a really efficient way. You need to start looking at an R&D organization as, okay, you’re going to have to innovate. You’re going to have to do great things, but you can’t add one person. You need to start practicing what you preach and adopting AI technology in order to make yourself more efficient while also driving growth.

Because we’re in an interesting moment. The people that approach with that creativity are generally speaking, people that are innovators at heart, creatives at heart, and those are great product and engineering leaders. When I came in, I focused on those roles first and my SVP product, she’s amazing. She was a founder that sold the HiBob and just loves this space, loves solving this problem and loves a data problem. Which this is going to, in the new world where UIs disappear, this is a data industry.

Kyle Lagunas:

Where AIs are talking to Ais?

Rebecca Carr:

Yes. You’ve got to be highly technical and you need to be ready to educate. But educate in a way that the market can understand-

Kyle Lagunas:

Enablement.

Rebecca Carr:

… a relatable way. I’ve leaned in a lot to that. You see a lot more product speakers generally speaking, versus CROs and CMOs. But I’ve had to also balance that with a C-suite that are pure operators that can think through not just how to drive efficiency in R&D, but in sales and marketing. How do we think through balancing PLG motions, like consumption motions with subscription software? Those are good product and revenue problems. But not your tried and true seller that’s just sold enterprise software for the last 20 years. It’s a different moment and profile and feel like it’s coming together. We’ve got new CFO, new CMO coming in. We’ve got our new product leader, obviously. Good engineering DNA, tenure. Yeah, I feel good about it. I got a good bench.

Kyle Lagunas:

Literally, you’re such a badass. I’m sitting here.

Madeline Laurano:

I love it.

Kyle Lagunas:

Got it.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah, I remember seeing you probably at the last hiring success event that I was at. I know there were probably a couple after the last one, and you were the star of the show. You gave the keynote, the opening keynote, you opened it up, you led the analyst session. Jerome was there obviously. We were both on a panel with Jerome at that event.

Kyle Lagunas:

Jerry walked in as the panel was beginning.

Madeline Laurano:

I love Jerry. I loved that panel. That was a great panel. But you were the star of the show and you kicked off.

Kyle Lagunas:

Absolutely.

Madeline Laurano:

Jerome was setting the stage. I feel like this has always been the vision. The vision has always been you would be the seat.

Rebecca Carr:

It’s funny, when this moment came to be, he just looked at me- because, I had left, we had a moment when I first left where I was like, “You know what? Seven years, Jerome. I love this space. I need to learn something different about another space so I can understand how to balance what TA brings versus what it doesn’t and to learn from the best of other industries.” When I came back and they put me in this role, he looked at me and he was just like, didn’t say anything. Just on the Zoom, just smiled. He was proud, I think.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, proud papa.

Rebecca Carr:

But I think that’s the case for a lot of the people that sit in leadership roles at SmartRecruiters now. There’s a lot of tenure. Even my chief of staff is eight, nine years of the business, things like that. There’s a lot of people that want to see this through that really want to change this industry. That starts with me. Frankly, we’ve gotten a lot of energy as a business from seeing product become the centerpiece.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s like revitalized.

Rebecca Carr:

We’re back.

Madeline Laurano:

You’ve been quiet for a while and I feel like you’re back.

Rebecca Carr:

We’re back.

Kyle Lagunas:

Everybody’s holding their breath for a minute.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah. The nice thing is you’re not cleaning up a bad reputation. You are just a company that went quiet for a few years and now you’re re-entering-

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, there was some change and transition, but I like to see momentum. I thrive from winning and seeing success and all of that. I think that’s what the future holds for a couple of people on this floor.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well you definitely-

Rebecca Carr:

It’s going to be an interesting 18 to 24 months.

Kyle Lagunas:

It really is. You know what? You’re making it really hard for us to be industry agnostic right now, industry neutral, because we love you. We’re rooting for you.

Madeline Laurano:

Yes. We’re all in Boston now.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know.

Rebecca Carr:

I know. I love you guys too. Dinner on, I don’t know, we’ll go on Newbury Street. Do something fun.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, can we never meet in Vegas again.

Okay, that is a wrap, little chickadees. Huge thanks to Rebecca for sharing her story and her vision for shaking up talent acquisition. And big thanks to Madeline to joining us for this special little convo. Honestly, I have a ton of notes from this. Personalized hiring workflows. API first platforms. Making recruiting tools feel as easy as unlocking your phone. Yeah, I’m really into this.

But I’m also really into Rebecca.

Her leadership isn’t just inspiring, it’s exactly what I think the industry needs right now. She’s not here for business as usual, and neither are we at Aptitude. This was a super cool, honestly, just very down-to-earth conversation with somebody that we admire. Rebecca, thank you for spending some time with us today. We will catch you and all of our friends here on the next episode of Transformation Realness. Until then, stay real, stay bold and make all your recruiting tools actually make your life easier. Until next time, this is Kyle signing off. Bye.

Tags Recruitment, Recruitment Technology

Blog Podcast

Stop Guessing, Start Listening: The Real Approach to Hiring

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 12, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by hiring tech trailblazers Jahkedda Akbar, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Radancy Labs, and Matt Lamphear, Head of the Digital Team at Radancy. Together, they unpack how Radancy is taking talent acquisition tech from “meh” to meaningful by blending data-driven insights with good old-fashioned common sense (and a touch of empathy).

This isn’t about shiny new features — it’s about solving real problems for recruiters and candidates alike. Our conversation hits everything from streamlining bloated tech stacks to tackling the ever-shifting whims of today’s candidates. Ready to take notes, HR leaders? Let’s go.

Staying Real: Why Innovation Must Be Grounded in Reality

Let’s talk about why so much of what passes for “innovation” in HR tech is just hot air. Radancy isn’t here for that. Instead, they’re laser-focused on what people actually need. “My main job is to work with our customers, our solutions engineers, [to] bring the voice of the customer back to our product team as they configure and determine, prioritize what to build next,” Matt says.

Radancy isn’t out here building tools that no one asked for. Instead of guessing, Radancy’s product strategy is based on real feedback from customers, advisory boards and even the complaints that come in through support tickets.

Radancy Labs cranks it up another notch. Jahkedda’s team combines big data with focus groups and qualitative research to dig into user behavior and context — with a tight focus on real people with real problems. “Oftentimes in technology we lose sight of the humans on the other side … So my team and I are really focused on, yes, big data, understanding trends, but contextualizing those trends,” she explains. In other words: No navel-gazing allowed. Radancy is about innovation that delivers, not just checking off RFP boxes.

Innovation isn’t about adding more features. It’s about delivering the right solutions at the right time. Jahkedda and Matt fundamentally believe that if they don’t understand the recruiter experience, they can’t build tools that make their lives better. HR leaders, take note — this is what staying real looks like in practice.

Don’t just chase the shiny new thing. Get feedback from your teams, your candidates and yes, even your customers. Stay connected to the reality of the work.

Candidate Motivations Are a Moving Target — And That’s Okay

Remember when candidates cared most about finding “interesting and challenging work”? Yeah, neither do we. The pandemic flipped the script on candidate priorities, and guess what’s at the top of the list now? Job security and compensation.

Shocker, right?

Jahkedda shares that Radancy’s been tracking candidate motivations since 2018, and that historic data has been a game-changer. “We could not have predicted that putting that in place in 2018 meant that we were going to have historic data to actually vet and validate based on this space we’re in today,” she says.

Here’s the kicker: These shifts aren’t slowing down. Jahkedda explains how candidate motivations swung wildly every 30 to 45 days during the early days of the pandemic — “I want purpose! No, wait, I want security! Actually, I want both!” — and they’ve kept evolving ever since. To keep up, employers need to be nimble. Messaging must adapt in real time, and employer branding can’t be a one-and-done exercise.

Matt adds that Radancy’s dashboards help clients track sentiment and motivations by department, location and job category — and even externally, across Radancy’s client ecosystem. “We give our customers dashboards so they can view not only how people are answering their own brand perception, their NPS score, their motivations … but you can drill it down by job and then you can compare it to others within Radancy,” Matt says.

Agility isn’t a buzzword — it’s a survival skill. Stay ahead by grounding your decisions in data and continuously adapting your approach.

Say Goodbye to Tech Chaos and Hello to Synergy

Let’s face it: You’re drowning in a sea of point solutions, and your recruiters are over it. Radancy gets it, and they’re here to throw you a life raft. Instead of cobbling together a dozen tools that don’t talk to each other, Radancy’s platform creates synergy by bringing it all under one roof — programmatic advertising, employee referrals, hiring events, CRM tools — you name it.

“Everything we’re doing is about taking the different channels that are available in our platform because we have had a history of investment and acquisitions,” says Matt, who is bringing those different resources together into a single powerhouse product. By reducing dependency on paid media and leveraging existing resources more effectively, Radancy helps clients get better results with less chaos. It’s all about making life easier for recruiters while delivering real value.

And can we talk about how Radancy uses challenge statements to keep things focused? Instead of telling their product team to “build this thing,” they define customer pain points and let the nerds (lovingly!) figure out the best solution.

Jahkedda and Matt know that the less time your team spends juggling tools, the more time they’ll have to focus on what really matters — like hiring great people.

People in This Episode

Jahkedda Akbar: LinkedIn
Matt Lamphear: Linked I n

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. It’s me. Welcome back. Here we are for another very special episode of Transformation Realness, which, as you know, is the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less shitty and they have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad and, most of all, the real. It’s produced in a partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by none other than the dashing, daring, totally cool Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech in transformation. Get into it.

In today’s episode I am joined by two absolute powerhouses from Radancy, Jahkedda Akbar, SVP of Innovation, and Matt Lamphear, Head of the Digital Team. We’re getting into the nitty-gritty of how they keep their product strategy sharp, balancing the human side of innovation with the demands of enterprise software.

These two are breaking down what it takes to prioritize customer needs, optimize tools and avoid the dreaded trap of building solutions in a vacuum. And, yeah, we’ve got thoughts on the future of talent acquisition. Spoiler, it’s not about more point solutions, although I think we’re still buying a lot of stuff. No, this conversation goes pretty deep, but it’s also packed with practical insights. Whether you’re trying to make sense of a shifting candidate motivation or figuring out how to leverage all the data you’re sitting on, this episode has something for you. So grab your notebooks or at least just listen very actively and settle in. This one’s all about innovation that actually delivers. Check it out.

Why don’t you guys introduce yourselves? Matt, do you want to go first?

Matt Lamphear:

Sure. Thanks, Kyle. Matt Lamphear, I oversee the digital team here at Radancy. My main job is to work with our customers, our solutions engineers, bring the voice of the customer back to our product team as they configure and determine, prioritize what to build next for our software.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s super cool. It sounds like you might be an analyst in residence. That’s kind of what my job is, but I don’t have just one product team.

Matt Lamphear:

I will learn from you today. There we go.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jahkedda, hi, who are you?

Jahkedda Akbar:

Hi, Kyle. Good to meet you. I’m Jahkedda Akbar. I’m the SVP of Innovation and I head up our Radancy Labs. At Radancy, in our Labs team, I’m really interested in understanding really the side of the user behavior. I think that oftentimes in technology we lose sight of the humans on the other side and we’re going technology down in product development. So my team and I are really focused on, yes, big data, understanding trends, but contextualizing those trends. So having a market researcher on our team who’s doing the qualitative side, really bringing to bear what’s happening from a macro trends perspective so that we can bring that together. That informs both our strategy and our innovation.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, that’s super cool. I mean, I love that because there is, as you all know, a real tendency in the solution provider space to innovate in a vacuum, to do that navel-gazing or to build that thing that you’d missed that you’re getting dinged for in RFPs. Or you’re getting all these feature requests and just responding. It’s really easy for your product strategy to get bogged down with just what is insulated in your organization. So I really love you guys for having this lens, make sure that you’re innovating for impact. You’re delivering solutions that your customers need. Yeah.

All right, but tell me about Radancy for those who don’t know, who are you? Because you guys have been around for a while, right? But we have had a rebrand, what was that, two years ago, three years ago?

Matt Lamphear:

A couple of years ago we renamed to Radancy, not a real word, so it was quite a process to pick a new name, but we are a software company. We continue to invest and expand our software, but we do so for the enterprise market and we do so with a specific lens. It’s not just helping customers hire faster and save money, whether it’s from reducing their key metrics, cost per application, cost per hire, but also reducing dependency on paid media because we have so many different channels that we can use, helping them maybe consolidate, not need so many point solutions. I do so-

Kyle Lagunas:

Are you saying that there are too many point solutions in talent acquisition?

Matt Lamphear:

Not at HR tech, I don’t think so.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God, girl, there is really so much. How long have you been at Radancy?

Matt Lamphear:

I don’t like that question because it’s close to 30 years now. It’s the only job I ever had other than Taco Bell and-

Kyle Lagunas:

You worked at Taco Bell?

Matt Lamphear:

I did work at Taco Bell. Do you eat Taco Bell? Do you get down on that Taco Bell?

Jahkedda Akbar:

So I will say that is my secret. I do eat Taco Bell. I know it’s-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, no, no. This is a very safe space. I went and ate at Taco Bell in the restaurant with my mom for my birthday this summer.

Jahkedda Akbar:

It’s fantastic.

Kyle Lagunas:

That Crunchwrap Supreme, it needs to be crunchy, it needs to be hot. I need that Baja Blast Zero. I want it crispy.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah, well I remember when we would do different bets with friends and the loser had to do the $20 Taco Bell Challenge, which-

Kyle Lagunas:

… which used to really be something. That was a lot of Taco Bell.

Matt Lamphear:

… used to be a lot of Taco. Now it’s pretty easy. But to eat, not including drink by the way, not a drink, $20 Taco Bell. You had to eat it all in one sitting.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God. Well, now, anyway, we’re not going to go too far down that rabbit hole. All right, you’ve been at Radancy for a little while. What about you, Jahkedda, how long have you been there?

Jahkedda Akbar:

Well, so this is also a question that’s a little weird one for me. So I’ve been technically at Radancy for about 10 years now, but I am a two-time boomerang. So I’ve been on the solution provider side of the house and also a practitioner.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay, work!

Jahkedda Akbar:

Left twice, went to two different consultancies to be a part of their candidate engagement team. And then I actually built the very first employer brand recruitment marketing function at a digital consultancy. So, yeah, I know it from both sides of the house.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I’m really glad I asked the question because that street cred is so important. There are a lot of people that, I mean, that… TA is a really interesting and dynamic space. I always say that recruiting is one of those jobs that everyone thinks they can do better than you. And I also think that in the solution provider space, and I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it, they think they know what your problem actually is. And, for you, especially in your function, I think that, yeah, you’re running a team that is giving you context and giving you vision and helping you stay ahead and stay relevant. But then you are also having that understanding of how this is really going to go. I’m not trying to cook up problems to sell more product. I’m trying to lean in deeper and deliver more value. Am I putting the right words in your mouth?

Jahkedda Akbar:

Absolutely, yeah. When I think about our software, I always think about working with TA teams. So in my last role I was a part of the marketing communications function.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, really? Okay.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Yeah, and I actually partnered with TA. And what I remember saying to the TA executives all the time was, “I know that your number one concern is your recruiter burnout, is making sure that you have products that make sure they are efficient, that we’re supporting you as a recruitment marketing function.” And so I was oftentimes pulled in, we had an internal digital business transformation function. And so a part of my lens was also making sure the software that they had made sense, that we’re understanding the ROI. So then, coming back on this side of the house, I can bring that to bear and say, “Is our software doing what it needs to do with all of those things in mind?”

Kyle Lagunas:

No, honestly, that’s really interesting. And, I mean, there has been a lot of change at Radancy too. I think it’s super cool for them to have that recent experience. A lot has changed in the space. But tell me a little bit about what you guys are up to right now. What are you cooking up?

Matt Lamphear:

Everything we’re doing is about taking the different channels that are available in our platform because we have had a history of investment and acquisitions. So now in one platform you’ve got not just the programmatic advertising, but you’ve got the employee referrals, the hiring events, the CRM. And what is the relative contribution to each of those when you-

Kyle Lagunas:

In-person events, virtual events?

Matt Lamphear:

Both of them, both of them.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah. We’ve been integrating on our roadmap, all of it together. Unified profile in the CRM, making sure that profile has what events they attended, who they were referred by, what they were rated on. Making sure that any advertising external budget includes both individual jobs, branding, but also event promotion. So we think there’s a lot of synergies there. And I feel like I’m a kid in the candy shop because there’s a lot more connections that we can make. We want to do more predictive campaigning when, here’s my goals, here’s my timeframe, here’s what I would expect each individual channel to contribute. And that helps me, at least, where do I start? And then optimize along the way so we have that data. We can get that.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, that’s what’s so… Look, I’ve been an industry analyst for 15 years. I was born when you started at Radancy… JK!

Matt Lamphear:

That wasn’t nice.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, but I have been watching for a while and it’s been interesting and that’s why I keep doing it. I stepped over to the practitioner side to see if I knew what I thought I knew and I didn’t. There’s a lot I didn’t know, right? But we have literally never seen this much change this fast. And I’m not just talking about the impact of Covid and the scale up and the scale down and the hire up and then hire… all of that chaos. But then also the technology innovation that’s happening, the way that we have completely shifted human behavior. We live on these devices and on these screens so much more than we ever have before. So you’re a kid in a candy shop too, but how do you zero in on, “Where am I going to… What am I?” You can’t do it all, right? How are you guys zeroing in on, “What are we going to prioritize? What are we going to get done?”

Matt Lamphear:

We’re doing it more efficiently every year. And this year we did a really good job with Jahkedda’s help in getting all the feedback, whether it was from customers direct, from our software advisory boards, to the individual tickets that are entered into our backend systems and what product managers are being asked for. And we, basically, with the help of generative AI, we change those into challenge statements and those challenge statements then are delivered to the product team. And of course you prioritize the challenge statements, but that’s what they work off of and then make solutions.

Kyle Lagunas:

Challenge statements, talk to me more about that. I haven’t heard of it before.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah, so from a product development standpoint, I’ve worked with the product team enough, they don’t want you to tell them, “Hey, build this.”

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay.

Matt Lamphear:

They want you to say, “What is the challenge of the customer?”

Kyle Lagunas:

Those nerds are so self-important.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah, they’ll actually kick it back…

Kyle Lagunas:

But let me tell you…

Matt Lamphear:

“Don’t tell me what to build here, but just tell…”

So we provide that and we help…”Hey, sales, tell us which of these challenge statements are most important, you hear most often during the sales process.” And so we provide the product team with a prioritized list of challenge statements and then they know the tools and the data that they have and they build the roadmap off of that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay.

Matt Lamphear:

So I’m actually proud of how far we’ve gotten this year, and every year we get a little better. And so 2025 is going to be pretty awesome.

Jahkedda Akbar:

You can get to this place where you are evolving based on the things that you’re hearing that are problems and issues and that’s how we create the challenge statements. What my team does is we also go in and we’re talking to candidates. We’re actually doing focus groups to understand, “How do you feel about different solutions that we’re actually putting out?” And so a massive important part, again coming back to the beginning, is that we’re not innovating in a silo, that we’re actually understanding how does this work in real time? None of us work in high volume situations. Maybe we did when we were 17. So talk to someone who actually works that job and understand what makes the most sense for them. Bring that to bear when we’re building out a roadmap.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I really love to hear that too, because just like the recruiter experience has changed, the candidates, their experiences have shifted a lot too. Well, and look, the employment environments that we are in right now are also way different than they were two years ago. So when we were getting ready, you guys were talking about a couple of concepts you are working on. Do you want to share some of that? I think, what did you say, the candidate motivation research? Yeah, talk to me about that.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Sure, I’ll talk a little bit about that. So, interestingly enough, we developed out this solution back in 2018, and it was really to mirror the information we would derive from both our customers in terms of their employees, understanding what motivates them, and the external market. We wanted to have a real-time solution surveying candidates all the time to understand how are motivations changing over time. We could not have predicted that putting that in place in 2018 meant that we were going to have historic data to actually vet and validate based on this space we’re in today.

