Transforming HR from the Inside Out: Neil Lenane’s Journey at Progressive

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Speaker B: This is William Titkup and Ryan Leary and you're listening, hopefully watching the practitioner corner. We got Neil on today and we're, uh, going to be learning all about his career. So we're excited to have him on the show. Neil, would you do us a favor, the audience a favor and introduce yourself.

Speaker C: Hey, uh, Neil Andane. Um, I lead our talent acquisition group at Progressive Insurance Company.

Speaker B: Alrighty. So, uh, how long you been in T.A. ish.

Speaker C: Uh, T.A. specifically eight years. Um, HR. I probably celebrating my 24th, 25th year and been in the insurance industry 37 years.

Speaker B: Oh my goodness. So you, you got good in, uh, talent in hr, uh, in insurance and

Speaker C: you just stayed there outside of college, joined the insurance industry and been with it ever since. It's a great, it's a great industry. It's super stable. And when you think about careers and skill sets, insurance companies offer a lot of those. Uh, it's more than just, you know, hey, a claim or you know, being a product manager and selling a policy, but all kinds of roles there. But yeah, I've been 37 years with two different companies and uh, like I said, I have enjoyed being in the insurance industry.

Speaker D: Two things you don't often hear, Neil, is 37 years for two companies. Number one. Yeah, that's, that's an accomplishment there. Uh, and then being in hr. Right, right. You know, through the thick and thin of it, uh, that long. So, uh, we've got a lot to learn. I'm excited for, uh, for, for today.

Speaker C: Appreciate you having me.

Speaker B: Insurance, highly regulated industry. And then you got HR with that as well. So, uh, why don't we go back? Uh, we'll get, we'll get back to Progressive, of course, but why don't we go back to high, uh, school, college? What did you do? What was, what was the dream? What did you want to be?

Speaker C: Uh, well, I wouldn't have said, we wouldn't have had said being insurance. Right. You know, so we always like to say, like, hey, I didn't grow up to say, hey, I wanted to be a claim rep. But some along the line, that's what I ended up doing, you know, coming out of the University of Georgia. So I was um, a New York City kid. I transferred to Atlanta, finished up high school and then University, uh, of Georgia was a great option, has a great business school. I'm a college football junkie. So, you know, SEC football was great. Uh, I didn't grow up on it, but I didn't come out of there saying, hey, I was um. My major actually was human resources. And it's really tied to. I love sports and I love coaching. And HR really has all those elements. It's about, you know, think about, um, whether it's college or pros, it's about selecting good players, developing good players, managing coaching good players. All those elements come into the HR space, paying players. All those things are HR elements. So there's was the connection. I was fascinated.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and then from there, once I graduated, I was in Atlanta. But it was tough for a graduate trying to get an HR job in Atlanta because a lot of headquarters there, a lot of regional, um, headquarters there. And so it was tough to break in at a certain job and needed to pay the bills. So I started applying for jobs. One of them was, ah, an insurance company I was with Aetna, happened to be there only three years, um, altogether before I joined Progressive. But it gave me a good foundation from a business perspective. And that's where really good HR practitioners, and particularly recruiting practitioners come from when they come from the business because they know the business. And so that's kind of how I got in there from college into the insurance industry.

Speaker D: That's interesting because, uh, that's kind of like the. I remember being at that moment of graduating college and thinking you were just gonna own the world, right? And you couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't get in. So you had to take what you could get to break into the company and build your way. So I think that's interesting that you bring that up because actually uh, a lot of people that listen to this particular show, they're at the age of graduation, coming out of college. And so hearing that I think is super helpful, uh, for them at least coming out of college and starting their career.

Speaker C: I remember interviewing post college and it was a. Happened to be an HR job, um, and it was uh, for a dairy company in Athens, Georgia. And I had a really good interview, especially for being a college kid. And I was able to hold my own just coming out. Hey, I don't really have much work experience in space. But that's ultimately what ended up being some of the, hey, uh, manager. I love the interview, but I've got a really tenured group and without some of that business knowledge of being in the dairy industry, relatability is going to be a challenge. And to Ryan's point earlier, I think you're right. You've got to start somewhere to learn the business and then kind of work your way over. It's really hard to just jump into it from the very beginning unless it's some really entry level role. Maybe you're working for a staffing agency and, you know, you're doing recruiting coordinator type of activities. But for the most part, whether it's, you know, HR or talent acquisition, learning the business is really key.

