Transcript
Speaker: hey everybody. Welcome to the Frontlines podcast. I'm your host, one of the hosts. I'm a co-host, Tim Sackett, with my bestest friend in the world, Madeline Lerano. But really, Madeline, if I'm honest, if I'm honest today, my real best friend is here, Chris Dunn. Chris, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thanks for having me. Feels like a panel interview right now. Like what's going on? Like it did i I show up at a university for a professor position? Just wait. to see done Madeline, how are you?
Speaker: I'm doing well, Chris. You know, it's funny because i always joke with Tim. I'll say, well, Katie just texted me and said that I was his best friend. That's right. I do that sometimes. Sometimes I'm like, hey, maybe it would be nice to have Madeline as my best friend instead of Tim. And then Tim guilts me.
Speaker: All of this stuff. Well, for those who don't know, for the uninitiated, as KD loved to say, when he hosted a podcast called the HR Famous Pod, well, we had to try like host. We all were together on on that a number of times on HR Famous. Chris, tell the kids that are listening, the millions around the world, um what what you do, who you are. Give us a little background.
Speaker: Yeah, so 30 seconds. you can You can ask for more, Tim and Madeline. So long-term HR and recruiting pro, started in HR, manager, director, to VP, Fortune 500 companies, went private equity. And then I found a female founder at Kinetics named Shannon Russo, joined her, did midsize RPO for 11 and a half years, loved it. We built a great company, that's Shannon's company, by the way, not mine, but we grew the thing. And then I got a call from Marriott International to be their global head of TA a in late 21. I joined them first of March in 2022 was the global head of TA a for Marriott International, 200,000 plus hires a year for three years. And then I got asked to take the CHRO role for North and America, well, for US Canada. And here I am. Right. So leading a continent from the HR perspective,
Speaker: Depending on how you define it, 120, 125,000 associates, thirteen hundred hr people Like, here we go. So big job. Yeah. Or 15, 16 months now.
Speaker: So it's been a great, nice. By the way, for anyone listening that like literally wants to see the best branding ever for an RPO checkout kinetics. Like it was, I remember back when you guys started putting some of that together and being like, Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I would want to do. If I was branding a company, it was amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's interesting you say that. Now that I'm with an enterprise company, i I wouldn't do it all differently. I might tweak it a little bit to be just a little bit more approachable for people like me now. well yeah It was aggressive. It was aggressive. It was fun. It was disruptive. It was fun to do.
Speaker: And certainly we connected with people that we we would be a great fit for in the mid-scale range. Yeah. so It was great. it was fun, right? what it What it reminds me of is ah marketing where we go, look, there's a certain kind of person and company that we want to work with. And if you're that person, awesome. If you're not, That's okay.
Speaker: But you're probably we're probably not for you. And there's so many companies that afraid to do that. um They want to like, oh no, we'll work with anybody. And you're like, yeah, but then you're vanilla like everybody else. And you guys said, no, we're not going to be vanilla. Here's what we do. We're going to be really good at it. And if you want to work with us, that's amazing. You know, you know I think I think individually too, we're at our best when we have that type of ethos from a career perspective. You know, we should have points of view and opinions, all of us yeah professionals that isn't for everyone and helps people self-select out, but the people who select in are going to be more intense yeah and want to work with you, whether you're a company or whether you're a professional doing work. So But also like there's a fine line, Katie, that you have to ride with that, which is how do we how do we not be exclusionary in in terms of how we're trying to market ourselves out? like just So like, hey, here's who we are and we're not trying to exclude anybody. If you want to be one of those, awesome. We want you to, man, that's a really kind of, you how do we thread that needle? And you guys did a great job. So shout out to Shannon and the Kinetics group.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a great team over there. Yeah. Katie, I want to start with a a question we ask every single guest on the program. um Your first frontline hiring job. like And I would say W-2, but it doesn't necessarily have to be because I know some of us that grew up in the Midwest, sometimes we were off the off the books. so Yeah. Count of 2,000.
Speaker: Middle of the Midwest. Grocery store bagger kid. Yes. How about that? Yeah. and In a twist. Okay. I'll give you my second job too.
Speaker: I had a mishap that sent me to the emergency room with a meat cutter. ye Oh, yeah. So like but by the way, just jumped behind the counter and said, I'm here. If you're watching on YouTube, that's like Chris lost a finger. Yeah. like awful um I'm okay, by the way, I'm fully functional.