Kyle Lagunas:

Ah, yeah, that’s cool.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Amazing. So in 2020 what I saw is every 30 to 45 days motivations were swinging wildly. It would be like, “I want purpose. No, I want security. No, I want this and that.” And so what we’ve been seeing over the past, let’s say, five or six years since the pandemic, is that motivations continue to change along every single new thing, including technology. So it’s return to office, it’s the economy, it’s the great resignation, and then ChatGPT and candidates and job seekers are thinking, “Well, how do I upscale myself? How do I remain relevant?” And so really paying attention to those key factors. What we’re seeing that is on average was about a 27% decline from when things were great in 2019. The top motivating factor was interesting and challenging work. Now, fast-forward to now, that’s really come down to maybe the third or fourth most important motivator. So that, for us-

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ll work on anything for a paycheck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jahkedda Akbar:

So that is what keyed us into this idea of, “All right, well we have to be more agile with messaging-“

Kyle Lagunas:

Because your customers do too.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Absolutely. And so getting ahead of that for our customer-

Kyle Lagunas:

They’re operating on that front line every day.

Jahkedda Akbar:

And so your brand isn’t changing, but how are we understanding the motivations aligned with your brand to make sure that whole right message and market at the right time, if we don’t know what the message is and what the right time is then how do we get ahead [of] it? So it’s the message, it’s being able to be agile about delivery and then optimization across the full platform.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love it. It’s also giving data to inform these things.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

Because, look, marketers love to think of new things. “What if we spin this? What if we spin that?” But if I can actually go and say, like, “Hey, I actually am monitoring this thing, I’m seeing this thing. We need to respond to this thing,” then you are actually going to get, I think, more alignment and buy-in for that continuous adaptation, right? If I say, “Hey folks, our EVP is not relevant, and I’m not just telling you that our recruiters are not getting signals of response rates. It’s not just that. I’m actually seeing in our sentiment analysis that people are not caring about these things that we are pushing. It’s just not landing.” You know what I mean? I might have that anecdotal perspective, but to move a ship in that much, that big of a way, anecdote is not going to be enough.

Matt Lamphear:

It’s even down to not just the time level, but it’s the location and department level too. So when we do have this data, we give our customers dashboards so they can view not only how people are answering their own brand perception, their NPS score, their motivations, are they finding what they want on the career site, but you can drill it down by job and then you can compare it to others within Radancy, because we use the same question set across all our clients so they can put in context, “Is this a good or is this a bad score?” And then our technology allows us to deploy whatever messaging needs to be deployed per job category…

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. So what I really like about that is that is the kind of personalization that I’m looking for. I’m not just looking for it to remember my name last time I applied, right, and to show me what job I applied for. I want it to serve up the content that’s relevant to me.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah. And we need to tie what is their main motivation to what can the company offer, tie those two things together and make sure-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, that’s really sophisticated. And look, I mean, I know that you guys have been on a transformation journey yourselves and positioning more as that technology player, but I think that your deep roots in delivering recruiting solutions, having that whole portfolio of capabilities, you can say, “We’re seeing an opportunity to make an impact and we have the tools to activate on all of this across multiple channels, multiple assets.” Right? Systems….

Matt Lamphear:

We want to partner with our customers, make it successful as possible. So we pride ourselves on not set it and forget it, “Here’s our software, but here’s the messaging you should deploy through that software. And here’s why.”

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, honestly, it sounds super interesting. I mean, I can talk about anything all day, but is there anything else that you guys wanted to make sure that we landed on today? Anything you wanted to bring up?

Matt Lamphear:

Well, I think the big message here is we always want to make sure that we’re helping reduce the dependency on paid media. And there’s really a hierarchy to do that. And our solution allows us to make sure you’re looking at your past candidates, make sure you’re looking, leveraging your employees, make sure you’re utilizing everything at your disposal. And then when paid media comes, we’ve got programmatic to do it. It’s the story that we’re telling. It’s one source of data, one reporting less work for your IT team, less report work for your legal team, your procurement team. So it’s really bundled up nicely together. We’re excited about the future too. We’re going to continue to push.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think so. I mean, look, there’s a big push for efficiency, right, and cost-cutting, but it’s not just face value, move faster and work cheaper. It’s like, “Get better, get more excellent.” You need the right data in place. You still need the right tools in place, and I think we need to be better stewards of the resources we have. It sounds like you guys are enabling your clients to do that.

Matt Lamphear:

And you need to measure it consistently.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, I mean, literally, I felt like during Covid we backed off big time on some of our recruiting scorecard, recruiter performance metrics, because we didn’t want anybody to leave, right? And guess what? When the business came and said, “What are all these people doing?” You’re working hard. You have no data to show them. They’re like, “Okay, well, they’re all gone.” So I think that’s also it, too. You guys are empowering your customers to be excellent in this new era of, look, you’ve got to know your stuff. So it’s super cool. You guys have a lot to offer.

Matt Lamphear:

Appreciate that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thanks for coming and spending time with me.

Matt Lamphear:

Appreciate the time. Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay, that is a wrap, another episode of Transformation Realness. Big thank you to Jahkedda and Matt for coming on and sharing how Radancy is raising the bar with smarter, more intentional tech. From turning candidate motivation trends into actual insights to keeping innovation grounded in real-world insights, they reminded us that solving the right problems requires staying curious, connected, and being adaptable.

The takeaway for me, it’s not just about building solutions, it’s about building the right solutions and continuously fine-tuning along the way. Whether you’re on the tech side or leading a talent team, it’s pretty clear the days have set it and forget it are over. They’re behind us. They need to stay behind us. Bye. Innovation is a moving target, and those who stay nimble and aligned will be the ones that are leading the way.

Thank you as always for spending some time with me and my little friends. I’ll catch you on the very next episode of Transformation Realness. And, until then, stay bold, stay curious and, above all, stay real.

Tags Recruitment, recruitment marketing, talent acquisition

Blog

Announcing Aptitude’s Human-Centric AI Council: A New Initiative to Put HR in the Driver’s Seat in AI Innovation

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 11, 2024

I’ve been getting lots of requests for predictions this time of year, and it’s been an absolute whirlwind of a year in our industry. AI is everywhere all at once—and we’re only just beginning to see how much it can do in HR and talent.

After 15 years tracking innovation cycles in HR technology and research trends in talent, I can honestly say I have never seen things move as fast (or as dramatically) as they have in the 24 months.

We are, quite literally, at the cusp of total and complete transformation of how HR and talent functions operate. And I’m not sure we’re quite ready for it.

Here’s why: For the last three years Aptitude Research surveyed HR and talent leaders about the greatest obstacles they face when it comes to the adoption of AI, and the leading response every year has been gaps in the HR organization’s understanding of AI and automation.

Figure 1 – Obstacles to Adoption of AI in HR, 2024

But the future of HR is undeniably intertwined with AI. As we look to 2024 and beyond, AI is poised to become the largest area of tech investment within HR, with 61% of organizations planning to increase their AI investments this year. While the opportunities presented by AI are vast, however, the pace of innovation has far outstripped the guidance and clarity many HR leaders need to confidently determine where and how to utilize AI.

And in the absence of established best practices, the potential pitfalls AI presents to HR—issues like the introduction of bias, lack of workforce readiness, lack of clear ROI—are stalling HR innovation at a pivotal moment. Lacking technical expertise and AI literacy, more and more HR and talent teams are being relegated to the stakeholder seat when it comes to AI and tech innovation.

My big question—and something I’ve been talking about with HR, talent, and tech execs all year—is, “How can we ensure the ethical, effective, and equitable use of AI in HR if HR doesn’t have a seat at the AI table?”

So… Yeah. It’s clear that AI will play a central role in the evolution of HR, but I’m worried that we’re headed down a path where HR leaders and talent professionals are offering input from the sidelines when it comes to how we utilize these rapidly evolving capabilities.

In a perfect world, we are working closely with our colleagues in IT, Legal, Compliance, and Operations to ensure AI is implemented and adopted in a way that serves the needs of businesses, the well-being of the workforce, and the fair and equitable treatment of candidates. But in reality, HR is increasingly relegated to the stakeholder’s seat–that decisions about how AI is adopted are being made by others. And now, more than ever, it’s critical that HR is in the driver’s seat.

So what are we going to do about it?

Announcing Aptitude’s Human-Centric AI Council (HCAIC)

Today, I’m excited to share we’re embarking on our own HCAI Initiative with the launch of a new program: the Aptitude HCAIC, a deeply collaborative, practical, and forward-thinking effort dedicated to supporting HR leaders in the responsible, ethical, and effective utilization of AI in HR.

Whereas we’ve hosted Research Councils in the past—bringing HR and talent execs and consultants together to shape and inform Aptitude’s Research agenda—this is a more focused effort dedicated to empowering HR and talent teams in the evaluation, implementation, and utilization of AI.

We believe AI should augment human workers and enhance human experiences—not displace human workers or over-automate important interactions. And who is better to inform and share best practices in this way than talent, HR, and technology leaders who have experience doing these things?

To ensure that AI technologies in the HR space are human-centric—prioritizing workforce well-being, fairness, equity, and productivity as we embrace the future of work.

Our Council is founded on three core principles: leadership, trust, and accountability. We’re starting strong with 10 founding members, all exec-level HR and talent practitioners who have been navigating these challenges and opportunities firsthand in global enterprise organizations.

At the heart of this Council is a commitment to ensuring that AI solutions are developed with human-centric values in mind. We want to move beyond just making HR processes more efficient—we want to ensure that AI enhances HR stakeholder experiences (candidates, employees, etc.), fosters equitable people practices and processes, and drives positive organizational outcomes.

As we move forward, our Council will focus on creating a framework for ethical AI practices, which will include establishing clear guidelines and standards for vendors and practitioners alike. By leading the way in this space, we aim to raise the bar for AI solutions that will have a lasting, positive impact on both the workforce and the organizations that rely on them.

It’s a mighty effort we’re undertaking—and we can’t do it alone. That’s why we’re also thrilled to announce our initial underwriter, GoodTime, whose support will help us get things off the ground. Together, we have spent the last couple of months assembling a collective of visionary and expert practitioner leaders who are committed to ensuring that AI in HR doesn’t just drive exceptional results, but also aligned with the values of fairness and inclusivity.

To kick off this exciting initiative, we’ll be hosting our inaugural “Session Zero,” where we’ll workshop the HCAIC’s first-year agenda. This session will bring together our founding members to identify key challenges in the AI adoption process, crowdsource best practices, and create a roadmap for the future for this effort.

Together, we’ll lay the foundation for an initiative that will (hopefully) help to shape how our industry approaches the integration and augmentation of AI into HR.

Ramping Up: What’s Next for Aptitude’s HCAIC
The HCAIC’s mission is not about regulation or lobbying—though these will be important efforts for our industry in the future. Rather, we’re more focused on empowering HR and talent leaders with the knowledge, tools, and connections to utilize AI responsibly and effectively. This Council’s value is built on collaboration, education, and practical guidance to ensure AI enhances the human elements of human capital and talent management

As part of our ongoing efforts, we’ll host virtual- and in-person meetings to connect, build relationships, discuss emerging topics, and set the agenda for our quarterly summits. These quarterly deep-dive sessions will tackle specific issues including discussions of what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to get ahead of, and will also identify opportunities for co-innovation between solution providers—on their own and with their partners.

We’ll also host “town hall” webinars to share notes with our colleagues, produce annual white papers to share key insights, highlight emerging best practices, and offer guidance on the most critical AI and HR trends. Our work will culminate in quarterly memos that share the Council’s perspective with the wider industry.

A Call to Action for HR and Talent Leaders: Join Us
The shift toward AI-powered HR is not just a trend—it’s a movement, a snowball effect that is already reshaping the way we work. We are inviting HR and Talent leaders, Technology and Change Management experts, and HR solution providers in Tech, Consulting, and Services to join us as we navigate this transformative journey. By coming together, we can ensure that HR isn’t just a stakeholder but a driving force in the conversation about how AI will shape the workforce of tomorrow.

Together, we believe we can create a future where AI is not only powerful but human-centric, where innovation is guided by ethical standards, and where HR has a clear and confident voice in shaping the technologies that are transforming the industry.

Join us in leading the way forward. Help us ensure that AI in HR serves people—not just processes. The time to lead from the practitioner’s seat is now.

Tags AI, HR Technology, Human Resources, Innovation

Blog Podcast

No More Quick Fixes: Why Top Solutions Are Integrated

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 10, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by none other than Yvette Cameron, Senior Vice President of Cloud HCM Product Strategy at Oracle. Yvette is a visionary (and certified badass) reshaping workforce technology with a focus on what actually matters: skills, culture, and empowering managers to lead in a rapidly changing world.

We tackle big questions about how skills fit into the bigger picture of talent strategies, the challenges facing today’s managers, and the incredible potential of generative AI to transform work — without getting lost in the hype. If you’ve ever wondered whether technology can solve your talent problems, let me just say: it can help — but no app is going to fix a broken culture.

If you’re ready to think bigger about the future of work, this conversation is for you.

Skills Aren’t Just for TA and L&D

If you’ve rolled your eyes at every “skills-based” solution on the market, you’re not alone — I’ve been right there with you. But Yvette sets the record straight: “There are so many ‘solutions’ … on the market that focus on skills-based recruiting, or skills-based learning,” she says. “And when you have these siloed systems that are focused on that one process, you can improve the process. But skills don’t stop when you hire people.” You need skills data for scheduling, planning, upskilling, budgeting — it’s about integration, not silos.

The real magic happens when skills data becomes foundational across the organization. From aligning workforce planning with future needs to creating intentional upskilling opportunities, Yvette says it’s time to stop thinking of skills as just a recruitment or learning tool — and start using them to drive strategy.

That’s why, under Yvette’s visionary eye, Oracle has adopted a more comprehensive approach that lets companies aggregate skills into a system of record. Collecting skills data across the spectrum of HR processes provides data that’s richer and more accessible. The result? You have the foundations of a strategy, not just an idea.

Managers Need More Than “Self-Service”

Let’s talk about managers — the unsung heroes holding it all together. “Managers are the ones who know how the real work gets done, right?” Yvette says. “They know the tasks that their people have to perform. They know the unique skills and qualifications that they need.” While HR plays a critical role as architects of people strategy, we sometimes lose sight of the people on the other side.

New tools and processes are great, but managers are already overloaded, so anything we add needs to tie back to a clear business benefit — and especially answer your managers’ “What’s in it for me?”

When HR leaders tell her they’ve adopted self-service modules to make the managers’ lives easier, for example, Yvette is quick to counter that assumption. “I say, ‘Is it really self-service? Are you putting your work on your managers, or are you giving them direct access to the information and support, and processes that they need?’” she says. “And I think that’s a fundamental mind-shift, right? Is it HR work, or is it really empowering managers?”

And this is where technology can shine. AI can nudge managers with reminders to check in with their team or even suggest agenda topics for those meetings. But as Yvette wisely notes, no tech can replace empathy, trust and a willingness to share talent across teams. Culture trumps tech every time.

GenAI: Transformative, But Not a Cure-All

It wouldn’t be Transformation Realness without a little GenAI talk. Yvette’s take? Game-changing potential, but tread carefully. Oracle’s approach includes agents that automate low-risk tasks (like scheduling) and provide managers with real-time answers and insights. But Yvette stresses that people are still core to the process. “We don’t like to take the human out of the loop,” she says.

And for all its promise, GenAI is no silver bullet. If your managers still have a talent hoarding attitude, for instance, introducing an AI-enabled talent marketplace won’t have the impact you want it to. “That’s a culture and a business process that has to be addressed,” she says.

Yvette brought the fire in this conversation, reminding us that transformation is about more than just tools — it’s about building the right foundation, empowering people and addressing the cultural barriers holding us back.

Stay tuned for more Transformation Realness, and remember: transformation isn’t something you buy — it’s something you build.

People in This Episode

Yvette Cameron: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome to another very special episode of Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are working to make the world of work less shitty, and who are brave enough to tell their stories: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by none other than yours truly, the ever so charming and ecclesiastical, Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research. The boutique firm leading the charge in HR tech in transformation.

Get into it!

Before I jump in, I have to say a special thank you to the team over at Glider AI, whose sponsorship made our Talent Transformation Ecosystem, EP possible. Thanks, fam.

Today’s guest is one of my favorite people in our industry, a longtime friend and personal mentor, Yvette Cameron, Senior Vice President of Cloud HCM Product Strategy at Oracle, just this tiny little tech startup you’ve never heard of. No, seriously, this powerhouse is shaping the future of workforce technology, making sure it’s not just buzzwords and feature dumps, but real strategies that move the needle in our space.

From skills-based workforce planning to the growing influence of GenAI, Yvette is here to share with us what’s really going on in the space. Plus there’s some super fabulous insight about the challenges that managers today are dealing [with], as they’re navigating this changing world themselves. Are we empowering them, or just giving them more stuff to do? Big questions, real answers, buckle up kids, this is going to be a good one.

I am joined by one of the baddest bitches in the space. Hi, Yvette Cameron.

Yvette Cameron:

Hello Kyle. So good to see you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Always good to see you. It’s always a pleasure.

Yvette Cameron:

I love being introduced as one of the baddest bitches. I actually really love that.

Kyle Lagunas:

But you know it’s so true. For those who don’t know, what is your job? What do you do?

Yvette Cameron:

So I’m the Senior Vice President for Oracle’s Cloud, HCM Product Strategy. So my team is out there visioning, “Where are we going to go in the next 12, 18, 24 months, three years?” Five years is a little more difficult. Things are changing so fast.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, especially now.

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

I don’t even know if you can really do 18 months?

Yvette Cameron:

You can-

Kyle Lagunas:

Look at this last 18-month cycle.

Yvette Cameron:

I know, but you know what? Flexibility is the story, right? And a strong strategy for where the technology’s taking us.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Agility is the only way to be now, right? That’s where resilience comes from. Well, tell me about your session? What did you talk about?

Yvette Cameron:

I would love to talk about the session, but I actually want to start with the elephant in the room, Kyle? There’s something we have to cover first.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God. What is it?

Yvette Cameron:

It’s huge. The fact that you were on the cover of New York Times recently? Oh, my gosh. I looked and I saw your face and I was like, “Wait a minute”-

Kyle Lagunas:

Man.

Yvette Cameron:

… “isn’t that Kyle?”

Kyle Lagunas:

You know.

Yvette Cameron:

Sweetie? So congratulations on that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thank you. We’ve been friends for a long time. For those who don’t know, I started as a little humble blogger. I actually have worked really hard to get where… We both have, right? But it was so validating, it was really cool. You know the coolest part? They came to my house, girl? And while they’re taking my picture… Which by the way, I cleaned the entire house, and then he wanted to take pictures in the backyard.

Yvette Cameron:

And was that your cat there? I loved that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes. So we’re sitting there taking pictures, my cat just walks over and sits down and he’s like, “What’s up dorks? What are you guys doing?” He looked so regal. He’s just like… And my arms look huge. I’m like…

Yvette Cameron:

That was awesome. So congratulations. Well, I didn’t like the way that they said that you had a little rant going on about [managing HR].

Kyle Lagunas:

Whatever.

Yvette Cameron:

So whatever. But it was fantastic-

Kyle Lagunas:

That was a microaggression-

Yvette Cameron:

… congratulations.

Kyle Lagunas:

… against gays.

Yvette Cameron:

Oh. Okay well, that’s another podcast.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. That is another podcast. All right, but talk to me about your session? Seriously, because it’s like standing room only at HR Tech, I mean that’s huge. Especially because… And no offense, but you’ve been an analyst… People don’t always want to go and hear from vendors?

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right?

Yvette Cameron:

You know, when I’m speaking and when most of my team is speaking, we really try to bring the thought leadership, and really how do we succeed in this market? Of course, there’s a bit of how our technology can support these strategies.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s why you’ve chosen where you land it, right?

Yvette Cameron:

Exactly. Exactly. And so my session was Five Keys to Unlocking Workforce Potential, and of course it comes down to experience. Which is also supported by today’s latest generative AI capabilities, ensuring a solid skills foundation to drive engagement and opportunity across the organization. Experience is also around empowering managers to be more people-centric-

Kyle Lagunas:

Work, yes.

Yvette Cameron:

… and empathetic leaders. And so we talked about that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes.