Speaker B: You know, I like about it is you can actually, you can talk to people, especially early in your career, both on the HR side and recruiting. It's like, I did that job. Yep, I did that bit. So, you know, it's, it's, uh, I grew up in retail, so a little bit different. Um, the people that were really successful when I was, when I was in retail were the people that started it as cashiers.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Or started grabbing the buggies and stuff like that. The people that bag groceries, they're the ones that were all store managers.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: Because they, they did the job, they knew, they worked around and, and worked their way up and so they knew all the jobs.

Speaker C: That's right. That's that credibility piece.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: Because particularly when either you're a leader or if you're in HR or even if you're a recruiter trying to get someone to work, having that credibility that I've done, it allows you to have a leg up on influence. And a lot of these jobs are about influencing people.

Speaker B: And they don't teach influence at shrm. That's not one of the, that's not one of the bits.

Speaker C: I don't remember influence 101 either.

Speaker D: No.

Speaker B: They might teach negotiation.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: Might get a class on negotiation or something that might help you, but not, not pure influence. How do I actually get this person to get from A to B? Yeah.

Speaker D: And that wouldn't be a bad class to offer to offer. I think that's actually a great class.

Speaker C: Right. The needed skill wouldn't matter even in your personal life. Right. Influencing others when you're not really necessarily the decision maker is a key, critical skill for young folks, older folks, whatever it is, every day. And it leads into negotiations at times. But it also means, hey, how do I get, uh, others to, uh, follow along it takes trust and credibility, and that's where influence plays a part.

Speaker D: To Ryan's point, I'd even argue that a class on influence would be more valuable than a class on negotiation.

Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture, ah, are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more@accenture.com Spotify it's just gonna happen.

Speaker D: Yeah. William doesn't.

Speaker B: I had a really, really good negotiation. Oh, no, no, no. But I was in an MBA program, so, ah, I had a professor that was an expert at negotiations, and he had done union negotiations both for and against. And so, um, he was just great. And the entire class, y' all would love this. The entire class was scenarios. So, you know, we'd have a class of, like, 30 students, and you'd break out into 15 or 15. One was pro, one was against.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: All right. And here's the scenario. Everybody read the same thing. And that was a class. So, like, you're going through all the. The steps, and you had to. You had to. By the end of the class, you had to reach a settlement. You had to. You had to. You had to get there. Clocks running. So I would definitely take the influence class.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: However, if I would have Professor Gerhard definitely take the negotiation, I like. After I took his first class, I changed my schedule to then take his more advanced classes because it was so good.

Speaker D: So anyhow, I've never had that experience at college.

Speaker B: Oh, my God.

Speaker D: I never did. Well, I just never had. I think it was. I went to school, and I went to school. I never attached to a professor.

Speaker B: You had the same as you had. So I went to public school, high school, then I went to Bama. Big giant public university. Then I went to University of Arizona. Big public university. And then I went to a private school or a private college. Completely different experience.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker B: We had a. We had, uh, 100 professors for 300 students. One on three.

Speaker D: No.

Speaker B: So I could just walk down the halls and step into somebody's office and go, hey, tell me a little bit about.

Speaker D: Yeah, most of my class sizes were 100, 200. Like, we were in it. We were in a stadium. But anyhow, Neil, curious. Okay, so you took a claims rep job. Get in there. You're grinding away.

Speaker B: How Was it?

Speaker D: Yeah. How One, how was it? And two, how did you start to kind of navigate? Did you see a path? Did you know where you wanted to go? Did it just organically happen? Walk us through that.

Speaker C: When you're in, when you're in a business operations kind of role, after a while, if you're talented and you're willing to work hard, you know, you start to become real good. And then after a while, folks start to come to you and they start asking advice and then, you know, you're informal mentoring. And then over time you may be asked by, you know, some leaders in the organization to maybe be formal managers and you start to get the roots of trying to be a leader in the organization. That interested me. Again, it was tied back to my, you know, love of sports, you know, that coaching. And so over time, um, you gain to a level of performance and subject matter expertise and then you start competing for leadership roles. And again, there's where the press skills. Now, insurance, being a claim rep taught a lot of. William talked about negotiations. You're learning that on the fly. You're learning about interpreting contracts, you're learning about empathy. Right. Sometimes you may be just a bumper claim, you know, but then there were times where I had to handle a fatality. And that's a totally different game. You walking into someone's house and you're, um, before you even thinking about anything about trying to settle a claim, you're faced with life. Right?