Speaker: And like probably six months after that, I continued to work, obviously ah had like a device on one finger, figure that out, and ended up at a 3000 watt radio station because we did a class tour and the owner of that small radio station thought I had a voice made for radio, which probably is not true, but it got me away from said meat cutter.
Speaker: That's awesome. That is very cool. Well, yeah, I think you do have a voice for radio. That's why you're on the spot. Face made for radio. Not a face. Not a face. Thank you for saying that. That's so harsh.
Speaker: um Amazing. Well, I have a follow question on that, too, that we're now starting to ask all of our guests as well, is what is the most critical role when you think about Marriott? And also, can you explain that this is Marriott and not Marriott, as I used to say it? for us Sure. I mean, the world says, for the most part, Marriott.
Speaker: Technically, it's pronounced Marriott, like chariot. But for everyone listening, We love your patronage of Marriott and the Bonvoy set of properties. We love you as our guest. you We respond to you either.
Speaker: By the way, once you get it in your head though, Mads, like you know now you can never, I never go back to Marriott now. And people will actually call me out when I say Marriott. They'll be like, that sounds funny.
Speaker: What's your answer? Yeah, so I think most people, like if we're just in the outside world and people call it Marriott, we're just, we're like rolling with it as we should because our guests are the most important thing. Madeline, to answer your question, I think your your question was most important, like frontline role, anything hourly in our hotels, I can't choose.
Speaker: yeah you know We have great front desk associates, we have great housekeepers who do an amazing job with the the style of our room. We have great F&B people in our hotels. I can't choose between them. I can just tell you anyone in an hourly role at the hotels.
Speaker: And those three are pretty like dominant. There are other roles. But those three really create the core of what we do for guests. And it's on our mind a lot. And we have an unbelievable set of associates. And we're because of what the Marriott family and the leadership team through the years has built.
Speaker: We have great retention across those hourly associates. And they're the key.
Speaker: That's
Speaker: a good answer. Tim, I think you we were talking a little bit about everything that Katie's done at Marriott and there was a ah massive change. I mean, you came in and you saw this needs to be handled a little bit differently. I think as a lot of organizations are realizing now that frontline hiring needs different technology, maybe a different process, a different focus on candidate experience. And you came in and really shook it up. I mean, what,
Speaker: was the thing that stood out the most to you as you look at this transformation that you went through. Well, I had a lot of help with that, right? I had a great TA a team and and Jessica Lee now has that ah talent acquisition team.
Speaker: I think just to build on, you know, I described we have these unbelievably as unbelievable associates. We have great environments and it's really just, you know, everything I that i was involved in that continues today is really just to make that front line hiring machine move faster.
Speaker: to get even more momentum. And we're an embarrassment of riches from a candidate flow perspective right now. Like everybody else, we struggled with candidate flow coming off COVID.
Speaker: I think every hiring environment did. But you know when we got back to what is now the new normal, we still have a lot of people who want to work for Marriott. It's ah it's a destination of choice. So when you think about frontline hiring, how can we make that move faster,
Speaker: find the best people who are the best fit for us, get them excited about the role and do that with speed. And of course, you know since we're talking as technicians, also do that at the best possible cost point while we get all of those quality things in line. And by the way, it was it was good when I got there.
Speaker: i think we were ready and that the organization was ready and continues to thrive in this area to find technology that helps us do that. The TA team today, even as I'm in the CHRO role, is not stopping. They're continuing to go after things that matter.
Speaker: Yeah, and ill I'll put a link in the show notes for everybody. I had a great interview with Jessica in terms of where that build of that hiring machine is today with Paradox, um using Oracle as the kind of the the foundation. And then also all the AI stuff that they're looking at in terms of just expanding that machine with more automation. So it's it's a pretty ah dynamic team over there. So that's pretty awesome.
Speaker: And you have a ah Marriott story, Chris, or frontline hiring story about your own experience with front the frontline workforce and something that made you even more passionate about this. Yeah, well, you know, one of the things when we, you know, one of the tools, as Tim mentioned, is we are a Paradox shop. And when we did automated interview scheduling for the first time, Madeline, we decided to use their survey functionality.