Yvette Cameron:

And then of course, really focused on the data of the organization. And one of the biggest challenges I think HR has, is moving from data to insights, to taking action-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

… on that data. So it was a really compelling session. I think the HR Tech people recorded it, and hopefully it’ll be available online somewhere soon.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m so sorry I missed it. I had to go to an-

Yvette Cameron:

I will send it to you first thing.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah. I mean honestly, I want to see the deck. I know, especially because I love when thought leadership is being driven by somebody that’s so accomplished, but also sits and has such a huge purview in the market. Almost 100% aligns with research that I’m doing. It’s really validating. I mean, so I’m not going to lie, I was getting really sick of skills-based everything. I was getting extremely cynical the last year, because it seemed like the new employee experience.

It was just like a catch-all, we were talking like, “Oh, this is going to make magic. It’s going to do all kinds of things.” And I just really wasn’t seeing it. Especially because I saw solution providers, not Oracle, but I did see some solution providers in the space that were almost making false promises, over simplifying this. They were saying, “Oh, if you buy our software, you’ll have skills-based everything.” Right? And you and I know that doesn’t work, so I was getting kind of cynical, I’m like, “I don’t know if this is a thing?” It’s a thing, baby.

Yvette Cameron:

It is a thing. But I think your cynicism is well-placed, because there are so many solutions, and I say that with quotes around it on the market, that focus on skills-based recruiting, or skills-based learning. And when you have these siloed systems that are focused on that one process, you can improve the process. But skills don’t stop when you hire people. You need to be able to schedule people according to skills, that’s critical in the healthcare industry.

You need to budget and plan, based on the skills need of the future. And that comes not just from the skills you’re bringing into the organization, but the way you’re driving upskilling, and learning and development. You need that skills-based learning. Skills-based learning alone isn’t enough, right? As there’s just skills even in how you’re managing your people, and the performance reviews-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, absolutely.

Yvette Cameron:

… and stuff that involves-

Kyle Lagunas:

Imagine if you’re-

Yvette Cameron:

… it’s just impossible.

Kyle Lagunas:

… only doing skills in learning, and then you’re not actually evaluating skills and performance?

Yvette Cameron:

Exactly. Exactly. So we talked about that in my session-

Kyle Lagunas:

Cool.

Yvette Cameron:

… yesterday, and one of our big points-

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s why it is ubiquitous, right?

Yvette Cameron:

It is. It is. And one of our press releases this year recently at our CloudWorld, was an announcement about how our investment in skills has broadened. So in the past, like many others, we took an approach of, “Here’s our skills ontology, here’s our AI that’s going to enrich the skills. And here’s how we have infused skills across everything in the HCM suite.”

But what we missed was the reality that there are still many organizations who, despite our being an end-to-end suite, are using that one solution outside, that’s in recruiting or learning or XYZ space, or multiple. I was talking with an organization the other day, who partners with an organization focused on the needs of manufacturing. The very unique skills, they have a subscription for that. Those change, there’s-

Kyle Lagunas:

Shifting landscape of skills needs in manufacturing.

Yvette Cameron:

Exactly. The shifting. And so our approach now, is that we are an open skills aggregation platform. And there’s a lot of goodness around that, and I won’t pitch that here on this podcast, but I will say-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, pitch baby. Just kidding.

Yvette Cameron:

… there are differences. I was talking to a couple of other analysts and unlike you, I’m hearing, “Oh, but everybody’s got skills. Everybody’s got AI and GenAI, everybody’s doing the same thing.” We’re not. The approach that the different vendors, and that Oracle is taking. I think especially because we’re not only an applications vendor, we’re a technology vendor.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

It gives us the-

Kyle Lagunas:

With deep-

Yvette Cameron:

… opportunity to do things differently.

Kyle Lagunas:

… industry, vertical expertise.

Yvette Cameron:

Deep industry vertical-

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

… right. So I think this is a huge space. Skills are incredibly important for organizations to really make sure they’ve got that agility that we opened with, in the future.

Kyle Lagunas:

But also it enables the intentionality with workforce planning. I’m not just looking for heads, what are these people going to do? What are the skills that are… What skills risks do we have? Or what skills opportunities do we have, right?

Yvette Cameron:

Skills are changing so quickly. One of my quotes yesterday was that over 62% of the workforce is quiet quitting. Pretty disengaged. In fact, I read that in the UK that number is an astonishing 92%. And how do you combat disengagement? One thing, is, you reach out to your workforce and you say, “Hey, grow with us. If we up-skill in these areas, here are some opportunities for you to grow.” And without a skills infrastructure and across all of your opportunities, again in scheduling and learning, and the way you’re recruiting, et cetera, your just-

Kyle Lagunas:

But it’s just a good idea?

Yvette Cameron:

… in little pieces. That’s a great way to say it. It’s an idea as opposed to a strategy, that you can really execute on.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well, so as you’re talking, I’m thinking, “All right, for a long time you’ve been watching the HCM space, for a long time you’ve been in the HCM space as a solution provider consultant, we’ve looked at what are foundational aspects of an HCM suite,” right? And you’re like, “All right, well, you got to have learning. You got to have TA, you got to have performance.” We’re thinking about the apps that you need to be that suite? You’ve got to be cloud, and maybe on-prem too?

There’s just things that we’ve thought about were core parts of that architecture. Actually, skills is a foundational aspect I think, of the modern HCM suite. You are that platform, and whether they’re going all in with you, or if they are plugging in other little things that are solving very specific problems that they just like. All of those things, skills needs to be relevant and standardized from learning to TA, from the front end to the back end. You know what I mean? And that’s more than just a philosophical conversation. That’s a data conversation, right?

Yvette Cameron:

It’s a data conversation for sure. And that’s why our approach is to bring skills that we deliver, or that you organically build through AI understanding how the skills-

Kyle Lagunas:

Or with a consultancy, you build your own special taxonomy?

Yvette Cameron:

You bring in libraries from different sources, an Eightfold or a TechWolf or any of these other solutions. Bring them into the same system of record where your people, your work data, and your job architecture is. Because when all of that is in the core system of record, then your opportunity to understand and really leverage it-

Kyle Lagunas:

And activate it?

Yvette Cameron:

… is phenomenal. You can activate it, exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

So one thing that I also was noticing about skills, which is why I think it had in my opinion, a rough go at the beginning. Where you like… were going in stops and starts, there was a lot of conversation, but not a lot of impact. Part of it was, we were solving this at a use case level: TA, learning. And what we were doing over in TA, might not actually had bought in an alignment with our skills concepts across the business, or in learning too? Do you remember competency models, when these were the big things?

Yvette Cameron:

I do, it’s painful.

Kyle Lagunas:

How much work went into it? HR came over here and brought their… We really poured our hearts into this and our minds, we were feeling so good about what we built. And then we bring it to the business and they’re like, “What the hell is this?”

Yvette Cameron:

I know I told the story in my session yesterday. I remember back in the late ’90s, early 2000, getting my competency library CD, I would plug it in, we’d unplug it-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God. Yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

… and we’d get an update from the vendor every six to 12 months. Those days are so, so far gone.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, but you know what’s not far gone? That HR still needs to make sure that what they’re innovating, and what they’re dreaming up, is relevant to the business?

Yvette Cameron:

You know, that’s absolutely true. But I would say that it’s not just on the shoulders of HR.

Kyle Lagunas:

Go on.

Yvette Cameron:

So managers are the ones who know how the real work gets done, right? They know the tasks that their people have to perform. They know the unique skills and qualifications that they need. HR is great, and needs to be setting foundational and top-down instructions on what we need in the organization. And what learning we need, and what specific skills for particular jobs. But more and more, work is shifting very rapidly, and it’s really the business leaders and the managers who know the actual tasks of the work.

And that’s one of the areas that we’ve invested, is making sure that managers are able to define their own needs for their team, what skills, and how do you build them? And think about it, HR is busy bringing libraries in and saying, “Here’s how you’re going to develop those skills.” But my strategy team is different than the strategy team over in customer support, or in supply chain, where at different levels of product maturity, we’ve got different responsibilities, a little bit than the other teams?

Kyle Lagunas:

Some things are more complicated than others.

Yvette Cameron:

And so I’m out there telling and assigning to my team, “I want you to build these particular skills,” and the sources might be going out and reading Kyle’s blog, or subscribing to this report, reading this book, and other things that HR has no insight to. Now, through the investments we’ve made in Oracle, managers can do that. And what HR gets from it, is a view across the enterprise of those hotspots of skills that are growing. They can see them associated with key roles.

They’re seeing the resources that are starting to surface, and when they see commonality, they can create new learning programs and skills development. So a bottoms-up approach to identifying what skills really are defining the work of the business that matter, and then looking for the resources. And if they’re going to be ad hoc, that’s great, but if there is a commonality, let’s spread that and make that an official HR mandated or supported policy.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, let’s scale that out. Yeah. No, I really like it. I mean, honestly, there’s so much on the shoulder of managers these days, so much. And HR is bringing them something new, and it’s just more work, you know?

Yvette Cameron:

And it feels like-

Kyle Lagunas:

… “well, thanks for more HR stuff.” We got to make sure that this is not that. That’s what I said, it has to be relevant to the business, it has to have immediate tangible value. Otherwise it’s just like, “Well, why am I going to do this?”

Yvette Cameron:

So one of the first things when I talk to organizations, and they’re talking about their manager self-service, when I’m talking to an HR leader. I say, “Is it really self-service? Are you putting your work on your managers, or are you giving them direct access to the information and support, and processes that they need?” And I think that’s a fundamental mind-shift, right? Is it HR work, or is it really empowering managers?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. But we haven’t been able to deliver that in the past. That’s why, I mean… Look, we’ve been studying innovation cycles, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as explosive as GenAI has been for us. And so talking about like, “Are we giving them immediate access?” Like agents, right? Where I’m going to have a conversational interface and I’m going to say, “Hey, so-and-so is about to go on maternity leave. What am I supposed to do as a manager for this?”

And I’m going to try to get my HR business partner to talk to me? No. I’m going to go to this chat interface and I’m going to say something in my natural language and it’s not going to say, “Go to the HR handbook, the employee handbook.” Instead it’s going to pull up that article, right? This one actually, I loved, like you guys were showing us, it’s going to give me an answer, and then I’ll actually be able to click to go in, and see where did this come from?

Yvette Cameron:

See the source doc then.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Where did-

Yvette Cameron:

Right.

Kyle Lagunas:

… this come from, right? So that enablement, that immediate access and support, that is transformative, right?

Yvette Cameron:

It really is. And this is where I caution the buyers in the market to really explore how their vendors are approaching this. Because I’ve seen across the 100 or so vendors here, I’ve seen cases where they’re using ChatGPT, or some other public model, and it’s not going to give you that context of the individual. And then they’ll say, “Well, but we’ll train it. We’ll train it on the customer’s data.” But where are they training it-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, that’s risky, baby.

Yvette Cameron:

… and is it exposed to the public model?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

So there’s things you have to get under the covers and look at. And I think GenAI is fantastic, and Oracle, we’re already on our 3rd kind of iteration of capabilities. We started a year ago, within a year of ChatGPT hitting the market and hitting 100 million users, we were delivering by last September, our first GenAI use cases. Creating job descriptions and summarizing performance evals, and a lot of productivity tools.

Now this year, in this last second half of 2024, we’re delivering agents. So we’ve got the benefit agents answering very specific questions, hiring support and other things. Now we’re working on what we’re calling agentic workflows, which are agents calling other agents to do end-to-end processes. And even for the first time, doing some reasoning, and perhaps automating some of that decision-making for you. We don’t like to take human out of the loop, but where it’s very low-risk, and the humans can still get involved-

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, the answer is yes or no.

Yvette Cameron:

… let’s streamline a talent review process schedule, for me. I don’t need to be in the loop of scheduling reviews with managers. That should be something that an agent takes care of. So we’re, again, moving fast and I think GenAI is transformational, but I can’t underestimate the core classic AI. So one of the things, again, yesterday was such a great session. You’ve got to see it when I get it.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m so bummed, I’m mad at myself.

Yvette Cameron:

But one of the points I mentioned is that from a manager’s perspective, they’re overwhelmed. They’re being asked to do a lot, HR is putting self-service on their plate a lot. There’s so many changes, remote workers, and we’ve got to manage them, and be empathetic in ways that we maybe haven’t been trained for. And so even the classic AI can bring information forward to managers and say, “Hey, it’s time to schedule a check-in, and here’s recommendations on what you should meet about.”

And those recommendations are coming in our system from all the interactions across HCM. Kyle got a feedback, he’s got a milestone coming. His goal is here, he’s had a conversation over here. So from across all these different areas to build an agenda for the manager, and the employee receives the same recommendations. So that you are talking about things that are relevant, timely, and that will make an impact on the culture. So empowering managers for us, that’s what that’s about. Making them better, more human-centric leaders.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I think it tracks to what HR needs to be doing anyway? If you look at that role, that is a critical role for the success of the evolution of any HR strategy, right? And look, they’re the ones that are moving the business forward. If you are delighting in supporting that stakeholder, talk about credibility, talk about trust. We need to be building that up right now. A lot’s depending on them.

Yvette Cameron:

Especially I would say now, and I think we’ve seen a lot of promotion of managers, of people who did a good job at their-

Kyle Lagunas:

At their job?

Yvette Cameron:

At their job, but they weren’t necessarily trained as leaders. And so how do we use the technology to support it?

Kyle Lagunas:

But also leadership in the workplace has completely changed in the last three years, where we all went home and suddenly I’m on a call, and my direct report’s nanny called out sick. And so this did literally happen. We have a really important presentation and her daughter is in the room with her, and I can’t tell her to tell her daughter to stop talking to her. Do you know what I mean? There’s just so… We’re in each other’s homes now?

Yvette Cameron:

Which I love.

Kyle Lagunas:

And then we’re also… Managers having to have really tough conversations like, “We have to come back to the office, by the way.” It’s just is what it… The amount of challenge that managers are under now-

Yvette Cameron:

It’s-

Kyle Lagunas:

… I’m glad to be back on my own-

Yvette Cameron:

Well-

Kyle Lagunas:

… an individual contributor and solopreneur-

Yvette Cameron:

Again, I-

Kyle Lagunas:

… I couldn’t be back in enterprise now.

Yvette Cameron:

I think technology’s very helpful. There’s so much more it can do, but ultimately the culture, the practices of the organization, the mindset of the organization sets the stage. No amount of technology-

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s more important now than ever, that we have time and capacity-

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

… for those things.

Yvette Cameron:

Absolutely. No technology is going to change the fact that if you have a talent marketplace, where you’re offering up gigs and projects to build out skills and experiences, and managers are treating their talent as their own moat. And say, “No, I’m not going to share you. I can’t let you do that for two weeks or even part-time,” then no technology is going to fix that. That’s a culture and a business processing that has to be addressed.

Kyle Lagunas:

Wait, I can’t buy transformation out of the box?

Yvette Cameron:

No, gosh, as much… Actually, let’s see, that would be 25D release.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, shady. All right. Well, thanks for coming to the show.

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

I will never be able to live down that I missed your session. But for what it’s worth, my friend who’s a practitioner was speaking at HR Tech for the first time ever, and I was in the front row to show her some love.

Yvette Cameron:

Oh, that’s great.

Kyle Lagunas:

So she needed me, and-

Yvette Cameron:

That’s great.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

So listen, I would like to come back in a year, let’s do this next year. Because I’ve got to tell you, I think GenAI is going to do more than just automate, and make things more efficient and productivity growth. It’s going to literally change the face of technology.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m here for it.

Yvette Cameron:

These menu navigations and various things. A year from now, we’re going to see a lot of difference in the works on the actual benefits.

Kyle Lagunas:

Bet. I will be right here. And I hope that you’ll find that, as an analyst, I’m asking the right questions, I’m paying attention to the right things, I’m really hoping that… Because it’s going to be really easy for us to fall into feature level, shiny object syndrome right now.

What I love about you and me is, we are really looking at impact. We are really looking to see what results this drives, how this changes things. And not just like, “Oh, look at all this cool,” I mean, there’s cool shit, there really is. But hold me accountable for that then, if I come to this next year and you’re like, “Kyle, you’re missing it, you’re missing the point?” Call me out, girl.

Yvette Cameron:

I completely doubt it-

Kyle Lagunas:

We’ll see.

Yvette Cameron:

… but I’ll be ready.

Kyle Lagunas:

All right.

Yvette Cameron:

All right.

Kyle Lagunas:

Next time.

Yvette Cameron:

Love you, sweetie.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thanks, Yvette.

Well folks, that is all the time that we have for today. Big thanks to Yvette for bringing the fire, keeping it 100 about the future of work, and the impact of tech, like GenAI. Honestly, it’s refreshing to hear someone with such a massive role, talk about actual solutions and not just shiny objects. I feel like this one was way overdue. Yvette and I spill the tea all the time, off the record, now we got to sit down together.

So what did we learn today, kiddos? Well, first of all, skills aren’t just some big buzzword. They’ve got to be baked into everything, not slapped on with a bit of software. And managers, they need more than just tools thrown their way. They need real support if we’re gonna expect them to be people-centric leaders. No tech can solve a broken culture, y’all. It’s up to us.

All right, well thanks for tuning in. And, as always, if you liked what you heard like and subscribe, share the love and tell your friends. We’ll catch you next time on Transformation Realness. Stay curious, stay candid and remember, transformation isn’t something you buy, it’s something you build.

Tags Recruitment, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition, talent management

Blog Podcast

Flipping the Script: How Employ Is Reinventing TA Solutions

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 5, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m hanging out with the brains behind Employ: Dara Brenner, Chief Product Officer, Steve Cox, CEO and Lucy Zarlengo, Chief Marketing Officer. Employ, the force behind Jobvite, Lever and JazzHR, is rewriting the rules of HR tech by combining these brands under one unified vision. But they’re not just smushing these brands together and calling it a day — they’re flipping the script on HR tech, redefining what it means to deliver impact for recruiters and talent teams everywhere.

This conversation gets into the nitty-gritty of brand unification, inspiring teams from the inside out, and delivering tools that don’t just look good on paper but actually work in real life.

Jazz, Lever, Jobvite — Oh My!

Turning three or more brands into one cohesive powerhouse isn’t for the faint of heart, but the team at Employ makes it look easy. “We can go in, we can do real discovery with customers and say, ‘What are your business problems? What are your pain points?’” Dara says. “And as a part of that, provide the right solution to solve it because we have so many options in our toolbox.”

Let’s talk strengths: JazzHR is great for high-volume, quick-turnaround hiring. Lever’s got that professional talent vibe with a scalable, recruiter-friendly design. And Jobvite? It’s the pro for handling complex workflows in industries like healthcare. “I look at it as something that can really target highly regulated industries, because of the complexity that goes along with that, [and] the compliance that goes along with that,” Dara explains.

The biggest challenge in unifying the brands was finding the common thread across them. For that, Lucy leaned into variety and giving customers options. “I think one of the differentiations for us is that we have choice,” she says. “We have three different ATSs. We don’t want to necessarily eliminate folks understanding who Jazz is, who Lever is, who Jobvite is, but as their needs change and evolve as an organization, they can move across our entire portfolio.”

No Silos, No Drama, Just Results

Employ’s bold rallying cry — “Flip the Script” — is about shaking off old habits and doing things differently. “We don’t have to make [only one] solution fit to our customer’s business needs,” Steve says. “We can understand [their] business needs and take any of our solutions, and create customizations of modules on top of the ATS to be able to go deliver them the service that they need and they want.”

Internally, it’s a vibe shift too. Steve makes it clear: “We’ve built a really strong low-ego team, and the benefit of having a low-ego team is that we can move together as a unit and we can move together fast.” No more silos, no more “not my job” nonsense — just one team working toward the same goal: making life easier for recruiters.

But Can You Prove It? How Employ Helps TA Leaders Show the Receipts

Let’s be real — every HR tech vendor loves to shout about ROI, but how many of them are actually helping talent acquisition leaders prove it? Employ’s stepping up to the plate with a new ROI dashboard baked right into the product.

“You’ve got to make that connection,” Dara says. “It’s great to be hiring people, but what is that really doing to the bottom line business? The CFO and the CEO want to know, how are you growing revenue, how are you reducing margin or whatever their key metrics are? We’ve got to arm the talent acquisition people with that capability.”

This isn’t just fluff: it’s about empowering TA pros to take a seat at the table and hold their own. “Talent acquisition leaders need the same data-driven credibility as their counterparts in finance or marketing,” says Steve. “We’re giving them the tools to tell that story.”