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: My three year old kid was just killed in this car accident. And that's where you start to learn all kinds of things about, you know, empathy and all the other social and you know, aspects of human nature go into play at that moment. So you just kind of grow as a human in that space over time.

Speaker B: Right. So what the, the things that you did at Aetna, uh, what made you, uh, switch, what made you, uh, attracted to people? Progressive?

Speaker C: Just, you know, I always had that growth mindset and it was the opportunity to learn stuff. So at Aetna, I was handling just primarily injury claims, right. You know, for third party losses. And I had a territory and I would go around the state of Georgia and I would negotiate with, you know, individuals and sometimes attorneys. Uh, but I wanted to learn other aspects and that was kind of the progressive model, right. You know, that growth mindset. Peter B. Lewis Right. Risk, learn, grow and um, the opportunity to come in and learn and do different things, maybe learn the property side, maybe learn, you know, other things like medical, maybe homeowners, just those things was, was attractive. In switching companies.

Speaker B: And they were hot, progressive, was hot. When you joined them, that were, that was, they were the up and comers.

Speaker C: Uh, they were, I mean, you know, if you think about it, they started in 37 as a non standard. By the time I get there in 1990, we're just starting to, you know, we're maybe 8,000 employees at the time time. And we're getting into, you know, standard and other products. And you know, that's kind of their, um, kind of their mission, like where they'll, they're offering, they want customers for life. And so they offer a lot of different products to keep, uh, folks, you know, connected to the, you know, the overall mission. You know, today we're about 60 to 65,000 employees. And so the growth has been there. So the opportunities to do different things. And, and what do I admire is really heavy culture on internal movement. And it's sort of like, hey, I'm fascinated that, um, I can drive my own bus if I want to go try something. Um, you know, again, that mentality, risk, learn, grow. I can try it. And if I can do well, I can take it from there. And if I don't have opportunities to do something else.

Speaker D: Let's unpack that a little bit. So my, I went from a small company, right? I'll use my personal experience here. We're from a small company in connects a couple hundred people to three thousand and then IBM acquires, so becomes a massive company. And we were given serial numbers, right? And so 2G5772. That should just get it on me somewhere. Like that was my serial number at IBM. I love the people that I worked with because they transitioned from the previous company, but I never acclimated to the big culture of the company. So when you, when you come in at 8,000 people, you're right in the middle of that, like you're starting to grow, right? So now you're 60, 65,000. Talk about that a little bit. How does one go from 8,000 to 60,000 and maintain sanity and build a career?

Speaker C: It's a targeted effort. And think about, Ryan, you were talking favorably about what you enjoyed about that small atmosphere. So you're right. So we're about 8,000. And you know, even before, you know, before I joined, you know, I would talk to my manager when they were like a couple of thousand, right? But what we learned is, hey, what do you like the most about being here? Because the job is hard, right? You never know with how much volume may come in. We talked about earlier, the types of claims that you may get, you know, you may get, you know, like I said, a simple auto damage claim, but then you may get, wow, you got a fatality claim. And that, that tugs at you. But what I learned across the way that people loved about the company was the people they worked with, no matter how tough the job was. And we realized that if we're going to grow and scale and continue this culture, going from 1,000 to 8,000 to eventually 60,000, we had to be intentional about our ability to be leadership and how to make that cultural experience scale to that size. So I think it starts with leaders just being intentional and the willingness to pay it forward.

Speaker B: I love that. Oh, my God. So when you came over from Aetna, uh, to Progressive, you were still in Claims. You're still an operational role.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: What was your, what was your. Because your degree and your background, love of hr. What was the kind of the first movement over into that area? What was, what did. First of all, how did you get over there?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great story. So I went to. I, uh, was three years with Aetna, and then about 1990, I moved to Progressive and I was in that Claims organization all the way till about 2000.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And a personal circumstance happened where I lost a family member. And at that point, um, it was my spouse at the time. And it gave me a reflection point like, hey, what is it that I, you know, when you lose someone you're close to, you're like, what's your purpose in life? Right. And so here is, I have this degree. There's something I really loved. I enjoy doing what I'm doing and I'm making good money. How do I merge those things? And you both have been really, uh, tied to the HR and talent acquisition space. The one thing you can say that you enjoy, that you get to make a difference in someone's life.