Speaker: to really survey candidates after they were done via via text sms and i waited about a month and by the way we did simply thumbs up thumbs down how'd you feel about your interview experience we weren't asking about the technology specifically although that certainly is delivered that way and that's a part of it we were just asking total interview experience thumbs up thumbs down and then some space where they could write in whatever they wanted. I didn't take a look at the data for probably a month because I wanted there to be a large large data set across the US, canada Canada before we did that. And then when I looked at it, we were running at 93 or 94% thumbs up.
Speaker: So I'm a 93 or 94% approval rating. In my own experience, as soon as I saw that, I was like, I've never seen anything like that. As I started to think about why that was, I came to the realization about why we get that type of candidate approval. And it's really the business we're in. So if you think about the hiring managers who are doing the frontline hiring, they are total guest experience experts.
Speaker: So when a frontline candidate walks in, either the associate entrance or in the front door, they get greeted unlike a lot of other environments that they might apply to. They get greeted in a way, I just learned that, and I already knew it, but when I saw the data, I had to make the connection that, oh, you know what, we are guest experience. So that means for a live interview, for a frontline position, we use technology to get you there, et cetera, et cetera. It's this human factor in the business we're in and the fact that
Speaker: All of our you know man hiring managers who are doing this are just like crushing it when it comes to what they're good at and candidates get that experience. So to frame that up, 93, 94% continues there today.
Speaker: It's amazing. And again, it's amazing yeah I didn't have anything to do with that. But from a frontline hiring perspective, it was a realization that again, we have this some of these super strengths based on the business we're in and what Marriott has built over time that like we're just ready to go.
Speaker: Yeah. Katie, like when I ran T8 Applebee's, I know you love my Applebee's stories.
Speaker: I know how difficult it is to get adoption of new processes and technology out in the field. You obviously have, was it over 8,000 hotels? um When you're thinking about something like frontline hiring and making changes to process, how do you get that adoption? Like, how do you go for that?
Speaker: Well, doesn't come automatically. Is the first thing I would say. yeah you just don't like send ah an email out saying, hey, you're using this now. No, I would think so. You know, this this team who supports us from a talent acquisition perspective is very much our set of experts related to everything talent acquisition. So that's Jessica Lee.
Speaker: That's Megan Rattigan. That's Chris Van Bavell. That's all of those folks. And they are so good at what they do and supported me. I think what happens is they will like in I was part of this in the past career at Marriott, you bring something out of the lab, you launch it and we're like it's hard. Right. But we're good at change management. But adoption doesn't happen overnight.
Speaker: So the old ways like just don't like go away. So i think what you have to do is you have to you have to really educate people about what the benefits are.
Speaker: You have to track who's actually using it right now, the way we track Paradox automated interview scheduling, just use that piece of it is we just rather than go through the big candidate list, the simplest way to do it is to say,
Speaker: from a hires perspective, how many of our hires experienced automated interview scheduling? Right now we're approaching 90%. There's another way to do it, right? So that's the other thing about adoption. Can you close the loop? wood way All the back doors. Yeah.
Speaker: And we've closed a lot of those doors, but the back doors still exist. And we're really, really proud at being at 90%. And it's really hard to do. I'll i'll tell you a quick story.
Speaker: I won't mention names. One of the things when we were just going into that adoption piece as a single adoption story is we had to make a choice whether we were you know automated interview scheduling,
Speaker: is a very meaningful thing to do it's a way you can give time back etc etc i think we had to make a decision whether we were going to block out time on hiring managers calendars rather than asking for calendar hygiene from them Yeah. And it was a member of that TA team who took a you know, a very innovative line. And for about a week or two, we had candidates showing up because we would automatically pop it on the hiring manager's calendar. And if we wouldn't have done that, I would tell you, i don't know that we'd be at 90 percent adoption today.
Speaker: So you need to care you didn't care what was on their calendar. you ah Like an interview was going to show up regardless. They they they were coming and that was like a two week like change management thing for everybody to like feel it, if you will. So it's this it's this communication side, Tim and Madeline, it's tracking it.
Speaker: It's continuing to educate. We we we call them DHRs, Director of Human Resources. DHRs are kind of our linchpin. and all of our properties for this educating them helping them with tools doing office hours and then at the end of the day you close back doors and you decide hey we just may have to have candidates show up and ask for calendar hygiene like after. yeah yeah And it's like, I'm glad that I got the advice to do it that way.