Employ’s also leaning into AI — but not the scary, “we’re replacing you” kind. “Done right, people shouldn’t even really know that the AI is there,” Steve says. “It should just help them sort through, make them more efficient, help them with decision making, but ultimately allow the human to make the decision.”

Employ isn’t just merging brands — it’s creating a whole new way of thinking about HR tech. From empowering TA teams to streamlining their tools, they’re flipping the script on what’s possible in this space.

Ready to rethink how you approach talent acquisition? This is your sign. Until next time on Transformation Realness: stay bold, stay curious and, above all, stay real.

People in This Episode

Dara Brenner: LinkedIn
Steve Cox: Linkedin
Lucy Zarlengo: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to another incredible episode of Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are trying to make the world of work less shitty, and who have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad and, most of all, the real. It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap, and hosted by none other than yours truly, the shining, shimmering, splendid Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the boutique research firm leading the way in HR tech and transformation.

Get into it!

In this episode, we are talking about the fascinating journey of Employ, the brainchild of tech giants like Jobvite, Lever, and JazzHR, all rolled into one beautiful little baby brand, a force to be reckoned with. What does it take to pull off such a transformation? Well, we’ve got the leadership team here to spill the tea. First up, Dara Brenner, Chief Product Officer with 25 plus years experience in HR tech. And let me tell you, this woman’s got a vision.

Joining her is Steve Cox, the new CEO, who has joined Employ to drive it to its next chapter. He’s still getting his feet wet in the HR tech space, but guess what? He’s married to a recruiter, and also he was brave enough to jump right in and talk the real tea here on Transformation Realness. And of course, we also have their CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, Lucy Zarlengo, fellow Austinite extraordinaire. It’s a pretty big conversation.

In this episode, we are diving into what it takes to consolidate multiple brands, build a unified vision, and flip the script on what HR and talent tech should be. Spoiler alert, it’s not just about selling software. It’s about driving impact for the people on the ground, the practitioners who need real tools to survive, and dare I say it, thrive. Are you ready? Are you listening? Do you want to know what’s really going on? Well, let’s get into it.

We are coming to you live for Transformation Realness from the Glider AI Booth. I’m actually really excited, because if you are tracking the space, you know that every day is a new day, and it feels like there has been a lot of action and activity in the vendor landscape. Of course, companies like Jobvite and Lever, and I think Jazz is a part of this, too. We’ve got a lot of different pieces of really fun tech. They all have been rolled up into a single new brand called Employ.

Today, I’ve actually brought the leadership team to talk to us a little bit about what are they up to, what are they doing, and how are they going to get from here to there? Yeah, so I’m actually going to invite you guys to jump in and say hello. First, we’ll introduce ourselves, since nobody knows us. We’re going to say who we are and what we’re doing here.

Dara Brenner:

Okay, so I’m Dara Brenner. I am the Chief Product Officer at Employ, and I have been in the HR tech space for a minute, actually about 25 plus years, from large organizations to small organizations. I just absolutely love this space, and I’m so excited to be responsible for the vision at Employ.

Kyle Lagunas:

It was actually our meeting where you showed me your vision and I was like, “All right, we got to record something because I really want to dig in here.” Thanks for coming.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Hi, Steve. Who are you?

Steve Cox:

Hey, yeah, thanks. My name’s Steve Cox, CEO of Employ. I’ve currently been here about six months. This is my first time in the HR tech space, so I’m new to it, but I’m not new to the concept of talent acquisition. I’m going to drop my favorite line. My wife is a recruiter, and so I have an inside track into the day in the life of a recruiter. That’s helped me immensely get up to speed in this journey.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s exciting. Now, you’re going to have somebody that’s like, “Well, I actually don’t know if my wife agrees with you on that.”

Dara Brenner:

Actually, I use it as an opportunity. Anytime I come up with some crazy idea, I’ll run it by Steve and I’ll say, “Hey, do me a favor. Can you run it by your wife?”

Kyle Lagunas:

I love it. You know what? Let’s get her here now. Do you want to say hi too?

Lucy Zarlengo:

Sure. Lucy Zarlengo, the Chief Marketing Officer. I joined Employ this time last year. Actually, HR Tech was my second week of joining-

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s right.

Lucy Zarlengo:

… The organization, but I’ve been in B2B software marketing my entire career.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah. Where do you all sit? Are you in Austin, Texas?

Lucy Zarlengo:

I’m in Austin. Yep.

Kyle Lagunas:

Did I learn that? Okay. What about you guys?

Steve Cox:

I’m in Denver, Colorado. We just opened our new office. Yeah, center of excellence is now there, and based myself out of there.

Dara Brenner:

I’m from Atlanta, GA.

Kyle Lagunas:

Atlanta. Hot-lanta.

Dara Brenner:

You got it.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ve actually only been once, and I think I went for an afternoon meeting in Buckhead, and then left the next morning.

Dara Brenner:

You didn’t even get to enjoy any of our fantastic restaurants?

Kyle Lagunas:

We went to a good steakhouse, but that was it.

Lucy Zarlengo:

The food scene is great.

Dara Brenner:

You got to come back, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. Maybe we should do something in Atlanta next, once it cools off. All right. Well, so Dara, let’s start with this epic vision you have. Last year when we met, it was all still the individual brands. We were trying to maybe just get our arms around it, but you really are coming at this, and I was stunned and inspired by what you have in mind. Do you want to share with us a little bit?

Dara Brenner:

Absolutely, thanks. If you think about it, and you mentioned it in the opening, you’ve got Jobvite, we’ve got Lever, we’ve got JazzHR, we also have Telemetry.

Kyle Lagunas:

I knew I was forgetting one, yeah.

Dara Brenner:

Which is part of the acquisition, and there’s a few others that were acquired over time, more features in my mind than products themselves. When you look at all of these things, you actually have the opportunity to put together a story that’s really compelling. What it gives us the ability to do is to really look at the customer base across those different solutions and say, “What is similar within each one of those areas?”

What we’re starting to find out is that people in the Jazz world, as an example, tend to be folks that want to really get hires in the door quickly. It could be large hourly workforces. The person who’s leveraging something like a Jazz in a lot of cases could be a franchisee manager, like a store manager, and they just need to get people hired as quickly as possible. By the way, they’re not professional talent acquisition people.

Kyle Lagunas:

What?

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, exactly. You compare that to a typical Lever customer. In this particular case, it’s much more of a scalable-

Kyle Lagunas:

You’ve got a very evangelistic sell, by the way. Lever was like, “We’re going to change the world.” It wasn’t just an ATS.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, and it worked in a very interesting part of the market. If you are a tech company, if you’re a professional services company, if you are really looking to scale quickly, in most cases, Lever was a perfect fit for those particular customers, and you’re starting to deal with people that have more of a professional view on recruiting and talent acquisition. You could have a sourcer, you could have a professional recruiting team, talent acquisition team.

For that particular type of user or that particular type of company, you really want something like Lever to fit for those folks. We have that as well. Then if you think about the other one that I haven’t mentioned yet, Jobvite, in terms of an ATS, it is so well-built to handle complex workflows. When I think about Jobvite as a product, I look at it as something that can really target highly regulated industries, because of the complexity that goes along with that, the compliance that goes along with that.

If you have an organization that has a ton of different hiring types, so let’s use a hospital as an example. You could have a neurosurgeon, you could have a janitor, you could have the cafeteria worker, you could have the biller, you could have clinicians. It’s so many different candidate types. And in all cases, they will need different workflows-

Kyle Lagunas:

With very different interview types, application interfaces-

Dara Brenner:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dara Brenner:

Because of the ability to handle the complexity in Jobvite, it gives us a unique opportunity to really sell that solution. We can go in, we can do real discovery with customers and say, “What are your business problems? What are your pain points?” And as a part of that, provide the right solution to solve it because we have so many options in our toolbox.

Kyle Lagunas:

So you’d be more consultative.

Dara Brenner:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

That was the challenge in front of you before. It was like, “Well, these are different. We have different client bases, they’re all built on different code. What are we going to do, integrate all of these products?” Now you’ve renamed them. Are you keeping the legacy names?

Dara Brenner:

We are. Lucy, you may want to chime in on this as the CMO.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Yeah, so we’ll continue to use the product names or the solution name, right? Employ is the overall company. JazzHR, Lever, Jobvite are our solutions. There’s deep resonance in the market and awareness in the market of those names. Really, I think the challenge for us and what we’ve started to work through as an executive team is how do you actually build a connection across those brands? I think one of the differentiations for us is that we have choice,r right?

We have three different ATSs. We don’t want to necessarily eliminate folks understanding who Jazz is, who Lever is, who Jobvite is, but as their needs change and evolve as an organization, they can move across our entire portfolio. It’s valuable to us to go to market as Employ and how do we build some distinction there, but also maintain the current brands as well?

Kyle Lagunas:

I like it. I feel like there’s cohesiveness with this approach. Having somebody that has a lot of experience in this space, you know the complexities of these things and the nuances from one to another. For you, though, I feel like you have a lot of meat to tell. You have a lot of storytelling that you can do in market, right?

Lucy Zarlengo:

We do, absolutely. We have stories that we can tell in terms of the individual solutions. We have stories we can start to tell of customers who’ve moved across solutions, et cetera.

Kyle Lagunas:

Then my question for you, as the business leader, how do we make sure that we’re not just selling a bunch of stuff, you know? What kind of commercial organization are you trying to bulk up and build to make sure that we don’t just have a big, we’re not just a portfolio company, that we don’t just have a whole bunch of things?

Steve Cox:

No, absolutely. I think that’s a really good call out as well, because when you think about the journey of Employ and where it started, it was the bringing together of these brands under a single name. It was bringing together of the brands under the name only. There was no real integration inside the organization, so very siloed. Everybody stayed in their lane, all the way from product development and engineering, right, away through to go to market.

One of the things that we are doing now is we are bringing the company together in a single structure with a set of products, rather than keeping it as a house of brands. Everything we are doing now from a product development and engineering perspective flows through as like ATS, data and integration, and AI teams that work across multiple products. We are starting to now run that through our organization. We are there in terms of products and engineering. We are well on our way in our customer group, and we are at the, I would say, the early stages in our go-to-market of driving this messaging around choice.

And we are breaking out of the small, medium and large for the products, and we are bringing it together as optionality for customers. Rather than having to find out-

Kyle Lagunas:

I love that matrix. I really do. You have small, highly complex companies, right?

Steve Cox:

Correct.

Dara Brenner:

Exactly.

Steve Cox:

Absolutely. I think this is where we have a key differentiator in the market, because we don’t have to make our only solution fit to our customer’s business needs. We can understand our business needs and take any of our solutions, and create customizations of modules on top of the ATS to be able to go deliver them the service that they need and they want.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, I’m excited, I’m really interested. This is a friendly space, but we got to get this right. This moment in the industry is a really tough moment in the industry, and if we are not getting it right, we’re all really vulnerable as solution providers, right? Having a good idea, there’s a lot of good ideas on this floor, and execution is a big one. Maybe for you all now, I don’t know who wants to pick this up, but how are we going to get there? How are we going to get that done?

Steve Cox:

I’ll start and let everybody else chime in. For me, it’s the beginning of it all starts with people. We need to find the right people. We’ve built a brand new executive team of people that have got not only 20 plus years experience in this industry, but also 20 plus years in building enterprise software companies. We’ve built a really strong low ego team, and the benefit of having a low ego team is that we can move together as a unit and we can move together fast.

We are proving that in the things that we are doing. It’s not lost on us that the time is now. I see it, we see it in the industry, we see it with our competitors, and I think we’ve got a winning team with the experience to go out and dominate in this space.

Dara Brenner:

I would say from a product perspective, we want to move really fast, but we also want to make sure that we’re getting feedback along the way, so typical kind of agile, but if we’re going to- one of the things I hadn’t mentioned yet was Telemetry. We’re going to break that apart and allow every customer, regardless of their ATS, to leverage capability there.

What we may do is say, “Okay, let’s go ahead and take a piece of that, and let’s start selling that, because the capability is there from a product perspective, to our Jazz customers, to our Lever customers, get some feedback on it, and then continue that journey.” Go really fast, but do it in a well-informed way after customers have the opportunity to use the technology and see the benefit that it has.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well, I’m glad to hear low ego, I think, is such a ticket. You’re not the only company that has had this kind of consolidated moment, but there’s a not my job mentality, like, “Oh, that’s them. This is me.” It’s like, “Well, no babe. We’re all on the same team here now.” There’s a lot of culture that we have- like, change that has to drive to enable it. You all can be connected and on the same page, but that’s going to come all the way down to that CSM, who’s also trying to get the engineering team to respond to these feature requests or these bug reports.

I am coming into a QVR, and our engineering team hasn’t said shit to me, so I have no idea what’s going on, actually. You know what I mean? There’s a really deep level of integration that we need to work on to make sure that we’re delivering on this vision.

Steve Cox:

And change management, right? Change management and culture is absolutely key, like you said. We run a monthly all-hands, and we share updates around the business. We do internal, just started to do internal product reviews, product roadmap updates, create feedback loops. I think what’s really important is we have to have a mission to be able to get everybody to rally behind.

We’ve just introduced a new rally cry inside of our business, which is “flip the script.” It’s all about challenging our people to just go do something different. Let’s not do what we did before in Jobvite, Lever, Jazz. Let’s do something new as Employ, let’s do something meaningful. Let’s put customers right at the heart of our decision making, and let’s make it easy for them to have choice.

Kyle Lagunas:

Look at all these goodies you get to play with.

Lucy Zarlengo:

It’s super fun. We can get you a flip the script T-shirt as well.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love a hoodie, I love a cardigan.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Put in your swag order.

Kyle Lagunas:

I was at a dinner last week where we designed our own Levi’s jackets.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Oh, I love that.

Dara Brenner:

Oh, that’s cool.

Kyle Lagunas:

I got… What is the leather? Not tassels, but anyway, fringe.

Dara Brenner:

The fringe. That’s awesome.

Kyle Lagunas:

… On the back.

Lucy Zarlengo:

That’s amazing.

Kyle Lagunas:

We’ll see. I had a couple of cocktails at that point, so I had a lot of ideas. Well, that’s really, honestly, I do want to see this work. I really do. Jobvite was a long-time client of mine, and Telemetry was an early CRM. I worked in the CRM space. I really want to see it work, but it’s a competitive space too. One thing, as you were talking, Steve, I’m thinking, you do need to inspire these teams that you have, because it has been a bloodbath the last several years.

You couldn’t build fast enough, you couldn’t sell fast enough, you couldn’t deliver fast enough. Especially coming out of that “everything’s on fire” moment to now, it’s everyone’s budgets getting cut, all of these things that we just sold might actually not get implemented. It’s still a really uncertain time. Keeping the people inspired is also important as at the same time, delivering, and building product, and getting out in market. You guys really do have a big challenge ahead. Are we excited? Are we… You know what I mean? Are we fired up?

Lucy Zarlengo:

Super excited.

Steve Cox:

Super excited. I see this right now. There’s a real opportunity in the market with some of the people that have done recent layoffs. There’s a lot of good talent come to the market. It’s an opportunity, and you’ll see this from us in the coming weeks, that we have the opportunity to bring in some of that talent to just enhance and make better our processes, programs and controls, and then bring more of our benefit into the market.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love to hear you say it. I’m glad to see you guys fired up, but I also feel like yes, we need to inspire our teams and give them a rallying cry, but I’m also looking like, yeah, it’s been tough in the solution provider space, but it’s been even harder for the practitioners that we support, for the teams that we’re trying to support. I would love to know, what opportunity do you guys see there to become absolutely obsessed with solving the customer’s problems?

Steve Cox:

Yeah, I see two real things. One is that, we just run a jump start program back in July to bring in 15 new customer success managers into our business. They were not replacements, they were additions to the team. We are really over-indexing in being able to put people on the ground to talk to our customers, help them get the most out of our products, help them become more efficient. As you say, it’s a tough time recruiting teams of downsize, and work effort in terms of backfills, even if not growth, is still there.

So I think that’s one of the things that we’ve done. Then one of the other things I think that I’ll let Dara talk about is what we’re doing around our ROI dashboard. Being able to take out data and analysis, put it into the hands of a talent acquisition professional, so that they can go show leadership the value that they’re adding and the return on investment that they’re getting, to go try and garner extra resources to help them do their job better, faster, more efficient.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we’re looking to do, and I don’t know what it’ll be called ultimately, but the idea is that everybody talks about ROI on the front end, but no one can ever turn around and say, “Did you achieve the ROI that you expected to achieve by using this solution?” We’re going to bake these into the product itself, into the products themselves.

And essentially, at any given time, to Steve’s point, the talent acquisition leaders could use it to justify additional resources, because they can show the impact that they’re making on the bottom line business. Because you’ve got to make that connection. It’s great to be hiring people, but what is that really doing to the bottom line business? The CFO and the CEO wants to know, how are you growing revenue, how are you reducing margin or whatever their key metrics are? And we’ve got to arm the talent acquisition people with that capability.

I think we’re doing that by spending a lot of time going back to being customer obsessed and spending time with customers and saying, “What is it that’s not getting through for you? How can we help you be a better business partner?” You know, being in this industry forever, HR folks have been wanting to get a seat at the table, and so now they have a seat at the table, but talent acquisition people need the same seat.

They need to be able to be armed with the same data and information that shows the business leaders, their CFO, their CEO, that this is really important, this function is important, and the impact we’re making is valuable.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, it’s the right time. I said a lot, I feel like part of the vulnerability for TA was that when the jig was up, the business was like, “Well, what are you doing?” We were just like, “We had been so head down just hiring, hiring, hiring.” They’re like, “I don’t think we had really strong ROI stories.” We’re like, “What do you mean, what have I been doing? Barely keeping it, barely staying alive is what I’ve been doing.”

We needed to see actual tangible ROI, and it’s like, “I love you, I’m sorry, but we can’t justify having all these recruiters when we don’t have this much hiring to do,” ya know? When I was a talent leader, we backed off on recruiting scorecards because we didn’t want to micromanage people. We just were trying to deliver, deliver. Even there, I couldn’t say, “Well, this is what my recruiters are even up to.”

If you are investing in the CS organization and you’re building this product, I want to get all of my CS team using this product as part of my QBRs. I’m going to be building my QBRs in this product.

Dara Brenner:

It’s funny that you say that, because the very first stakeholder is our CS organization.

Kyle Lagunas:

Love it. I’m a genius.

Dara Brenner:

Before we roll it out, exactly, before we even roll it out, we’re already working in Q4, so in the upcoming quarter, to roll this to our CS so they can start using it.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love it, because then you’re also practicing what you preach. Using the product, being actual product experts, you’re going to get closer to your user experience. Look, I’m thinking you’re going to have, yes, the head of TA, but also the team leads, right? And the individual recruiters. Everybody needs to show what they’re up to, which kind of sucks, because it’s like, “Will you just get off my back? I’m just trying to stay alive here.”

No, they’re like, “The new normal, we got to show what we’re up to.” I like that this maybe gives you an opportunity to empower your customers with the product, and not just facilitate a new workflow.

Steve Cox:

As we start to return back to growth, we see the tech companies growing, we see the industry, the economy growing as a whole. Talent acquisition is going to be the first thing to bounce back. They’re going to have the problem scaling to keep up with growth. Today, it’s about, how do we become efficient with a reduced workforce? Then it’s going to become how do we go scale?

Kyle Lagunas:

See, I love that, though, because in the past, efficiency, everybody in the back of our heads are like, “Oh, cost-cutting. That’s what that is.” I don’t know that that’s… Look, we did need to cut costs. Spending was out of control. Efficiency now, especially in the AI age, efficiency is excellence. We need to be building the most excellent functions right now, so that when we’re scaling up, we’re not just throwing bodies at problems, we’re actually building out new operating capacity is what it is, right?

Steve Cox:

The phrase you used there is one that we’ve lived by, is scaling efficiently, right? It’s easy to throw people at a problem and try to get a better result, but the more efficiency that we can build in now, that’s going to allow organizations and talent teams to be able to scale efficiently through the work we do today. Everything we do sets itself up not only for today, but for future growth and scalability.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m really into it. I think that’s what teams are really feeling, just like waiting for one more shoe to drop. They’re working tirelessly still, but with something like this, I can engage my business stakeholders and build that credibility back up. Everyone’s jobs are hard right now. It’s not easy anywhere, but most of these other functions, you’re going to come to your boss and have some reports, and not just some fluff stuff. You’re going to get into the nitty-gritty, and you are too.