Speaker D: Sure.

Speaker C: Right. And so we all get, we all thrive about making a difference. So there's the opportunity. There was. Right. Staring at me. It was an opportunity to think about doing something different. Coming, uh, off, you know, a personal tragedy of a situation. And I said, I'm going to do it because I need a new purpose to make sense of what just happened to me. And that was my purpose. It was the ability to jump in, into space. At that point, I was, uh, an established leader in Claims. We know hr, you know, really good HR professionals. Many, um, of them come from the business. And so I made the leap over and then, you know, that was about 2000, and I haven't looked back from the HR world since then.

Speaker D: 24 years later, you're still in HR, still moving along. So let's start maybe. Let's run through that HR journey. Right. So we eventually get into talent, and you're about eight years in this particular space. But prior to that, what does that journey look like? How did you end up here?

Speaker C: Yeah. Um, so I started off as supporting a. One of the states in Progressives Claims organization.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Eventually that grows. And then over time, I work my partner role business.

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker C: That's. Yep.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: So I'm supporting a business, and because I was a leader in claims, I connected well with some of the claim reps and the leaders because, hey, back to your point earlier. Hey, I did the job.

Speaker D: Makes sense.

Speaker C: Right? So I can relate. Um, then I had the opportunity to kind of compete for roles, uh, where, you know, uh, I'm leading, you know, HR organizations for several states. And so I stay on this, what I call Field HR track for probably 10 years of that first 24 of the last 24 hours should say. Then I have an opportunity to move into a, um, corporate setting. And from there.

Speaker B: That's different.

Speaker C: Totally different.

Speaker B: That's different. It's a different animal right there.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I'm then taking my. Hey, business experience, my business leadership experience, my field hr, and I'm wrapping it up. And Progressive happens to create a role, and it's called the Director of Employee Experience. You're managing elements of talent management. You're managing elements of, you know, DE and I programs. And you're saying, hey, I want. We want you to build out what the ideal employee experience could look like.

Speaker B: Dude, that's so far.

Speaker D: Yeah. So. So did they create this for you specifically?

Speaker C: The job was created and I competed for it.

Speaker B: Right, got it.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: So like 2010.

Speaker C: 2010, exactly. So it wasn't specifically for me, but I was, you know, one of a handful of people who had the opportunity to compete.

Speaker D: Before we jump on, where are we at employee size at this point?

Speaker C: Well, that's a good point. Uh, probably in the 30s. I'm gonna have to guess at that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: So the next half of the 30th. Yeah, so the next half of the journey now. Yeah, now we're getting serious about people.

Speaker B: But you're a corporate.

Speaker C: Don't hold me to the number. We're probably in the 30s at that point. Somewhere in the 30s. Count 30 thousands.

Speaker B: I'm always fascinated, uh, Neil, with, uh, practitioners, the decision on which to stay a Generalist, you know, kind of move up the ranks of a generalist or to then go out and do specialization and, you know, going to comp. Going to benefits, go, you know, going to any of the silos. And, uh, you have all this wonderful HR experience and then you do the employee experience.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: So you, you made the decision to do some type of specialization, did you?

Speaker C: I think if you think about it, look at them as critical experiences. Right. So let's say you're in job X and you want to move to job Y.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: You ask yourself, what are the critical things that I need to be good at or I've had done?

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Speaker C: jobs in job X in order to be in job Y some day. So you look at it and. So let's say I'm making up. Example. Let's say you want to be the chief financial officer of a company. You know, I have to have some steps that I've had to have taken in order to get there. So I think depending on where I was wanting to go and be a senior leader in an HR organization, I needed to have some different experiences both on the corporate and on the field side. Plus, the business side was helping me if I was going to be successful ever being a senior leader in hr.

Speaker B: Right, Right. No, I can see that. I can see that in the role of ex, which is now what we call it, the role of ex. Y' all were pioneering. Y' all were way early in that game.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So what did you, uh. All of a sudden you get the job? What. What? How'd you. Because there's not like the books written on it. There's no conferences that are running, running tracks on it or anything like that.