Speaker: And I think that's a good adoption story that there's always going to be four or five angles you've got to close out. Right. Yeah, and you're always going to have a – no matter what choice what choice you made on the calendar situation, you're going to have a certain percentage of of GMs that are going to be upset with it regardless, right? No matter what you chose. I know Rachel Allen, I was on a panel with her. She runs TA for 7-Eleven. They actually did the blocked thing where they said, hey, every Tuesday, Thursday from 2 to 4, whatever, every single 7-Eleven, we're going to schedule you.
Speaker: and They did that for 30 days before they started to allow those GMs that played played nice to then do their hygiene of their of their calendar. you know my Another approach, right? One of my bosses, Ty Brewin, our global CHRO, Satya is my my group president in the US, Canada.
Speaker: You know, Ty is a big like block day, like hiring event day. we We've had success with that. Some properties do that. We've also had success with, hey, 10 to four.
Speaker: yeah like understand that if you don't have calendar hygiene, we're we're we're sending people your way. So I think there's a variety of ways to do it. and But I've seen that block work really, really well, for sure. yeah yeah It's the only way. The alternative is, like I mean, the interview is going take four weeks for a job that needs to be filled next week. Correct, yeah. And getting to the speed. And you know what we've seen certainly post-pandemic, but even now, is the secret sauce to frontline hiring.
Speaker: is to do it with speed. You want quality, but you know as the economy like heated up, as it came down a little bit, wherever we are now, whenever it heats up again, time is at the essence and candidate flow is a perishable asset.
Speaker: So you've got to move quickly. you want to do it with quality, but you're right, Madeline. Sometimes you you can force the issue in a variety of ways to get the adoption you need to make the thing home. one hundred katy egg I go back to a story that I steal from you a lot. and it you know you had when out I think it was Denver Market, and you had met with like 30 or so GMs in the Denver Market. And you had a couple of those that you said, like, hey, they didn't have any issue hiring.
Speaker: And they just manually had found a way to say, hey, we went out, got a burner phone, whatever. If somebody calls or someone applies, we're immediately going to call them, right? So it was the speed factor. We're just going to muscle this thing, but we're going to do it in a way that kind of makes sense. And none of the other properties had actually done that. So it was like, oh, you don't... Obviously, having an AI solution like Paradox is amazing, but you can also muscle this in some ways too for like those who are... like those Maybe it's a...
Speaker: you know, a franchisee that only has three hotels. Like there's a way to make this happen, but it's all about, Hey, whoever's going to be on shift that time, if somebody applies, I want to you have to contact the moment they apply. Right. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. You can like hundred percent. Like that's, that's a great story and you can bootstrap this on your own, but wouldn't it be great if a function like my ah HR function with our TA partners could do that bootstrapping for you. Right. Oh yeah. 100%. Like, broad enterprise technology comes into play, which is, you know, and I like the people who used to bootstrap it are glad they don't have to bootstrap it anymore.
Speaker: They're they're happy with the enterprise tools that are being provided by our ah HR leaders and our ta team. Awesome. Absolutely. So Chris, you talk about this candidate experience that's different than probably either what it used to be or what other of your you know competitors are dishing out for candidates, but it's a guest services experience and that's how they're treated.
Speaker: But candidates expectations have changed a lot too, especially since the pandemic. How do you think about candidate expectations and how do you address those? I still believe, Madeline, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this. I still believe that responsiveness and speed in frontline hiring is the most important thing. If we can do that, which technology helps us do that, and then they can experience what I what i talked about earlier, if they can experience that walking in the door,
Speaker: It's going to be different than any other thing. And I think our our hiring managers, based on what they do for our guests, are really good at the conversations. I think they make interviews feel conversational.
Speaker: So I think we have the quality thing. We just have to like act with speed. I do believe, by the way, that candidates have an expectation of more transparency.
Speaker: in all things, culturally, how things work at one of our properties, compensation. And you know there are you know there's a web of laws, as you know, like and we're still like navigating that. We comply with all laws and we give like great guidance in live interviews about those expectations. So I think being just fast and responsive on on apply. And then I think the other candidate experience that I think all of us in every frontline hiring situation have work to do is just the follow up why you you didn't get the job.
Speaker: And, you know, in the US, you know, we live in such a society that's driven by legal action, et cetera, et cetera. It's really hard to have. I would love to see every everyone.