You’re going to want to click down and they’re going to be ready for it. I just feel like TA hasn’t had a moment to catch its breath and be investing that time in being more data driven, and being more just excellent and efficient. It’s just like, “Cut here, cut here, scale back up, scale back up.” You know what I mean? It’s just so reactive. I really think that this might be a good new foundational moment for us to build up a stronger base.

Steve Cox:

We can be at the heart of that because if we can provide the tools that drive that kind of-

Kyle Lagunas:

We’ll see. Just kidding.

Steve Cox:

We will see. I’d bet on us, though.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I hope you would.

Steve Cox:

We have the opportunity to be at the heart of that, and to be able to give them the tools to be able to do the work that they want to go do. That’s what’s super exciting for me, is to just think about what we can go build to go bring the underrepresented talent organization up in stature inside of a company, and get people to really understand and recognize the value they provide.

I think that’s lost at the moment, right? There is no data, there is no insight that can be shared. So some of the work we’re doing will bring that kind of front and center.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think it’s really cool. I’ve been a Jobvite friend for a lot longer than, I don’t know if you guys ever knew Jobvite before, but once upon a time, the head of marketing created- remember when social was a big deal and social recruiting was all the rage? They created the social recruiting report that they published annually. It was a best practice every year.

It was good market research. You guys did it yourself. An analyst didn’t do it for you. Do something about data-driven recruiting. That’s what’s new now, and that’s what we really need to figure out. I would say invest some time in building the thought leadership that’s going to empower your people and get interest in market, but just building on what you’re already doing.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, and it’s interesting that you say that, because one of the things that really got me excited about joining Employ was that we have 22,000 customers from very small to very large, so 22,000 customers have a lot of data. When you aggregate all of that data, it provides insights that really no one else can match. When you combine that, and that provides the insights to our customers with, and again, you mentioned AI earlier, and people still think of AI as, “You’re going to replace me with AI.”

We don’t view it that way. We view AI as part of our DNA. If we’re doing AI right, and we’re combining that with the insights that we bring to bear, you don’t even know. You don’t know there’s AI inside, if you will. It’s kind of like Intel inside. It’s just there. It’s just making you more efficient.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, good. It’s not a feature play, right? This is a new found- you’re talking about new foundations.

Dara Brenner:

New foundation.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s a core technology now. It’s a core capability.

Steve Cox:

Done right, people shouldn’t even really know that the AI is there.

Dara Brenner:

Nope.

Steve Cox:

It should just help them sort through, make them more efficient, help them with decision making, but ultimately allow the human to make the decision.

Kyle Lagunas:

I was talking, there was a session yesterday about candidate experience, and I forget where this person worked, but they were talking about their chatbot for scheduling interviews or candidate care, and they were saying that even after an interview had been scheduled, which completes the workflow, the candidates were still texting with like, “Thank you so much. Is there anything else I should know,” like chatting with the bot, knowing it was a bot, by the way.

Dara Brenner:

Oh, that’s funny.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think it’s so interesting what we’re going to do.

Dara Brenner:

That’s funny.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, thank you guys for coming, opening up a little bit. I am really looking forward to what you guys can do. I think the vision is definitely going to be a really good guiding light. Let’s flip the script, girls.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Let’s do it.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay, cool. Well, thank you, guys. We’ll see you again soon, okay?

Lucy Zarlengo:

Thank you so much.

Dara Brenner:

Thank you, Kyle.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Ugh, that one was so much fun. I loved it. But unfortunately, we’ve reached the end of this episode, folks. A huge thank you to Dara, Steve and Lucy for coming on the show and bringing the heat. We really got into it. Everything from building low-eagle leadership teams to the realities of transforming brands without losing sight of the end user. And the message that hit me the hardest: success isn’t about throwing bodies at a problem. It’s about scaling with excellence, with purpose and with heart.

The truth is the HR tech, TA tech landscape — no joke right now. Everyone’s working twice as hard to keep up, and let’s face it, no one has the luxury of just coasting. Here’s what I love about Employ’s approach: they’re putting customers at the heart of their process. They’re staying agile, and they’re building tools that actually help instead of just complicate these processes. That’s the kind of transformation we need.

If this conversation got your gears turning — and I know it did — be sure to like and subscribe, share with all of your friends, and leave us a review. Don’t worry, we’ve got even more juicy content coming your way in future episodes. Until next time, take care of yourselves. Stay sharp, and remember, excellence isn’t just a goal: it’s the standard. Thanks for hanging out with me. We’ll catch you on the next episode of Transformation Realness.

Tags Recruitment, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

Don’t Leave People Out of the Skills Conversation, Y’all!

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 3, 2024

In this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m sitting down with Toya Del Valle, chief customer officer at corporate learning platform Cornerstone OnDemand. As one of the leading players in the skills space, Cornerstone has been making major moves to help organizations build workforce agility, including through the acquisition of SkyHive.

Toya’s background is in the high-stakes world of airline transportation, where she supported organizations through 9/11 and the Hudson River landing. “Being an HR leader in that space, it brings the HR, the talent, operations, people learning — it brings it together,” she says. “Cornerstone has been a really great place for me to continue that learning and growth, bring in what I’ve learned through that experience, but then also just fly and do even more with the folks that are here now and the way the world is changing.”

Toya brought some serious realness to our conversation, reminding us that skills are fundamentally about people. It’s not just about finding the right talent or building fancy new tech — it’s about creating a culture where people can thrive and grow within their organization.

You’ll want to take notes for this one, folks. Toya dropped some serious truth bombs. Special thanks to the team over at Glider AI for making this episode possible as a sponsor!

Why Skills Are More Than Just a Buzzword

We all know that skills are having a major moment right now — but what does it actually mean to build a skills-based organization? “Everyone talks about skills and many folks are trying to figure out: what [are] skills? What [are] competencies? What do I do with it? Is it a buzzword? What really is it?” Toya says.

For her, it all boils down to agility.

In a world where disruption is the new normal, businesses need to be able to adapt quickly to changing market conditions. And the only way to do that is by having a workforce that’s equipped with the skills they need to pivot on a dime. “It’s the absolute glue that’s going to move us forward,” Toya says.

But here’s the thing — you can’t just recruit your way out of a skills gap. As Toya points out, there aren’t enough people in the world to fill every open role, and even if there were, simply hiring someone with the right skills doesn’t mean they’ll thrive in your organization. You’ve got to invest in developing your existing employees, too.

Practicing What You Preach: Building Skills at Cornerstone

I was super curious to hear how Cornerstone was approaching skills internally, given all the work they’re doing to enable skills-based strategies for their customers. And Toya didn’t disappoint. Turns out they’re “drinking their own champagne,” as they say in the biz.

Cornerstone is using their own tech and talent strategies to help their customer success team stay ahead of the curve. “As we continue to build capabilities for the organizations and what the customers expect from us, we have to be able to deliver,” Toya says. “Part of that is ensuring that our team members … know how to utilize AI not just as a tool, but as a transformation journey so they can meet those outcomes.” This includes using AI to personalize learning journeys, identify skills gaps and recommend career paths — all within the Cornerstone platform!

Toya also shared that Cornerstone is using the data they’ve gathered from their customers and their acquisitions, like SkyHive and Talespin, to inform their own talent strategies. It’s really cool to see them practicing what they preach — and using their unique insights to help their customers do the same.

Customer Success Is More Than Just Checking Boxes

One of the most refreshing things about my conversation with Toya was her focus on value. “We talk a lot in my team about value. How are we bringing value to organizations?” Instead of just checking boxes and delivering features, she’s challenging her team to think about how their work is actually driving business outcomes for their customers.

She shared a powerful example of a banking customer who was struggling with compliance reporting. Instead of just helping them build the right report, Cornerstone’s customer success team dug deeper and realized that the bank’s underlying goal was to open a new branch in an underserved community. By understanding the bigger picture, they were able to deliver a solution that not only helped the bank comply with regulations, but also made a real difference in the lives of people in that community.

I love Toya’s take on customer success as a force for good, and I think it’s something we can all learn from. Let’s move beyond just building features and start thinking about how our work can create real value for our customers and for the world.

People in This Episode

Toya Del Valle: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries, and welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less sh*tty and have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real. This podcast is produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by yours truly, the unstoppable, unbelievably charismatic Kyle Lagunas, Head of strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation. Get into it.

Special thanks to the team over at Glider AI, whose sponsorship made our Transformation Ecosystem EP possible.

Today, I am sitting down with none other than Toya Del Valle, Chief Customer Officer at Cornerstone OnDemand. Over her 10 plus years at Cornerstone, she’s overseen their transformation into a powerhouse of skills-based talent strategies.

But wait — there’s more.

Before Cornerstone, Toya led teams in the airline industry through historic moments, including the Hudson River landing. Yeah, with Tom Cruise, he was there, I think. I saw the movie. We are also joined by Madeline, who, as you recall, is my illustrious, invincible, incredible business partner. Madeline Laurano, Founder and Principal Analyst here at Aptitude.

In this episode, we are talking with Toya about the future of workforce agility, why skills are more than just a buzzword, and how Cornerstone’s latest moves, including their acquisition of SkyHive, are reimagining what it means to be ready for what’s next. Let’s dive in.

Hey, everybody, it’s Kyle back for another episode of Transformation Realness live from HR tech with Madeline, my BFF, my OG, my boss. She’s in charge here. Speaking of boss, we also have a boss lady here. Hi, Toya Del Valle.

Toya Del Valle:

Hello. How are you? Great to see you both.

Kyle Lagunas:

We’re actually really excited to be sitting down with you. I mean, honestly, the five-letter word that nobody can stop talking about is skills in our space right now, and one of the leading players in the space, with probably some of the most product innovation, is Cornerstone OnDemand. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Toya Del Valle:

I have. I’m proud member of the team.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes. Actually, how long have you been at Cornerstone?

Toya Del Valle:

A bit over 10 years. I’ve heard it’s a real transformation journey of that Cornerstone to today’s Cornerstone to the future of Cornerstone, so pretty excited.

Kyle Lagunas:

She’s ready for it. Well, tell us a little bit about your background, because when we talked before, I was actually stunned and could see some of the best practices you were pulling through into the SaaS space. I think it’d be really helpful for people to know the leadership that you’re bringing to the table.

Toya Del Valle:

Absolutely. Prior to coming to Cornerstone, as I’d mentioned, I’ve been here just over 10 years, I spent 15 years in the airline transportation, so working for the largest carriers in the U.S. and internationally, leading operations teams and also HR and people teams. I was in the airline industry from the 9/11. I was with Northwest Airlines during that period of time, leading in customer care and customer operations. I say that my team and I were the first TSA, in the sense when the airlines operated, we mobilized and did that. I was with U.S. Airways whenever we had the landing on the Hudson and managed that critical incident, which was very successful to the lives of those individuals. When I think about operations-

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, Tom Hanks made it through.

Toya Del Valle:

Made it. When I think about the power of operations and what that must be for individuals that are being serviced with the solution, with the product, with the service, and I think about what’s important for success to look like towards an outcome, all of that has come together. Also, being an HR leader in that space, it brings the HR, the talent, operations, people learning, it brings it together. Cornerstone has been a really great place for me to continue that learning and growth, bring in what I’ve learned through that experience, but then also just fly and do even more with the folks that are here now and the way the world is changing.

Kyle Lagunas:

Now, do you see why I wanted to sit down with Toya?

Madeline Laurano:

Yes. I’m so impressed.

Kyle Lagunas:

Honestly, just such a baddie. Well, especially, all right, we started with skills. You guys made a major acquisition that I think really enhanced your go-to-market, your strategy capability around supporting skills-based strategies. Do you want to talk a little bit about SkyHive at all? Yeah. How’s that been going?

Toya Del Valle:

How that fits in? Sure, absolutely. We’ve always had skills embedded into our overall platform with the acquisition of Clustree and how we’ve just been building. But now, with SkyHive, is an absolute game changer to the now and the future of skills. Everyone talks about skills and many folks are trying to figure out what is skills? What is competencies? What do I do with it? Is it a buzzword? What really is it?

Kyle Lagunas:

Why does this matter?

Madeline Laurano:

How do I get started?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Toya Del Valle:

How do I get started is number one in that. What SkyHive is doing with us is that it has brought on this magnificent platform of data intelligence that really puts together, not— its skills, but not more than skills in the sense of what is happening in the world, what is needed, what is sitting out there that folks don’t know how to do it, what it is, and how do they embed it into their organizations so they can meet those future needs.

Instead of skills being a skill, it is a transformation into the workforce agility or the gap that we see within the world of how we move from what we need individuals to do from an organization standpoint and how do we actually get there. It’s the absolute glue that’s going to move us forward.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I think so too. I didn’t see the acquisition coming at all, and I was just like, great work. Really good.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah. I mean, there are large providers that are tackling skills as you are at Cornerstone, and then there’s providers that are really specific on supporting a skills-based approach to talent. SkyHive was one of those providers, so to see that as being the first company get acquired was very cool.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I think what I really love about the way you guys are thinking about this skills-based— Any talent strategy, any HR strategy that is designed in a vacuum without context, without connection, without relevance, how’s it going to be impactful? It’s just going to be another HR pet project. We got to make sure that this stuff is actually moving the business in the direction it needs to, getting us more resilient to disruption and helping us to be a little bit more future-proof, and, dare I say, agile. I think that might be a magic word of the day.

Toya Del Valle:

Oh, yes. Skills is about people. It is about people, just like we talk a lot about AI. AI is about people, should be about people.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it has to.

Toya Del Valle:

I think you’ve talked about the human first. That’s what it has to be about. All of these are tools and ways of moving from one place to another, but the foundation of that being… Agility, because we have to be agile, because look, we really don’t know exactly what the future holds. We have forecasting, and designs and a hypothesis. This is allowing that agility, that flexibility, to say, “I know that I’m a learner. How do I even be a learner so that I can be prepared for what’s next? How do I pivot?” Those are skills, dare I say, to know how to get into that next phase. All of that is critically important. I’ll also add that as important as recruiting is, and it is very important, companies cannot recruit themselves out of this.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, I totally agree.

Madeline Laurano:

No, they can’t.

Kyle Lagunas:

They’re trying to.

Toya Del Valle:

Some are. It’s not going to work.

Kyle Lagunas:

Actually, I think they’re doing the same thing with skills they did with diversity. They’re trying to recruit their way through diversity and leaving off EIB. They’re missing the whole point.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah.

Toya Del Valle:

I mean, diversity, you make that a recruitment thing, but you don’t create the right environment for those individuals to join and be a part, not an add, but a part of the organization. Same with anything else. It will not be successful. It’ll not be successful.

Kyle Lagunas:

But so is skills, I think, is actually… I hadn’t really thought about it. We’re trying to just buy skills.

Especially, are these people going to fit into our organization? What do we do with the people that don’t have the skills that we are actually looking for right now?

Madeline Laurano:

It needs to be dynamic. It changes all the time, so how do we evaluate?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, got to be on top of it.

Toya Del Valle:

And that is that gap. You have to bring people forward. You have to bring people together, because even if you thought you could recruit yourself out of this, there’s not even enough people. It’s like everyone’s going to do it. No, keep that culture within your organization and start showing successful pathways for this is where I started in the organization, this is how I grew into the organization. You begin to create the culture that must be necessary for growth.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. It’s like this is the path to the future for me in this organization. We’re not just talking about workforce agility as an enterprise capability, although it is. It’s like, I want to be future-proof. I want to be recession-proof myself. So interesting. Well, one of the other things that I really like about the work that you’re doing is I feel like you’re practicing what you preach as somebody that is leading the customer organization for… I mean, Cornerstone offers a lot of transformative capabilities. HR struggles with change management, they struggle with long-term program management. I really think you have built out, for your customer success organization, a lot of different capability, a lot of different expertise. It’s like you are leveraging skills-based talent strategies yourself, right?

Toya Del Valle:

Yes. I say that Cornerstone benefits from Cornerstone.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, it has to. In this space, you have to practice what you preach.

Toya Del Valle:

I can’t think of any organization that would say honestly that they’re immune from skills. They’re immune from this gap. They’re not. What we have done at Cornerstone is that we have identified, okay, great. Here’s where we are, here’s what our customers expect of us. This is how the world is changing. How are we going to be ready as we continue to acquire new organizations? As we continue to build capabilities for the organizations and what the customers expect from us, we have to be able to deliver.

Part of that is ensuring that our team members know how to deliver. They know how to utilize AI not just as a tool, but as a transformation journey so they can meet those outcomes that’s expected of us because we have the data that we have. No one has data like we have related to the customers that are within our own portfolio. The acquisitions, the talent intelligence that SkyHive brings, the data that Talespin brings forward with VR. I mean, all of that is just pretty magical. But if we don’t practice, and enable, and transform our own team-

Kyle Lagunas:

Your team doesn’t know what to do with it, how is your customer?

Toya Del Valle:

They’re just going to be tools, and there’s a lot of tools. The difference between the tools and activation and growth are the humans that will continue to empower them, and including AI that is powered by humans.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well, I think it’s really cool to see, at this point, a lot of people are investing a lot in tech innovation. I’m not saying Cornerstone’s not, but at this moment, it’s really important that you all are making significant investments in the customer organization. You have to be there for them. You have to help them-

Madeline Laurano:

Understand what they want.

Kyle Lagunas:

Exactly. You’ve got to be that partner, and you can’t do that by just building more features.

Toya Del Valle:

No, and we talk a lot in my team about value. How are we bringing value to organizations? An example that I would give, say, one of our banking customers, and if someone said… I say, “How are you bringing value to this customer?” In the past, someone may have said, “Well, I helped them with reporting, and they really needed this reporting. It was awesome. It was very necessary for their business.” I said, “Okay, but let’s rethink that. Was it the reporting that was necessary or did you help them ensure they have the right reporting so that they can ensure that they were compliant to the regulators so that they could open up a new branch in a neighborhood that maybe was unbanked?”

Now there’s individuals in this neighborhood that can bank, and they can build, and have a new school or a new home that they have. That’s the power. That’s how we think about value differently, that yes, we are creating or solving an issue, but what does that issue do for the organization? That’s the value.

Madeline Laurano:

The customer, right. I mean, you have a lot of customers. I think one thing that’s interesting about Cornerstone compared to a lot of other companies right now is you’ve made 15 acquisitions in the past five years, and that’s a hard job for you because you’re dealing with customers that have different products that are now part of Cornerstone. How do you manage, as a chief customer officer, all of these different acquisitions and different customer expectations under this new agile skills-based approach?

Toya Del Valle:

Sure. We definitely have had several acquisitions, and we’ve done it a couple of ways. One of the things [is] that we bring in these acquisitions for a purpose. We’ve been very careful to not disrupt that very specific talent that we brought into the organization. We found a way to really cultivate that talent, and it’s not just taking those individuals and those products and bringing them into Cornerstone. In some cases, we brought Cornerstone into that acquisition as well because we’ve learned from them, so it’s been kind of a two-way learning process so that we don’t lose that magic, lose the reason why we purchased that product. It’s been two-way.

Saying that at the same time, part of our Galaxy that we just released is about bringing it all together. How does learning management align with learning experience? How does our recruiting come together and our performance connect with the learning component? How does talent marketplace align to skills and bring…? That’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve taken each part of these acquisitions, which have been very strategic, in the sense that they have been add-ons to existing products that we have or the existing products have been able to carry those additional acquisitions through. They’ve all been very purposeful back to the customer to ensure that the customers have what they need to continue their learning journey, to continue their talent journey, again, to hit the future, future-ready, future-proof, future needs, future ongoing.

Madeline Laurano:

Amazing.

Kyle Lagunas:

Toya, I know you’re a very busy woman and this is a busy week, but thank you for spending some time with us. Really appreciate you.

Toya Del Valle:

No, thank you. I really appreciate you all as well. I mean, you have a very powerful platform and you also share a lot of information. It’s very necessary to really demystify some of these different areas of HR tech and talent, and so thank you all as well for the work that you do.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thanks for recognizing it. It’s mission work, isn’t it?

Madeline Laurano:

It is. It’s hard work.

Toya Del Valle:

I don’t know. It’s hard to clarify something that’s super confusing too.

Kyle Lagunas:

My family still thinks I’m a recruiter.

Madeline Laurano:

Mine thinks I fixed cell phones.

Toya Del Valle:

Mine’s like, “Wait, where are you? Where are you today?” I was like, “Yeah.” Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

No. All right. Well, we’ll let you go, get back to the next one. Thank you, Toya.

Toya Del Valle:

All right, thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

And that’s a wrap. One more episode of Transformation Realness in the books. Big thank you to Toya for joining us today. What an absolute powerhouse. Honestly, she had me rethinking everything. From building resilient teams to redefining value beyond just ticking boxes on functionality — who knew customer success could get so deep? Well, actually, I think all of us did, and I’m glad we went there.

Big takeaways for me: you can’t just build features or hire your way out of complex challenges. Real transformation in the world of talent and HR starts from within. And, as Toya said, it’s literally all about the people. Whether we’re talking AI, skills or customer success, humans are the ones that are driving the magic.

Thank you all for listening. Whether you’re here for the laughs, whether you’re here for the insights, or maybe just to prove to your family you don’t fix cell phones for a living, I see you. That’s all the time we’ve got for today though. Be sure to like and subscribe, leave a review, tell everybody you know about how wonderful this conversation was. And hey, we’ve got more exciting conversations coming your way, so stay tuned.

Until next time, keep it real, stay agile, and remember, transformation waits for no one. Catch you on the next episode of Transformation Realness. This is Kyle, signing off. Goodbye. I miss you already.

Tags Recruitment, skills, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

AI Is Here, Baby: How HR Leaders Can Harness It Fairly

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date November 26, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, Kyle Lagunas is talking with Keith Sonderling, former commissioner at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Keith is a trailblazer in HR tech policy, and believes HR leaders are uniquely positioned to guide organizations through the responsible adoption of AI tools.

“Everyone wants to make this world so difficult to understand, where you know you’re not going to be able to keep up with it, so ignore it and just implement it,” Keith says. “Or on the flip side … it’s too complicated, so let’s just not move forward.”

Neither of these attitudes is the right approach. We can’t afford to avoid AI, but we need to assume its risks, too. And that’s exactly the thoughtful, balanced approach that Keith spearheaded during his time as EEOC commissioner. “If there’s ways to help us make employment decisions more fair, more transparent, and without bias, we should be all for that,” he says.

Keith and I cover everything from AI’s role in amplifying HR’s effectiveness to the importance of HR literacy in these new technologies. Whether you’re overwhelmed by the rapid pace of change or excited about AI’s possibilities, this conversation will leave you with actionable insights on how to lead responsibly in this evolving space.

Special thanks to the team over at Glider AI. Without their sponsorship, all these juicy insights would have stayed on the show floor at HR Tech! Thankfully, we were able to bring them to you… Yay!

AI Isn’t Creating New Decisions — It’s Just Making the Old Ones Better

First things first, let’s address the elephant in the room — AI in HR. Keith made it crystal clear that this train has left the station, my friends. AI is no longer some far-off, futuristic concept in our world: It’s here, it’s real, and we better start figuring out how to use it the right way.

That’s why Keith wants to address one of the biggest misconceptions about AI: that it’s fundamentally changing HR processes. “At the end of the day, AI has not created a new employment decision,” he explains. “All AI is doing is either making those for you or giving you more data, augmenting it.” AI isn’t inventing new ways to hire, promote or fire‌ — ‌it’s enhancing the decisions HR has always made by providing better, more transparent data.

But with innovation comes fear: fear of bias, fear of lawsuits and fear of the unknown. Keith acknowledges this but challenges HR leaders to reframe the narrative. “If we don’t move to this, we’re going to stick with the status quo, and the status quo has issues within itself,” he warns. By addressing these risks head-on, HR can use AI to make employment practices not only more efficient but also more equitable.

HR Professionals Are the Stewards of AI in the Workplace

Let’s get one thing straight: HR is no stranger to high-stakes decisions, and Keith believes that HR’s role is only growing. “It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in: HR is highly regulated,” Keith says. “But that’s where I’ve been trying to empower everyone in the HR functions, saying you’ve been dealing with a much higher risk area your entire career than other parts of your business, because you’re dealing with people’s ability to provide for their families, to enter and thrive in the workforce.”

That’s why, as we enter the AI era, Keith believes that it’s your time to step up as trusted guardians of your business and its people.

And that means you can’t sit back and let someone else figure out the tech. AI literacy is a core competency for HR and talent acquisition — because we’re not just here to make sure AI complies with the law. We’re here to align it with our company’s values, ethics and vision. This is our time to lead, and we can’t afford to miss the opportunity.

Bringing the Government and HR Worlds Together, Finally

One of Keith’s biggest wins during his time at the EEOC? Bringing government regulators and HR pros to the same table. “The EEOC is the biggest show in town for HR technology. And the EEOC … was completely absent,” he admitted. Keith didn’t just sit behind a desk during his tenure. He got out there‌ — ‌talking to everyone from venture capitalists to HR leaders to ensure the voices shaping workplace technology understood what was at stake.

Keith believes most companies want to do the right thing, but making that happen requires partnership and open dialogue. Keith showed us what it looks like to create a bridge between innovation and regulation. And here’s the kicker: HR pros are the best ones to walk that line. We understand the people side and the compliance side, which means we’re uniquely qualified to steer this ship toward a future where AI serves everyone.

The future of HR is all about embracing responsible AI, and Keith brought that message loud and clear. We have a unique opportunity to be the stewards of trust in our organizations, to make sure AI is used to build a better, fairer workplace for everyone. HR isn’t just about compliance anymore — it’s about being leaders in this new era of work. So let’s lean in, get literate, and guide our companies toward a future where AI serves us all responsibly.

People in This Episode

Keith Sonderling: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries and welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less shitty and have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap Media and hosted by yours truly, Kyle Lagunas, head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research. Hiee.

Our talent Transformation Ecosystem is made possible thanks to the team over at Glider AI, who so kindly offered to sponsor us. In da club, we really are all fam.

Today’s guest … Oh, it’s a reunion, folks. I am joined by none other than Keith Sonderling, commish, my very first podcast guest. Yes. Maybe you recall. But this time Keith is fresh off a major career move having just wrapped up his term as commissioner of the EEOC.

Yes. The man is technically unemployed. But if you know Keith, if you are familiar with his work, then you know that the world is literally his oyster at this moment. And it is a huge honor that he took a moment to sit down with us while he was scoping out what’s next.

This episode today is packed with real talk about the intersection of AI, HR and civil rights, and honestly, how Keith’s leadership has helped HR professionals embrace tech without losing sight of ethics. We riff on the evolving role of HR, the rising need for AI literacy and why doing nothing isn’t an option when the status quo is, well, kind of dumpster fire.

From the struggles of mental health accommodations to the challenges of getting AI adoption right, this conversation is one for the books. Let’s dive in.

I’m really excited to be joined by a dear friend, dare I say colleague, Keith Sonderling.

Keith Sonderling:

Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be chatting with you in this really nice booth and setup you have. We’ve done this podcast virtually, but now we’re doing it live.

Kyle Lagunas:

For those who don’t know, who are you, Keith?

Keith Sonderling:

I am Keith Sonderling, formerly the commissioner of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I’m no longer the commissioner. My term ended, but my desire and passion to stay in the HR space lives on because I’m here live at HR Tech in Las Vegas.

Kyle Lagunas:

Let’s go baby. Let’s go. So, you’re technically unemployed right now?

Keith Sonderling:

I am unemployed and a good place to be unemployed at an HR conference with a lot of recruiters. At the EEOC, you have terms.

Kyle Lagunas:

Didn’t get fired.

Keith Sonderling:

It was a term, and the term came to end, and I only wanted to do it one time. So, to continue on, I’d have to be renominated and go through the Senate confirmation process, which I could have done. I just knew I wanted to do it one time, make a big impact and leave. And I think that’s really important in these roles. But they’re not career positions. I mean, a lot of these high-level government jobs.

Kyle Lagunas:

It would inevitably, the leadership in the role would stagnate or it would warp. There’s just too much vulnerability in being in that position of extreme authority and influence. I mean, there have been many people who have been in your role who have done really important work in the commissionership. But especially at this point in time when artificial intelligence is literally everywhere and compliance is literally all over the place.

And I mean, I’m a geriatric millennial, so what do I know about the history of HR? But I feel like it has never been this hard and your leadership in this space, especially around the use of AI in HR, there hasn’t been very much federal legislation to regulate the use of this to inform the ethical and responsible use of it.

But that hasn’t stopped you from going out and talking about, well, look, and I love what you always say, “Position of EEOC has not changed. You cannot discriminate based on gender and race and religious background.” And I just feel like it has been really powerful for you to come out and say, “In the absence of legislative guidance, I’m going to come out and give you” … The story is the same. And you actually did it with confidence and with humility. It was really refreshing in our space.

Keith Sonderling:

I think you could write my biography of my time in the EEOC. How much do I have to pay you? Thank you. But in all seriousness, when you get in these jobs, especially at the EEOC being the regulator of HR, you realize that, like in HR there’s always fires to put out. There’s always something distracting you from the next big issue.

And I think what was important for me getting into this role coming off COVID, coming off the Me Too movement, coming off all these lingering issues with pay equity, is how do we be proactive? How do we get ahead of the next biggest issue in HR, instead of being reactive, which is a lot of what HR is, just because that’s the nature of the job. There’s just always something going on. There’s always something to distract you.

So, that’s why I picked up HR technology and artificial intelligence in the workplace. I was really the first regulator to talk about AI in this space, and really one of the first regulators broadly to talk about the implications of AI. And when I got into it, like you, I’m a very big fan of a lot of the software. I think if there’s programs, if there’s ways to help us make employment decisions more fair, more transparent, and without bias, we should be all for that.

But a lot of the negativity from AI and workplace technologies leads the conversation, especially out of DC, “Oh, it’s going to discriminate. Oh, it’s going to take all the jobs.” And look, all of that is possible, but we have to balance that with a positive side of it as well. So, that’s what I started digging into it as a worthy cause to take up.

And to what you alluded to, everyone wants to complicate it. Everyone wants to make this world so difficult to understand where you’re not going to be able to keep up with it, so ignore it and just implement it. Or on the flip side …

Kyle Lagunas:

Put your head in the sand.

Keith Sonderling:

… it’s too complicated, so let’s just not move forward. And I think both of those have problems. On the frontend side of that, if you’re saying, “Well, there’s too many potential risks of this and we don’t understand it.” Well, okay, let’s stick the status quo.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’ll never understand it.

Keith Sonderling:

Right. Right.

Kyle Lagunas:

You know what? Risk is the big fear. But I don’t actually find anybody … In the beginning, I feel like we are maturing very quickly here, thankfully. But people weren’t really evaluating risk. They were assuming risk and then avoiding it.

Keith Sonderling:

Or just saying, “We’ll deal with it later.”

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Kicking it down the road.

Keith Sonderling:

Or we’re just not going to deal with any of these innovations and not take that risk associated with it. And I always argue that’s not great.

Kyle Lagunas:

Which completely de-risks their entire HR process, right?

Keith Sonderling:

Guess what? The way that humans have been doing this, no offense to everybody in this community, hasn’t been great to begin with. That’s why we’re at this conference. That’s why there’s so many innovative vendors in this space to make a very difficult process that has been not efficient, that has had serious bias issues, which is the reason the EEOC was created in the last two years, have collected $1.2 billion from employers violating these laws that there’s a problem.

And so, to not move forward into some of these technological advances that make these decisions not more efficient, not just better, faster hires, but actually removing bias and actually allowing workers to get the jobs that they’re the most qualified for and employers to actually fill those needs is something we should all be very positive on, and not just the negative.

So, one who is reframing it, too, and just saying, “If we don’t move to this, we’re going to stick with the status quo.” And the status quo has issues within itself. So, it’s just a different way of looking at this. But to your point where it really made the most impact is by going back to the basics and saying, “With all these fancy AI tools, with all these vendors out there, at the end of the day, AI has not created a new employment decision.”

There’s only a finite amount of employment decisions, hiring, firing, wages, training, promotions, benefits, demotions, terminations. There’s not a new one.

Kyle Lagunas:

No.

Keith Sonderling:

So, all AI is doing is either making those for you or giving you more data, augmenting it, all these different words. But at the end of the day, there’s an employment decision.

Kyle Lagunas:

The process hasn’t really actually changed.

Keith Sonderling:

Not at all. And in a sense, they’re changing in the positive where now you could actually go back and show exactly how you made that employment decision.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. The how is changing.

Keith Sonderling:

Versus how we were worrying when you’re accused of doing wrong or making a bad employment decision, not just on the bias side, just, “Oh, why did you make this terrible hire?”

Kyle Lagunas:

And you have no documentation either way or the other?

Keith Sonderling:

And you have documentation. And then you’re defensive versus this is exactly what we looked at. At the time, this was the best decision, whether it’s lawful.

Kyle Lagunas:

This is what we looked at, specifically. This is what we didn’t look at, right?

Keith Sonderling:

Exactly. We didn’t have that before. So, in a lot of ways, it can help the whole process from start to finish. But that’s getting over the fear of that, “Oh, no. The government’s going to rue this.” “Oh, no. Our fear of class action lawyers, if we make this mistake is going to prevent us from implementing this stuff.” And I’ve really been trying to change the narrative there.

Kyle Lagunas:

So, do you think this AI thing’s going to stick then, huh?

Keith Sonderling:

I’ve said that it’s no longer a question, are you going to use AI in your HR process? Not just on the hiring side, not just on the recruiting offer side, but through the entire employee lifecycle, from performance reviews to management of the employees of what they’re supposed to be doing, to compensation determinations, to even termination decisions. We’re past that point.

It’s just reframing it. AI is here. It’s happening. You have to use it to stay competitive. But let’s just reframe the question to saying, “How are we going to use it?”

Kyle Lagunas:

Exactly?

Keith Sonderling:

“What are we going to use it for? What vendors are we going to get in bed with to make these very big decisions? And how are they going to ensure not only are they complying with the law?” that’s one part of it. “But how are you complying with your own company’s ethics, civility codes, moral conducts?”

Because every company’s different and they have to ingrain into your organization as well because they’re going to be the ones as if they’re your new hiring managers. So, they have to understand your culture as well and what your principles and ethics and beliefs. And that goes from the CEO all the way down to what that company believes and how hiring practices and performance practices should be done.

Kyle Lagunas:

Let me ask you. So, commissionership has wrapped. You are a free man. But I have to imagine, because you’ve done so much work, I mean, literally on the road every single week for most of the week, for the entire commissionership, what are you most proud of?

Keith Sonderling:

Being able to learn a trade, being able to learn a whole area that we are the sole regulator for. The EEOC is the biggest show in town for HR technology. And the EEOC before I started doing this and being on the road was completely absent. And what that allowed me to do was learn the entire, and I’m going to drop a tech word on you, ecosystem. And to be able to properly regulate this, to be able to properly look at it, you have to look at the whole chain.

And the EEOC, since the 1960s, has known basically three groups, unions, employers, staffing agencies, and a fourth obviously, employees and applicants. But now, you have VC companies and private equity looking to invest, and they don’t want to invest in products that are going to violate civil rights law.

You have the entrepreneurs who are smart enough to make this technology and help us solve this problem. They don’t want to build technology that’s going to violate civil rights laws. And then you have the people, like I joke around in the worst position, are the buyers, the companies who have to make that determination not only what vendor to pick, but then how to implement it within your organization.

And everyone was speaking different languages. Everyone was talking to each other from their perspective, but what was their interest in these products. And for me, I had to learn all those different considerations to be able then to properly say, “Well, here’s the landscape from A to Z. Here’s all the different concerns.” But at the end of the day, the most important concern is the civil rights implications of your applicants, of your employees, and you’re all involved in that. But we, the regulator, was nowhere to be found.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Right.

Keith Sonderling:

So, that’s why I did that. Not only to be able to get out there and learn the technology, learn various functions within HR that are very complicated that you don’t understand unless you practice there. Most DC people and lawyers like myself just don’t get. But also, leading some of my now closest friends, like you, and really just being able to ingrain myself in that.

Kyle Lagunas:

There’s a lot of heart in the space, isn’t there? You mean, honestly, the work that we do is really important, and I think that because it’s so hard and because it’s thankless, we forget how important the work is. You know what’s interesting though, I feel like there has been a parallel between your journey and the HR profession itself.

We have actually had to do that learning that you have done. We have had to lean in and figure out what is this? How does this work? What doesn’t this do? How can I use this responsibly and effectively at the same time? I’ve got to get something done. How am I going to do that? HR has been on that same journey. You’ve been right there with us.

Keith Sonderling:

And it’s amazing, too, because these governance terms that HR really never had any involvement in. And a lot of these keeping up with regulations and legislation, it’s just changed. Coming from DC, HR is now at the front and center of a lot of senators, the White House mind, where it wasn’t before the pandemic, it wasn’t in that.

So, it’s also a learning experience, too, for everyone in this community to hear directly from me, from DC saying, “I’m not making this up. These are the concerns of the agency. These are the concerns of Congress. These are the concerns of the White House. And it literally implicates your daily job.” And it’s just a new way of thinking where other industries, where other parts of the business are really involved in that regulation scene.

So, I think it’s a really cool experience for HR professionals now as their practice elevates. As you see CHROs now are the CEO’s best friend, like the CFOs wars getting on boards. Well, that’s part of, in a sense, growing up, is now dealing with this highly regulatory environment, which is across all industries. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, HR is highly regulated.

But that’s where I’ve been trying to empower everyone in the HR function saying, “You’ve been dealing with some much higher risk area your entire career than other parts of your business, because dealing with people’s ability to provide for their families to enter and thrive in the workforce. So, you’re familiar with this. This is what you know. We’re just now throwing all these fancy new terms into it.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. HR has always gotten a pass for not being very tech-savvy and for implementing a new ATS or a new piece of software in HR. You just had to have a project team that knew how to implement the software, and that was enough. Not everybody needed to know what an API was. Not everybody needed to know what a custom field was. We didn’t need to know the software stuff.

But I feel like now AI literacy is a core competency for HR. And for talent acquisition, we are change agents ourselves. We’re not just policy police. We need to actually know what this stuff is in a way that matters in my day-to-day, because we’re stewards of a lot of these things and we’re the frontline for a lot of these things.

Keith Sonderling:

If you’re in the area, that’s easy to understand, and I don’t want HR professionals to lose sight of how impactful they can be, because when you think about practical uses of AI that companies are using, not just reviewing millions of documents or making shipping routes faster, everyone at some point has had a resume. Everyone has applied for a job. And that’s a familiar aspect for most employees. And now that you’re dealing with AI in this sense, you can lead it because you can explain it.

Kyle Lagunas:

We’re like stewards of trust in this new era. Oh, it’s so interesting.

Keith Sonderling:

Right. You talking about responsible AI, there’s so many panels on that. It’s such a hot topic. That’s where I’m encouraging HR leaders to say, “Well, here is an actual use you understand. Everyone’s applied for a job. Here’s how AI is going to impact that, and here’s how we’re going to do it responsibly within our organization,” versus if we said, “Well, here’s how we’re going to use AI to make a new pharmaceutical drug.” We wouldn’t understand anything of it.

Kyle Lagunas:

Nobody would. They’re really cool.

Keith Sonderling:

Versus, “Hey, here’s how AI is going to look at your performance review over the course of year.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Absolutely. Every single person can understand it. Yeah.

Keith Sonderling:

It’s not like people analytics software. And here, you can actually understand it. It doesn’t require an advanced science degree or math or finance. It’s dealing with humans and dealing with an aspect that everyone in every industry has dealt with.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right. Yeah. Right. Well, all right. Let me ask you, what’s one thing that you would have done differently? Or what’s one thing that sticks with you now?

Keith Sonderling:

I don’t know if it’s about doing something differently. I think it’s more about what else could I have tackled? And it took a lot of time to focus my efforts on AI because it’s just a global issue on the technology, all the different people involved. I call that my hobby. But the day job was dealing with all the cases of discrimination in the U.S. and the tens of thousands of new cases, 80,000 to 100,000 new cases every single year.