Speaker: This is not unique to married. I would love to see us have the opportunity to be even more empathetic than we are to people who didn't get the position. Yeah, it's really it's really, really hard based on the legal environment we live in.
Speaker: yeah You know, what that it reminds me of something that Jessica said um when I did the interview with her, Katie, like she's thinking about this really long tail and that candidate experience in terms of is there a way that when we tell a candidate, hey, you didn't get the job, you know, which, you know, 100% we should do that 100% of the time.
Speaker: Can we offer them up skill modules that would like help them in the future? And I think like, that's another amazing way to go Hey, we value that you actually took the time and you want to be a part of our family and we want to help you get there. And here's how we can do that. I think it's an amazing idea. you know Yeah. And I think, you know, based on Jessica's expanded role, you know, she had learning before and she HTA in the organization. That's a great example of her as a leader, thinking about the learning side. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: within the recruiting funnel. So I think i think that's excellent and like really meaningful. Yeah. And it's i mean that's what internalmo everyone's talking about for internal mobility. It's for your internal candidates, how can you give them skills or a learning experience if they don't get the job? But to extend that to external candidates too, it's an ma it's an amazing experience.
Speaker: Yeah. and i think yeah And Madeline, you know, you and I have talked before about CRM and, you know, i have a lot of like different views on CRM. I don't know exactly where I'm at. I do think, you know, when you think about silver medalists for any position, especially in a frontline in a metro area, I think being able to retarget and remarket to them.
Speaker: and stay in touch with them to say, hey, we have more opportunities for front desk associates. You didn't hit on the, on the let's say, the Renaissance one that you applied for a month ago. We have one that we you think you'd be a great fit for at the JW, and we'd love to see you apply. I think that type of retargeting done well is an opportunity as well.
Speaker: Absolutely. I mean, that is a candidate experience. If you don't get the job, the best candidate experience is, someone gets the job. But for the 90 whatever percentage of people that don't get the job, how do you communicate with them in a consistent way early in the process?
Speaker: And how do you give them future opportunities so that. Agree. eight Two weeks, two months. Well, and if you do communicate, they're actually going to want that opportunity when you communicate with them. But if you don't, and you just come back to them three months from now and say, Hey, by the way, we have another job. but You never told me I got disposition the first time.
Speaker: they're They're more than likely they're not going to be interested. Right. And I think one thing to point out, because this is true in frontline hiring and we, like I get emails, like every like leader does, like at scale.
Speaker: I think the other thing is with the best of intentions, you can still disappoint candidates. You know, the story would be I've applied for 26 positions.
Speaker: Yeah. and I've yet to receive an interview. So at scale, even if you're staying in touch with someone, maybe they got an interview and you've re remarketed to them, but they didn't hit on those jobs for whatever reason.
Speaker: ah you know i would love to see there be an opportunity for more empathy overall. I don't know necessarily how to solve that issue in the environment we're in But like when I get those emails, i like i respond to all of them.
Speaker: like i don't even, for the most part, I don't forward in the TA team because those are guests, by the way, as well. They're the guests, right? Yeah, 100%. yeah And maybe future associates.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: Awesome. So, you know if we're thinking about the future and there's a lot of change, there's a lot of ai there's a lot of things to be excited for, but things to be cautious about. When you think about what excites you as CHRO of Canada and the us s what what excites you most?
Speaker: And you want frontline hiring specific for the most part, correct? i Like what I would tell you active an active coach in the interview process would be unbelievable. That's probably the thing I'm most excited about. So if you think about interviewing like layer technology that we are, like Jessica and her team are looking at on our behalf. And I was a big proponent of this back when I was in the job and that technology has matured, you know tech like interviewing technology is built first of all on recording.
Speaker: and transcripts. Yeah. Kind of how the the guts of the intelligent engine like happens. I think, you know, a lot of the solutions you see, Madeline and Tim are based around professional hiring.
Speaker: So we do, from a frontline basis, we do, it's kind of a choice people can make, we do do phone screens and those can be like this call, but for the most part, a lot of our interviews are live.
Speaker: So i think being in a live environment and having that transcript go down and, you know, one of the things we run into professional hiring, frontline hiring, especially if you if you have good retention, you don't necessarily interview enough to become best in class at interviewing. I know everybody thinks they're a great interviewer. i would tell you all of us have like blind spots and gaps. And I think the technology to record interviews and to be an active coach in the interview to say, Tim, you should follow up with the following question.