So, I think there’s still a lot of huge issues impacting HR that are at the forefront. And mental health in the workplace is significantly a bigger issue now for employers dealing with some of the accommodation requests that employees are asking, especially with a lot of the return to office mandates. So, there’s just always something that needs to be tackled, that you just don’t have the resources, you don’t have the time to. Everything, too, with pay equity and all the pay movements, there’s just so much to do and so much to tackle.

Kyle Lagunas:

The work’s not done.

Keith Sonderling:

The work’s not done. In a lot of sense, it’s not even started in a lot of these areas.

Kyle Lagunas:

Exactly. Yes.

Keith Sonderling:

You think about some of the issues still we …

Kyle Lagunas:

We’re just getting started.

Keith Sonderling:

… see the systemic issues with pregnant applicants and pregnant workers in the workplace, and some of the discrimination issues they face, disabled workers. There’s just always something. So, I wouldn’t say if I could go back and change anything, it’s just almost you need more time. The more resources you have, the more investigations we’d have in that sense so there’s always something.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, I have a feeling that we’re still going to see you around, that your voice is going to carry through. But I also do hope that your, I don’t know if it’s successor, but the current commish, I guess, may I call them that? I hope that they see the value in the work that you’ve done and continue to carry that torch, because we need that level of guidance, but we also need that level of connection to our governing bodies. How can you effectively regulate anything if you aren’t connected to it in that kind of way?

Keith Sonderling:

Yeah. And I think I’ve used this position to elevate what government officials at my level can do. And whether it’s at the FTC or the SEC, you could use your position to go out there and people will listen. Instead of just using your position in court through government investigations or litigations, which is what these agencies normally do. You know why? Because it’s a home-field advantage.

Because I don’t need to tell you what to do. I’m the government. I have investigators. I have lawyers. At the end of the day, I can just file claims against your company, investigate it and go to court.

Kyle Lagunas:

You are so sued.

Keith Sonderling:

Right. And that’s how normally you don’t have guidance, you don’t know how to change versus, “Hey. Be proactive. Whatever industry you’re in, they will welcome you.” Because most employers, the vast majority of employers want to get it right.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. They want to get it right.

Keith Sonderling:

They just need the tools to be able to do that. They really don’t want to be in the limelight.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love that. It’s not just like, “I’m afraid of getting it wrong.” It’s actually we want to get this right.

Keith Sonderling:

Right.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, I love it. And honestly, this is why we’re friends, is because you are truly a civil servant. And I think that you’ve given so much to our space and your time. I can’t wait to see what you do next. I love you, buddy.

Keith Sonderling:

I love you, too. And I’ll be in this area. I’m not leaving. I’ll be still hovering above you, making sure you’re compliant.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, you can’t sue me now. You can’t bring a case against me. All right. Well, thanks Keith. I’ll see you more soon, bud.

Keith Sonderling:

Thanks, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, folks, that is a wrap. If today’s conversation with Keith taught us anything, it’s this. HR isn’t just keeping up, it’s evolving. Whether it’s navigating bias, getting real about compliance, or becoming stewards of AI, there’s no room today for staying on autopilot. The status quo, mm-mm, not cutting it. Keith, huge thanks for joining me again, dropping wisdom reminding us that avoiding risk isn’t the answer. Navigating it is.

HR pros, the bar has been raised. AI literacy is no longer optional. It is an absolute must. He may be off the government payroll, but you better believe he’s still out here keeping an eye on all of us. Thanks for listening, my little blueberries, that’s all the time we have for today. Until next time, keep it real, keep it human and keep transforming. Catch you on the next episode.

Tags AI, employment, equity

Blog Podcast

Trust, Tech and a Little Skepticism: Making AI Work for People

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date November 22, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, Kyle Lagunas is joined by Opal Wagnac, Senior Vice President of Market & Product Strategy at isolved. With her sharp insights and fresh perspective, Opal doesn’t hold back on what it takes to bring enterprise-grade solutions to businesses of all sizes while keeping it real about AI’s potential — and limitations. At the center of her approach is a mission to ensure that technology serves us, not replaces us. “Technology is not going to solve all your problems,” she says. Sometimes you just need a real human on the other end of the line.

Opal is passionate about helping small and mid-sized businesses compete with larger organizations by providing them with practical, enterprise-grade tools. For isolved, this means not just providing tech but supporting SMBs every step of the way as they integrate and utilize AI effectively.

Recorded live at HR Tech 2024, this episode dives deep into the challenges and opportunities of using AI responsibly, especially for small to mid-sized businesses. Tune in as we explore why trust, empathy and a little skepticism go a long way in keeping HR real.

AI Isn’t Magic, Honey — it’s the New Electricity

Opal kicks things off with an electrifying comparison — literally. She compares the dawn of AI to electricity, noting how every revolutionary tech has a bit of a rough start before it becomes a staple. “There’s this fear, there’s this trepidation,” she says. “And at one point, electricity had the same fear and had the same trepidation.”

Like electricity, AI needs understanding and adaptation, not fear. Just as we don’t think twice about whether a restaurant has electricity, AI will eventually be a standard‌ — ‌but only if we integrate it thoughtfully.

For Opal, this AI evolution calls for a good dose of healthy skepticism. Instead of blind trust, she’s all about asking the tough questions: “We need more critical thinkers,” she insists. “And I emphasize that word critical. Criticize the AI. Please do. Just to make sure that you’re also not creating the same repetitive mistakes.”

AI’s real value is in how seamlessly it can serve human needs — but it’s on leaders to ensure the technology remains human-centered.

AI Needs Real Change Agents, Not Just Cheerleaders

For Opal, trust in AI-powered HR solutions doesn’t mean blind acceptance‌ — ‌it’s about thoughtful implementation and a willingness to question the tools themselves. “To me, HR is a change agent,” she says. “So accept your role as a change agent and start making some changes. So even if the AI is telling you X, Y, Z, start challenging it.” This stance is at the heart of isolved’s approach, where Opal emphasizes that real progress in HR requires actively questioning AI’s outputs to ensure they’re serving the right goals.

Opal underscores that while enterprise-grade AI solutions can support SMBs, they also need to be backed by real human support and an ethical framework. By layering technology with hands-on consulting, isolved ensures that their clients feel equipped to handle AI’s capabilities without compromising on human connection.

Diversity for the Win: No Room for One-Track Thinking Here

Opal’s big on shaking things up and bringing in diverse perspectives‌ — ‌because if everyone thinks the same way, innovation doesn’t stand a chance. She encourages HR leaders to expand their circles and take advice from unconventional sources. “Learn from other people’s mistakes,” she advises, “because you won’t live long enough to make them yourself.” Her point? The best solutions come from a wide variety of voices, and pigeonholing people based on titles only limits what’s possible.

Opal underscores that HR leaders need to look beyond the obvious. By valuing each person’s unique journey and experiences, HR can foster a more inclusive and adaptable workplace culture. “They didn’t just fall out of the sky and be an HR generalist. There was something else before that, too,” she says. “So for the most part, when you’re engaging with someone, you’re getting the whole person and all of the experiences that make them.” That’s why she encourages everyone to dig into diverse perspectives, and the innovation will follow.

Big thanks to Opal for keeping it real on AI, the need for trust, and why HR must step up as change agents. Her takeaways? Don’t just follow the tech‌ — ‌challenge it. AI might be the new electricity, but it’s nothing without the people guiding its use. For all you HR pros out there, remember: it’s up to you to make these tools truly transformative. So stay curious, keep asking questions, and let’s get real about shaping a future where tech serves us‌ — ‌not the other way around.

People in This Episode

Opal Wagnoc: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries, te-he-he. Welcome to another electrifying episode of Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are trying to make the world of work less shitty and have the guts to share their story. The good, the bad, and most of all, the real. It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by none other than yours truly, the magnetic, magnanimous, magnificent, Kyle Lagunas, head of strategy and principal analyst at Aptitude Research, the boutique research firm leading the charge in HR tech and transformation. Get into it!

Today I’m joined by somebody who knows a thing or two about shaking things up. Opal Wagnac, Senior Vice President of Market and Solution Strategy at isolved. Opal’s on a mission to help businesses of every size access enterprise-grade solutions. And if you thought AI was just a fancy buzzword, well, buckle up. From electricity to the internet and now AI, Opal’s got stories and analogies that’ll make you rethink everything you thought you knew about innovation cycles. And yes, Roomba is named Zaza, because of course it is. You’re going to hear all about it. All right, this conversation is full of laughs, insights and a healthy dose of truth bombs about what it really takes to drive change in HR today. Check it out.

Okay. Hello everybody. My little blueberries. We’re back with another special episode of Transformation Realness. We are coming to you live from HR Tech 2024 in the Glider AI booth. And I have with me another very dear friend. Opal? Do you want to say hi to everybody?

Opal Wagnac:

Hi everyone. I’m so glad to be here. My name is Opal Wagnac, and I am the Senior Vice President of Market and Solutions Strategy at isolved.

Kyle Lagunas:

And what’s isolved?

Opal Wagnac:

isolved is a HCM provider, not just of product, but also of services. Really servicing the SMB in the mid-market space. And we cover everything from a bevy of products and solutions, from HR services to talent acquisition services, as well as the full scale of HCM.

Kyle Lagunas:

So just a little bit of stuff. No, I love it. And honestly, isolved is a bit new to me. I had a really great briefing with them a while ago, last month or so. But I was really excited to see you on stage for the opening session at Women in HR Tech, and especially when you were sharing with me a little bit about the first point of view of, look, we’re living in crazy times. Innovation cycles are just going rampant. But I really loved the story that you told about electricity. Can you tell us about that? Yeah.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, absolutely. So, of course, when the question comes up about, well, how are we supposed to embrace AI? And it’s always like that new thing. It’s like, oh my gosh, there’s this fear, there’s this trepidation. And at one point, electricity had the same fear and had the same trepidation. What do you mean light is coming out of the ceiling? What do you mean that I’m holding to this candle and I’m walking around one room to the next? Where’s this light coming from or how does it work? Electricity, I can’t see it, but I see its effect.

And I’m like, okay, you don’t see wind either, but you see its impact. And so with electricity it had to go through this enormous learning curve. And I believe it was Andrew Ng who said, like, “AI is the new electricity.” And so it literally had to get to a point where, here we are, if I’m making plans to go to dinner with you, I’m not going to ask, does the place have electricity? You would probably look at me like I had three heads. And so I understand where Andrew Ng was coming from with really trying to embrace AI. But if I look at electricity, I don’t know about you Kyle, but I wasn’t around when electricity was discovered.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, me neither. I’m very young.

Opal Wagnac:

I can’t remember what that learning curve was about. But I can read about it. However, in our lifetime we’ve seen the internet. So to me, I look at the AI — as AI as the new internet. Where there was a time where it’s like, what do you mean I can talk to someone in real time that’s in Singapore? And so actually we had a laugh about it, what was your screen name again?

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my first screen name was “Hello.” Because I didn’t know that I wasn’t chatting yet. I just got prompted with a box and I wrote Hello.

Opal Wagnac:

Wow. Very original. So Hello being your new screen name to talk to people. Mine was Talk and the number 2 Opal.

Kyle Lagunas:

See, you already had the acronyms. I love it.

Opal Wagnac:

I was just trying it out, but just thinking about it…

Kyle Lagunas:

You were cool from the beginning. Don’t play.

Opal Wagnac:

Thank you. Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

I really like it, especially because I think the electricity allegory, there was a lot of fear around electricity. People didn’t understand it, they didn’t know how it worked and so they didn’t trust it.

Opal Wagnac:

Right. Right.

Kyle Lagunas:

And I feel like especially in the HR organization, which has been historically extremely risk-averse, that the perceived risk and danger with this has really stalled, I think, some meaningful innovation. It’s like if I use AI to create a new drug, a new pharmaceutical drug, no one really understands that. But if I’m using AI to create a more data-driven performance management program. Or if I’m using AI to implement more equitable pay practices. Like everybody gets paid, everybody has performance reviews. We know what that is. And so it’s like the exposure, the level of connection to these perceived risks, the use cases for AI in our space, it’s actually a ubiquitous understanding of the stuff.

Opal Wagnac:

100%.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like, hey, this could actually be really disruptive. But I think we don’t know how it’s going to work. And so we’re not sure, candidly, whether we can trust HR to figure it out. You know what I’m saying? It’s like there’s this point right now where it’s like, what are we going to do here? Is HR going to take this and run with it? Can they? And I think they can.

Opal Wagnac:

I think they can too. Because when it comes to our own personal lives, AI is all over the place. We talk to Alexa to ask them, okay, what are those stats of Michael Jordan doing against LeBron James? Or even sillier things than that. So even using everyday natural language processing in our daily lives. I look at my kids. My kids are never going to ask, “Well, what are your AI solutions?” They don’t know what AI is, but they know the absence of AI.

Kyle Lagunas:

At four years old they’re asking if you have Wi-Fi. They’re coming up to me at my house, my niece and nephew. Like, “What’s your Wi-Fi password?” I’m like, bro.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. Exactly. So even the Roomba, right? We gave her her name. Her name is Zaza.

Kyle Lagunas:

Zaza?

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. Yeah, Zaza. Because she earns her keep. And not to try and genderify her with that name but we felt that Zaza was very fancy. Instead of Jeeves, we felt Zaza.

Kyle Lagunas:

She’s a fancy girl.

Opal Wagnac:

She’s a fancy girl and she does a lot. And I think about all the type of innovation that goes into that. So this is the world in which they live in. So my kids will never look for a movie. Netflix better recommend. Even their friends are recommended to them. So living in a world of recommendations, and that is their day to day. I can definitely find areas within HR very easily. It’s easy for me because I look at a lot of the things, a lot of the questions that we’re constantly asking.

I was actually overhearing a conversation with one of the sales leaders and she was trying to help her son. It was like adulting 101. I was eavesdropping on it. So this was very interesting. You’re going to laugh at this one. And so of course, he’s like 26 years old, so he needs to get off his mommy’s insurance and get a real job. And so he got a real job. Check. And now he is going through the whole enrollment process. And he starts to freak out. He’s like, “Mom…”

Kyle Lagunas:

Because it’s complicated.

Opal Wagnac:

“… what Is a deductible? What is that? I never learned in college? What is that?”

Kyle Lagunas:

What’s home insurance and what’s a lifetime maximum?

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. So all of these things during the enrollment process. And then he’s like, “Wait a minute, I got to count how many times I’m going to get hit by a bus next year to figure out how much I’m going to spend to go to urgent care? How morbid is that?” Right? So in thinking about it, you know what, he wasn’t wrong. Because he’s lived in a world where things have been recommended to them.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Served up to him.

Opal Wagnac:

Literally served up. HR already knows, I know that you’re a single male. I know that you have no children. I know that you’re a nonsmoker. I know so many things already about you. As a matter of fact, I know who you really are, not your street name, but I know your government name. You know all of these things, and yet you won’t even serve up to me, what’s the recommended plan?

Kyle Lagunas:

I actually only have a legal name. I don’t have a street name.

Opal Wagnac:

You don’t have a street name?

Kyle Lagunas:

No.

Opal Wagnac:

We got to give you a street name because-

Kyle Lagunas:

Don’t be fooled by this ink.

Opal Wagnac:

No, listen.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m actually a square.

Opal Wagnac:

You have street cred, my friend.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ve got some rizz.

Opal Wagnac:

You’ve got a Kyle high vibe.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, listen, let me back it up because I really like where you’re going with this. You and I had been in this space for a while, right?

Opal Wagnac:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

And you are new into this role, and I’m actually really excited for this role for you because we need really passionate but also informed voices that are really pushing this narrative forward, that are challenging the industry. Especially from the solution-provider side, especially focused on SMB and mid-market.

Opal Wagnac:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

Everybody’s ignoring this whole… Which is the hugest employer market in the world.

Opal Wagnac:

It is.

Kyle Lagunas:

And we’re all talking about enterprise issues. So I love this for you.

Opal Wagnac:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

But look, you and I know that AI, we’ve been talking about AI in the space for a while. And not even that long ago, three years ago, it was a buzzword. We were just talking about it as a future thing.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

And literally overnight it has become ubiquitous.

Opal Wagnac:

Of course.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re saying, I’m not going to ask if a restaurant has electricity. I’m not going to ask if HR is using AI. I want to know, how are you using AI?

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. So this is your new baseline if you think about it, right? So many of us work for SaaS companies. Your company wouldn’t exist if the internet wasn’t there, right? So many of us have jobs. My job didn’t exist 45 years ago. So just even thinking it through, we’ll now have to be at the cusp of like, well, what are the new jobs going to be if AI is the baseline? So if the internet was the baseline, here we are today. Can you imagine if AI is the baseline?

As a matter of fact, I don’t even think we’ll put those two letters together again. Because no one even says the internet anymore. People just say Wi-Fi. It augments itself from one generation to the next. So I can only imagine what my kids are going to call it. They may call it, I don’t know, the internet went to the what? The cloud?

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, do we still talk about the cloud?

Opal Wagnac:

I know, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, look, before we even get there, I feel like HR is feeling this pressure. We have to get to a point of literacy. The business is asking us all these questions about AI. And like, I don’t know, girl, I’m an HR expert. I’m not an AI expert. But I honestly am feeling this massive paradigm shift where, and this is the tough part for HR, is being an HR expert’s not enough.

You have to know how this stuff works and how this stuff doesn’t work, what it does and what it doesn’t do. Because we do, in order to be effective leaders and effective stewards of the trust of the workforce, we have to make sure that we are actually using these things effectively. And ethically. And so we do need to get better versed in these. It can’t just be the internet. It can’t just be AI. We need to really start to figure this stuff out.

Are you finding in your role that you are having opportunities to answer some of these questions and lean into some of these things? What are some of the stuff that you’re really trying to get done at isolved?

Opal Wagnac:

Right, right. So just looking at the world of, especially like you mentioned before, when you’re looking at AI, you’re looking at all of these solutions. We should not stop questioning. Just because it’s there, we need more critical thinkers. And I emphasize that word critical. Criticize the AI. Please do. Just to make sure that you’re also not creating the same repetitive mistakes. And now all you deal is-

Kyle Lagunas:

You can’t take anything for granted.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, just take it and you’re systematizing it too. And if we’re really going to try and truly be these change agents, to me, HR is a change agent. So accept your role as a change agent and start making some changes. So even if the AI is telling you X, Y, Z, start challenging it. Okay, is this what we want for the future? Especially in an area like here at HR Tech, you see a lot on talent acquisition. And there’s been so much that has been done. At isolved we’ve done a tremendous amount of work around talent acquisition, especially even though we’re servicing the SMB and that mid-market space.

Kyle Lagunas:

Which is underserved, to be honest.

Opal Wagnac:

It’s very underserved. And I believe it was a stat like 99% of all businesses in the U.S. have less than 500 employees. So just think about that. Yes, there is a churn rate, but there’s also a much more impressive growth rate too. And so if they’re also trying to fish from the same pond as those larger enterprises, they should be able to get the same good talent.

Kyle Lagunas:

They have the same problems. They might not be at the same scale, but it’s…

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right?

Opal Wagnac:

So everything is fair game for them too. So they deserve the same type of enterprise-grade solutions, so to speak. They deserve the right type of AI solutions.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, you know what they deserve, what they also need? Is to know they can trust their partners.

Opal Wagnac:

Oh, 1000%.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s one thing that I think is really interesting about y’all’s approach is you really are layering in best practice consulting and professional services with the technology too. I’ve seen, and you have too, a lot of people in the space, you can build a mousetrap and you got to hand over the mousetrap with the book to implement it. And sorry, I’m a technology vendor. You do what you need to do. I did my part, which was give you the software. I really like seeing you guys committed to helping your customers succeed.

Opal Wagnac:

Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

Especially knowing you and your passion and your opinions. We need it. Right? It can’t be kid gloves. Like I said, the problems that HR leaders face in a global enterprise, the scale might be bigger, but we are facing those problems on the home front too.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly, exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

And we need have somebody that’s going to help us navigate this next level.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. Because technology’s not going to solve all your problems. Let me say that again for the people in the back. Technology is not going to solve all of your problems. So there’s going to be some times where you actually want to get on the phone and not be prompted. You actually want to speak to a real human because you’re dealing with people. It’s a very dynamic world that HR basically has to serve. And our tastes, our styles, everything changes. So if everything is constantly changing, you’re also going to need to deal with some very complex issues.

And the beauty about what isolved does is that we do not shy away from that service model. We recognize the fact that yes, there’s plenty of our customers. We have over 177,000 customers. So we take our same learnings from those customers and we produce HR services. Especially even understanding the notion that once upon a time, it was very easy for you to find someone that had 20 years of HR experience. That has been cut in half.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know.

Opal Wagnac:

So where do you find the expertise to move your business forward?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Opal Wagnac:

As a business owner, you recognize that there is a need and there is a void. So looking at HR services, looking at talent acquisition services. You know you want to be able to acquire talent. However, actually to really be successful in talent acquisition, you need to be able to market. You can’t just take your job description and plop it out there on Twitter. Good luck with that. You need to be able, like, sorry, you need honey to catch some bees.

Kyle Lagunas:

That is part of the problem, right? I mean, because guess what? They’re competing for talent, not with their direct backyard competitors, they’re competing with those big budget companies too. Right?

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, let me ask you then, if you are going to give one word of advice to folks to navigate this next year ahead, what would it be?

Opal Wagnac:

Well, definitely, I would say expand your circle. Because one thing about just being locked in, you’re never going to understand the problems that you’re about to face. And at the same time, I always tell my kids, learn from other people’s mistakes because you won’t live long enough to make them yourself. So that’s one part of it.

The other part of that is the diversity of thought. Also look around you. I think that there is a lot that we can do there, just even by expanding our circles ever so slightly. We don’t have to look that far. But really doing things in a way that, “Well, she’s not an HR expert, so why would I ask her?” Oh no, you should definitely ask her. Or, “She’s of a different generation.” No, you should definitely ask them too.

And you’ll be surprised that whenever we tend to pigeonhole people based off of their title, the truth is they didn’t just fall out of the sky and be an HR generalist. There was something else before that, too. So for the most part, when you’re engaging with someone, you’re getting the whole person and all of the experiences that make them.

Kyle Lagunas:

You know what this is giving Kamala… You didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, you sure did…

Kyle Lagunas:

No, I really love it. I have actually seen, because I’ve been on the conference circuit all year long, and this is the most disruptive year I’ve seen.

Opal Wagnac:

Wow.

Kyle Lagunas:

But I also love seeing the community. People are coming together. They are sharing their war stories and their successes and learning together. No HR person is an island. Find your people. Find us. We care.

Opal Wagnac:

Yes. We’re here.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, we have a lot of opinions. I don’t know.

Opal Wagnac:

You’re never short of them, and neither am I.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, thank you for coming and chatting with me for a little bit. If anybody wants to find you, they can hit you up on LinkedIn?

Opal Wagnac:

Yes, absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Kyle Lagunas:

All right. Thanks, babe. I’ll catch you again soon.

Opal Wagnac:

All right, love you.

Kyle Lagunas:

And just like that, folks, another fantastic conversation in the books. Huge shout out to Opal for dropping some serious wisdom and for reminding us that tech is only a tool. At the end of the day, it’s the people who behind it who make the real magic happen. That means you. Whether you’re running a global enterprise or a 50-person small business, it’s clear we all face the same challenges. The only difference: scale. And as Opal said, the key to navigating it all: expand your circle. Because let’s be real, none of us are going to live long enough to make every mistake ourselves.

So if today’s episode got you thinking about AI, or had you Googling deductibles mid-show, know that you are not alone. These are the conversations we need to have. And if you’re still curious, definitely hit up Opal on LinkedIn. Check out isolved. She’s the kind of person who tells it like it is, and then helps you figure out what to do next. I absolutely adore you, even if I candidly don’t remember how to pronounce your last name. I’m sorry, Opal.

Anyway, thanks for tuning in my friends. Remember, transformation doesn’t always happen overnight. And you don’t have to go it alone. Keep it real, keep it curious, and keep asking questions, whether it’s from your Roomba, your kid, or Alexa. We’ll catch you on the next one. Until then, stay kind, stay curious, and for the love of Zaza, don’t forget your Wi-Fi password. See you soon.

Tags HR Technology, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

Hiring Assessments That Do More Than Just Check Boxes

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date November 20, 2024

In this episode of Transformation Realness, I sit down with Satish Kumar, the innovative CEO and co-founder of Glider AI, a leading skill validation platform. Satish’s background in education tech brings a fresh perspective to HR, blending rigorous assessment standards with hands-on practice for real-world tasks.

And it’s exactly what the industry needs right now. With candidate fraud on the rise, companies are facing challenges they hadn’t prepared for, and it’s impacting hiring quality at every level. Satish explains how Glider’s tools give hiring teams the confidence they need by validating both technical proficiency and integrity in candidates.

This conversation with Satish is loaded with insights for anyone who wants to make their hiring process more transparent, strategic, and future-focused. Whether you’re struggling with candidate fraud, looking for ways to use assessments as part of a long-term talent strategy, or just curious about what’s next in HR tech, this episode will give you plenty of ideas to chew on. Grab a coffee, tune in, and let’s get real about what assessments can do for your team!

Are They the Real Deal? Why Candidate Authenticity Matters More Than Ever

Let’s talk about authenticity — something we’d all love a little more of in hiring, right? With remote and hybrid work now the norm, it’s harder than ever to know if your candidates are the real deal or just playing the part.

So, how does Glider AI help? They’re not just doing traditional assessments: they’re creating a process that gives you confidence in the authenticity of every hire. It’s about knowing that the person behind the screen actually has the skills they say they do. “Our goal is to … give you the confidence there’s no cheating at all,” Satish says. No second-guessing, no crossed fingers‌ — ‌just a system that’s built to help you hire the right people, every time.

And it’s more than just a skills check. Glider’s assessments include hands-on tasks that mirror real job responsibilities, giving you a real-time peek into a candidate’s problem-solving abilities, work style and creativity. In a world where hiring remotely is here to stay, Glider’s tools are like having a truth serum for candidates.

Hiring for Today, Planning for Tomorrow

Now, here’s where Glider’s approach gets even cooler. Most companies treat assessments as a pass-or-fail moment, but Satish takes it a step further. Instead of just thinking short-term, Glider’s assessments are designed to be the start of a bigger conversation about a candidate’s future at the company. “We can chart that journey for the candidate,” Satish says. Imagine using the same data to help new hires grow into roles they haven’t even applied for yet!

Glider’s assessments gather insights on broader skills and career potential, which is gold for HR leaders trying to build a talent pipeline. So, instead of just hiring for the role in front of you, you’re creating a development roadmap that keeps employees engaged and moving forward.

This approach is all about setting employees up for success from day one and giving them a vision of where they’re headed. It turns a one-off assessment into a strategic tool for long-term planning and career development, helping companies keep top talent and reduce turnover. Glider’s assessment data becomes more than just a hiring tool‌ — ‌it’s a foundation for a talent strategy that goes beyond the present.

Straight From the Frontlines: Learning From the People Who Make Hiring Happen

Here’s one thing I love about Satish: he’s not just a tech advocate: he’s motivated by understanding people. Glider’s approach to building assessment tools isn’t just theoretical. Satish is out here connecting with real HR leaders and practitioners to learn about the daily challenges they face in hiring. In fact, that’s his main reason for sponsoring this season of Transformation Realness: “Learn from the practitioner, listen to them, what they’re doing — and at the same time, share that knowledge with the world,” he says.

Satish is all about hearing the gritty details‌ — ‌the obstacles, the breakthroughs and everything in between. This isn’t just lip service, either. Satish genuinely believes that Glider’s tools should reflect the reality of today’s hiring challenges, and he’s making sure the product evolves to meet them. This real-world input means Glider stays adaptable, evolving as fast as the hiring landscape changes.

Satish’s commitment to continuous learning and genuine connection means Glider AI is a platform that’s rooted in the real experiences of people in HR. In a world full of tech that promises to “revolutionize” hiring, it’s refreshing to see a company that’s grounded, practical and truly dedicated to making hiring better.

People in This Episode

Satish Kumar: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries and welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about what’s going on in the world of work: the good, the bad, and most importantly the real. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s been a minute since our last little episode. I have been on the road pretty much nonstop speaking at industry conferences, moderating executive summits, and sitting down with some of the most innovative solution providers and forward-thinking HR and talent leaders, literally, in the world. Did you miss me? Are you ready to get learnt and turnt? Are you ready to get real? Well buckle up buttercup: we’ve got a lot to cover.

We’re also trying something super new, this very special season, I’m calling the Transformation Ecosystem EP. And it features quickfire conversations recorded live from HR Tech conference in Las Vegas. We have practitioners like Donald Knight, chief people officer at Warner Brothers. We have solution providers like Rebecca Carr, CEO at SmartRecruiters. And we have extra special guests like Keith Sonderling, former commissioner of the EEOC, and my personal bestie, Madeline Laurano, my stunning business partner, the founder and principal analyst here at Aptitude. Can you even?

We also have our first-ever sponsor. Oh my God. The Transformation Ecosystem EP was made possible thanks to underwriting from the team at Glider AI. I know I make this all seem absolutely effortless but, to be honest, Transformation Realness is a serious labor of love. And working with an expert team like Rep Cap, it ain’t free y’all. You’re going to love this season. And I get to keep doing this work because Satish and Joseph at Glider believe these conversations are worth amplifying. I’m so humbled by their support. Okay. But enough from me, let’s jump into our first episode. And never forget to like and subscribe.

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness. The only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less shitty, and they’ve got the guts to share their story, the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap Media, and hosted by yours truly, the ever so glamorous, definitely down to earth, Kyle Lagunas, head of strategy and principal analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation. Get into it.

Today’s guest is a very special, Satish Kumar, CEO and co-founder of Glider AI, which, as you all know, was the underwriter of this extra special EP. He’s the kind of entrepreneur I love talking to: bold enough to tackle big challenges, but grounded enough to know exactly where things can go wrong.

Satish and I dig into Glider’s unique approach to skills validation, and why it’s more than just a way to weed out unfit candidates. It’s about building real opportunities for growth. Satish’s background in education tech, also, adds a really cool twist to the conversation. Think of it as teaching for the corporate world, but with more swag.

So, if you’ve ever wondered how to assess talent beyond checking boxes, or how to sniff out candidate fraud before it tanks your hiring funnel, you’re in the right place. Satish and I have a lot of tea to spill. Let’s dive right in.

Hi, Satish.

Satish Kumar:

Hello.

Kyle Lagunas:

How are you doing?

Satish Kumar:

I’m doing great.

Kyle Lagunas:

You want to introduce yourself to everybody? Who are you?

Satish Kumar:

Hello, everyone. This is Satish Kumar. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Glider AI. Glider AI is a skill validation platform for talent acquisition and talent management.

We are here to validate the candidate quality, combat candidate fraud, and provide practice-based learning for your employee. Through our sophisticated assessment platform, intelligent interview tool, we are able to solve candidate quality issue, and provide enterprises value on the investment on the skills.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, super cool. Honestly, this is not your first foray into the space of skills either, right? Like you found a new opportunity to solve some problems here, but you’ve been an innovator for a while. What did you do before you got into HR tech?

Satish Kumar:

Great questions. Not many people have asked me this. I come from education technology background. In fact, I ran my last edtech company for nine and a half years, and there, I was trying to identify the mastery of kids in the K-12 classroom. And that was the most satisfying part of my professional journey, actually.

And from there, when the company got acquired by a private equity firm, my two co-founders went with the last one, and I was the crazy one to start anew, but in the process, I am bringing all the pedagogy. In fact, I have the IPO of the last company as well, and we built a lot more things on top.

And that is very much applicable to this market, because, earlier, I was tracking the mastery of kids in the classroom, now, I track the mastery of professionals in corporate world.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, super cool. And I mean, HR tech is a really dynamic space, right? It’s a really interesting space. How long has Glider been in business? Because I only actually met you earlier this year at Transform. Stacia Garr introduced us, which I’m very grateful for.

As an analyst, I look at a lot of products, and I see a lot of interesting ideas, but when we sat down, I knew that you really had something different. And I do think that your background coming from proctoring in a different space, like delivering innovation in a different space has really helped you have a much more nuanced point of view on the market.

But, yeah, how are you feeling about… I mean, skills is everywhere. How do you feel like you guys are standing out in the market?

Satish Kumar:

So, one of the key part that I say that, in the world of remote work or hybrid work, when somebody say, “Hey, this person is great, good quality,” well, it has to mean two things. The candidate is competent, and genuine, because a lot of candidate fraud happens in this hiring process, what you don’t know what you don’t know. But once you find even one issue, then, you question what happened to other thousand candidates that have gone through the process?

And our goal is to create, by design, a process through technology that will give you the confidence that there is no cheating in the process at all, and then, have all the audit trails available so that it gives you the comfort.

Kyle Lagunas:

I would, also, say that, from my point of view, former talent acquisition executive, I needed to have the right tool to make sure that we were effectively assessing for the skills that we needed. Right? I mean, I actually need to make sure that I had something that was going to give me the right insight on whether somebody could do the work that I needed them to, or not.

I mean, there have been tech assessments for a long time, but there’s some really unique stuff that you guys have with Glider. Do you want to share some of that?

Satish Kumar:

So, one of the key part that we offer as part of our solution, is that it’s a hands-on task. Assessment has been there since ages, right? But what you do inside that, how you do it matters. And how confidently the outcome will give you the proficiency level of individuals can only be driven by how you assess.

So, our approach has been we can simulate the client technology stack for the tech roles, or for functional roles, the kind of job they will be doing after joining the company. And then, we say, “Hey, if anybody can do this task, they should be given opportunity to proceed further in the interview process.”

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, see, that’s really interesting. Like, honestly, I don’t think that you are far away, then, from assessing for the job that somebody’s applying for now. But then, also if you look and see where do people in this role go next in the company, why don’t I go ahead and see how much potential do I already have for what’s next.

So, let’s assess for right now, but then, also, let’s go ahead and get some data and see where is Satish right now for being software developer two, software developer three, or running a product management team, right? Like why don’t we just go ahead and get that going?

Satish Kumar:

Since we have done so many evaluations, we understand that what is the need for role A versus role B versus role C that could be in the progression path. So, we already understand that part, right? So, if I have to recommend person A, “Hey, you are at level A,” but you know what, the real need for level two is this, because we already assessed other people and have been successful at level two.

So, we can chart that journey for the candidate further, showing that this is the area you need to…

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I really do love it, especially because, look, we invest a lot of money in the assessment. Whether we’re talking about technical assessments, behavioral assessments, there is a lot of spend that goes into these things, and I have rarely seen an organization that uses that insight, that information from the assessment to build a development plan to onboard those people.

Like we really use it to decide if we’re moving you forward or him forward or her forward, and then, that’s it. And so, it’s really cool to see you guys are designing a product that’s going to have that, it’s designed to have that extended value. It’s designed to help get that person onboarded into a development plan. That’s super cool.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Can I ask you a different kind of question?

Satish Kumar:

Sure. You’re always on for a surprise, I know that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it’s kind of a weird one, but like, I have never podcasted in somebody’s booth before and it means a lot to me that you all were willing to sponsor this, and I have to ask, why did you like, sure, we’ll have Kyle sit in our booth and talk to a bunch of people, but, yeah, again, thinking budgets are finite, resources right now are really precious, what made you think that this might be worth it?

Satish Kumar:

I think the primary reason was that, while we are at HR Tech conference, which is a large conference, there are so many practitioners out here already, and they have their own experiences in the domain that they work in. Wouldn’t it would be great if we can capture their thinking process brain while they’re there already, as against scheduling them one by one outside?

And you happen to be here offering this help, hey, I can pick their brain, what they’re doing in this skill world, and because that’s core to us as well. So, for me, primary: learn from the practitioner, listen to them what they’re doing, and at the same time, share that knowledge with the world as well. And who better could do than you sitting here at one place, so thank you for that.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, honestly, I have to say vendors don’t get enough credit for underwriting the community that exists. These moments are not possible without underwriting from vendors like Glider. And I think that you should be proud of that. I mean, not only are there practitioners here that you want to hear and learn from, this is an opportunity for them to have, like, to stand out in the market, right? And to have an asset for their own career brand.

I mean, look, I sat down and had a really cool conversation about skills, and I was at HR Tech Conference. No, I didn’t speak at the conference, but I did sit down with this really cool analyst, Kyle. You know what I mean?

Satish Kumar:

Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like you’re underwriting something that’s really important. So, I think it’s super cool. You should give yourself credit for it.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you. You rightly said that even practitioner got to showcase what they have been doing, get this in a platform to share with the world. So, not just learning for me, but saying learning through the world as well.

We always want to do better, right? And they’re the real practitioner who can share things that wouldn’t otherwise, and doing just Zoom remote doesn’t cut it. Being there live, face-to-face makes so much difference to get the nuggets out of…

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I think so, too. And it’s like, it’s a connection point. Right? And I mean, people come to this, yeah, they come to sit in some sessions, yeah, they come to learn about what the new vendors are building, and what that cool tech looks like, but they really are wanting these moments where we can sit down together and share some ideas, and like, I don’t know, wax philosophical, right?

Well, and I hope that you get dollar-for-dollar ROI. I know ROI is like, everybody’s under that pressure. But I did want to ask that question, because this is something that is, I think, important for the space, and I appreciate you making it possible.

Satish Kumar:

Thanks to you.

Kyle Lagunas:

What do you think we’ll do next year? And I mean not just mean you and me, but what do you think is going to be happening at this show next year?

Satish Kumar:

I think this show is already so big.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

I think we need little more structure how vendors like us can get more time with the practitioner. I mean, what we did here was just to get to that part, right? And thanks to you that you’re willing to do that here. But, in general, this show is so big. I think there has to be some structured way for the practitioner to participate, [get] time with the vendors who are showcasing there. Right?

And one big challenge here is that, because all the talk track are on the second floor, for them it’ll take time out of those and come and show which vendors are waiting…

Kyle Lagunas:

And they wander around aimlessly, maybe, see somebody that’s nice to them, like the name of a company doesn’t really dictate what they do. I’m 20 minutes into a conversation with somebody, and I realize this isn’t relevant to me. Do you know what I mean? Like that happens.

No, I think there is a lot of opportunities, especially like everything’s changed, the way that we engage, the way that we learn, the way that we shop for new partners, it’s all changed.

I would like to see some opportunities where, maybe, these shows evolve a bit more to enable some more of that, too. I think that the old playbook is not going to cut it anymore. It’d be cool to see what maybe they can dream up.

Satish Kumar:

Can I suggest something on that?

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah, please.

Satish Kumar:

Maybe, there should be a track where vendors can have some hands-on labs.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

And have people walk in and try it out. And they should promote that as well, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

As against sharing just the pitches, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

And some people are-

Kyle Lagunas:

I know, it’s like the pitch stage, right? Where you show them your demo. That’s not hands-on. That’s not really making eye contact and getting to know people.

I think that could be cool, especially workshops. People want to come and not just hear things, they want to interact with some of these ideas.

No, that’s cool. Well, if anybody from HR Tech is listening, we’ve got some ideas for you, babies.

Satish Kumar:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. Come and find us. Well, thanks again, Satish. It’s been really fun so far. I’m looking forward to learning more here while we’re at the show.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

Appreciate you so much. See ya.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you. Bye.

Kyle Lagunas:

Just like that, we’ve reached the end of another incredible episode of Transformation Realness. A huge thanks to Satish for joining me, for coming through, and sharing his insights. Because let’s be real, assessments have been around forever, but Glider AI is one of those providers that’s, actually, making the work smarter and not harder. And Satish, thanks again for making this very special season of Transformation Realness possible.

All right, well, some quick takeaways. First, trust, but verify. Candidate fraud is a lot more common than bad coffee at the office. Second, assessments shouldn’t just measure potential, they should help to unlock it. And finally, if your tech isn’t building a better talent pipeline, what are we even doing here?

Thanks for tuning in, my friends. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review, tell your work bestie, and shout it from the rooftops. I’ll take whatever promo I can get, honestly. I’m pretty desperate.

Until next time, stay curious, stay sharp, and stay real, my little babies. We’ll catch you on the next one. Bye.

Tags HR Technology, talent acquisition