Speaker: and give them optionality, because what happens is we are a behavioral interviewing shop. And if you ask me, why are you still a behavioral interviewing shop? It's because there's nothing better that's been presented.
Speaker: So if you're a hiring manager and you don't interview a lot, you're going ask the question. I'm going to be interviewing. Let's pick on Tim Madeline. I'm going interview Tim. Tim's going to give me like polish maybe.
Speaker: He's gonna like give me an an answer to a behavioral interview question that sounds great. And I'm gonna kind of look at him and I'm gonna say, that's great. Great. Let's move on. when' think That's a really good answer. Okay, next one. Like yeah behavioral interviewing 80% of your time should be follow up to the action, information task action result. 80% should be, well, Tim, tell me like, who'd you talk to to make that decision?
Speaker: Like, you know, what what was the key in turning around that situation with a guest? Whatever the question is, to have a prompt to say, you should follow up a couple of times. Here's a couple things you could ask and have that with them on a device, on a laptop like the one I'm working off of. I think that's where this is going. and then the other thing that I've seen in some technology that i absolutely love, Madeline, in addition the active coach in the moment, notes after the fact,
Speaker: to help them become a better interviewer. One of the things I love better than anything else, I'm the guest, so I don't feel bad about talking more than you, Madeline, since I am the guest. One of the things I love in interviews is I've seen it, we haven't experienced it yet, time what I call time of possession between the interviewer and the candidate.
Speaker: You know, it should be about 20, 80, 30, 70 the most. The candidates should be talking more. And just that stat alone, I think would really drive a lot of behavior. So I'm really excited yeah about where this goes from an active coach perspective, from from a frontline hiring perspective.
Speaker: KD, actually demoed a a product this week this week that has every single one of those things you want for. like The coaching on it was amazing. The percentages, all the stuff that happened, follow-up stuff. um I was blown away.
Speaker: But it still comes back to, okay, you and I are going to have this interview in the back of office of ah you know of of a Fairfield Inn because that's my that's my brand. Yeah.
Speaker: And somehow we have to be able to capture that information. And so it's usually a cell phone on ah on an app that someone has to push start. And in my mind, I'm trying to think like, how do I make sure, again, the adoption happens where I go, look, if if the interview didn't happen, the hire can't happen.
Speaker: So I don't care if you ever interviewed this person, now you've got to bring them back again and turn the phone on or turn the app on so we can capture the data. I just don't know how you do it, but it's it's really difficult for for high volume hourly hiring to get that capture. You know, it's a mixture of incentives, right? Some are positive, some are negative. And one of the negative incentives that we have, certainly our management layer is we want interview notes.
Speaker: So if you think about the layer and we've got some of these moves, i don't know if Jessica talked to talked about it during her time with you, but if we have interviewing technology that's better and it can provide your notes so you don't have to go chase them down, that's one the biggest positive Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And as we can provide. Right. So it's it's those type of incentives to like present the cause. And then, you know, we kind of started talking about adoption. It's just tracking it, educating people, office hours, our D.H.R.s in the field, our directors of human resources really doing the edge. Like we can do a lot at the enterprise level. They're really where the action happens for us.
Speaker: like and they're my you know trusted confidants in the chro chro role because you know at the property is where all the action happens so i would tell you we're probably only as good from an adoption perspective as the leadership that we have for those directors of human resources and also the gms our general manager properties and we're lucky to have a great set but adoption still hard Yeah.
Speaker: Katie, I'll get you out with this question. um like All year I've been on the soapbox around data, measures of success. As a CHRO, US and Canada for Marriott, when you think about this giant hourly population you have and you think about all of the data that you have, what are the things that stand out to you from ah from a data perspective that you look at is to know like if you're on the right track?
Speaker: Well, so again, you know the term I always use is just in my vernacular is we're an embarrassment of riches because of the scale and the volume. So one of the things I know that well, I didn't know when I joined Marriott in the global TA role, but i so I've soon learned is that as critical as we are, and you know you two are the same, right? As critical as as we are about the systems we have, et cetera, et cetera, we have this unbelievable data set.
Speaker: And the data at our scale, Tim and Madeline, never lies. Can't hide from it. It's like highly repeatable and it never lies.
Speaker: It always repeats. Now, does it change? Yes. Year to year, you will see subtle changes. Take COVID away. Take like the ramp up back from COVID away. You will see like in our like data set, you'll see the economy.
Speaker: You'll see it in candidate flow. You'll see it in offer acceptance rates. You'll see the economic graph there. And what I always tell people is regardless of your size, you have to understand with the data you do have, what your recruiting funnel looks like.
Speaker: Because if you don't do a recruiting funnel, and Tim, and you and I have talked about this a lot. If you don't do the recruiting funnel and really own that, understand it, value it as the most important thing, a you won't understand your business from a frontline hiring perspective.
Speaker: And b you'll probably be spending money. on things like ad spend that you really don't have to spend or maybe money that can be redirected towards your areas of you know the most difficulty. So we have this unbelievable data set. It never lies. and not like I've never seen anything like it. It's just based on the size of Marriott globally, the value of it. um you know We were just ranked in the Fortune Great Place to Work survey, the seventh best employer, humble bracket.
Speaker: Nice. Congratulations. Shout out, by the way, to the entire, like, you know, all our DHRs and GMs, also the HQ team that supports them in in all of our functional areas in ah HR. So data never lies. But even if you're a small or mid-size, I would encourage everybody to get really focused your hiring funnels. I would do it overall and then I'd break it down by functional area to understand what's going on because you also have like an economic graph there and the data never lies. I've always been predispositioned to that. And then I walked in to the data set at Marriott, which is robust.
Speaker: and tells tells a great story. And I'm just lucky to be in closing this up. I'm just lucky to be working with a team like the TA team. I've mentioned their names earlier, all of our DHRs and then the Marriott brand overall.
Speaker: I'm just lucky to be in environment where that whole data set, it either ends or starts with the fact that candidates come in and they get treated the way they do by our hiring managers and they code at 93 94. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah yeah Like that's not normal. And I understand like where I'm at. Yeah. and so yeah And the team that I'm a part of, it's very humbling.
Speaker: And could he when I talk to the two of you, I'm just like, oh, yeah I'm reminded. It's crazy. Any more name drops you before we leave? Mr. Marriott, any of the... more Yeah, I got Jessica Lee, Ty Breland,
Speaker: um All my friends. I've got great friends to work in. Shout out to Elaine Engel, who does many different things, but handles like our assessment platform. Shout out to Elaine.
Speaker: Shout out to Elaine. God, who am I going to get? It's like it it like an Oscar speech. if You go through all my direct reports, Amy Ray, Julie Caldwell, Brian Kamnik, Nina. Oh, my God. Don't forget anybody. you Now let me start going into the hourly. No, no, no, no, no. All right. Hey, Katie, how can people find you? What's best, easiest way? The k you know. ah Not the NBA player or former NBA player? Not the NBA player. So do not look him up on LinkedIn. I'm not sure if he has an account. But hey, look me up on LinkedIn if you want to connect on anything. i love the community that I'm a part of with both of you and also the overall ah HR and talent community that includes TA.
Speaker: So hey, look me up. Ping me. also Also a dual author, two books. Yeah. best boss bus Best boss ever and... Nine Faces of HR. The Nine Faces of HR, the OG book, the Nine Faces. OG book. And I'm actually on the cover of that one.
Speaker: i mean, kind of. It's cartoonish, but it's it's pretty much Madeline, did I put you on Best Boss Ever? I'm on um on the cover of Best Boss Ever. Yes. Tim wasn't happy, by the way, Madeline, with his picture on Best Boss Ever.
Speaker: Because you're on both of them, correct, Tim? ah Yeah. I'm looking at it, but it's over on the shelf, so I can't see. yeah Yeah. Here's why, Madeline. I'll get you out of here with this. um He wasn't happy with it because it didn't I used an artist.
Speaker: That's kind of how I roll, right? I used an artist, and he is now used to what AI can do for him. Yeah. My AI photos are so good. like Is this like Lansing face, George cleany pruding li yeah Clooney. Yeah. No, I, well, I liked my picture on the cover. So I think that's because I'm your true, true best friend. Yes, of course.
Speaker: thank you for Thank you for everything you do, Madeline. All right. with you I'm getting us out of here. I want shout out to Workday and the Paradox team for sponsoring us for these conversations. amazing to have them on board. And for Madeline Arano, Chris Dunn, I'm Tim Sackett, and we'll try a little harder next time. But, you know, we still do good right as we do. The Frontlines podcast, we are out.