Speaker D: Not a lot of tech at that point.

Speaker B: A lot of tech. There's not a playbook like how, how'd you create it?

Speaker C: Well, you know, you're getting different elements, right. So part of your job is you're getting engagement surveying, you're getting, you know, the DE and I pieces. And, you know, there's a learning, uh, to that. And how do we grow those programs and, uh, make them part of your culture. There's aspects of performance management, you know, setting expectations through objectives. Right. You know, evaluations, assessments. For a period of time, I had the, um, you know, leadership learning development group. So you're getting all of these pieces that make up what an employee is going to be going through. And the job continues to evolve, but again, it's all centered around what do we want an employee here at this company, what experiences do we want them to have? And we're centralizing some of those efforts. And that was the crux of the job. It was how do we centralize them to get traction versus having them live in all the different business groups and having different experiences from there. How do we have a unified experience?

Speaker B: You mentioned the word intentionality earlier. This is intentionality. Right. Personified is you're thinking about their experience and then you're trying different things. I'm sure, you know, some things worked well, some things didn't work well. Like, that's just life.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you try programs to move people through this experience. And again, it's never done. It's never, it's never. You never get to a point where you're like, ah, we got it.

Speaker D: No, uh, so on. So to build, to build on that question I have is curiosity really, is today companies will do this for a business reason.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker D: Business reason. At that time, companies were doing this, but it really wasn't the foundation of a lot of companies. Right. They knew they had to do. They wanted to do something. Was this more of a business decision, like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna go from 30 to 60. We need, we need an experience here or turning people. Or was this more people got together and said, you know what, we really care about employees. Let's, let's make a good experience. But there really wasn't tied to a business.

Speaker C: There was probably four things that I would say were the pillars. Right. If you build in on Ryan's question, right. Um, you're scaling to growth. Right. You can't have like, you know, 30 different versions of this. If you Want to go from an 8,000 base employee to a 30,000 or someday be 60. And well, by the way, we have aspirations to maybe be over 100 based on where things go. So preparing for growth, um, retention. Right. You've got to have, you know, William talked about art. You've got to have, uh, an ideal profile about what things employees need if they're going to continue to stay with you.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Same thing from an engagement. If I'm going to go and go that extra mile as an employee to service, whether it's external or internal customers, my engagement is a critical aspect of that. So you're building on those experiences. And then lastly, we got to remember this is a business. We got to do this efficiently. Right. And so this, you know, you know, the centralization allows you to scale, build, uh, subject matter expertise, but do it in a manner where it's not breaking the bank in terms of how much it's costing you to do these programs.

Speaker B: You know, I'm fascinated because you're consumer facing. So there's a customer experience somewhere in this process. Right? There's a customer experience. Uh, did you ever lean or pull from some of the things that were the customer experience and pull those into the employee experience?

Speaker C: Yeah, There are really almost three or four customers. Right. There's the policyholder. Right, Right. There is the person whom your policyholder may have had a, you know, an accident with. Okay. That's a different experience. There is the vendors who you partner with to bring those external and, um, you know, customer experiences, you know, to life. You know, example, you know, body shops that you partner with to get someone's car back on their driveway. A key thing. Right. And then, um, lastly, it's like, uh, how do we service each other? Like, how does it service a claim rep in the field who's servicing an external customer? So you're really managing all those four dynamics when you think about some of those things.

Speaker B: Right. And do you pulled some of that learning into the, uh, employee experience?

Speaker C: You have to. Right. Because the employee, if I'm an employee servicing an internal employee, uh, you know, I may like, hey, how do I get your laptop up and running? There's a service level there. Uh, I'm on the phones and, you know, how do I talk to customers in terms of, um, hey, I'm here to help you service your policy today. What changes would you like to make? Or if you've had a claim? So you're bringing what skills and experiences people need to service all of those different types of customers scenarios.

Speaker D: Did you look at off boarding during this, what the off boarding experience would be.

Speaker C: Well, let's calibrate. Offboarding is when people leave the organization. Right?

Speaker D: Correct.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And you know, think about it this way. From a human perspective, there's respect, there's the dignity piece from the business side. Remember, hey, Ryan, you know, you're a talented individual. You're going to leave us at some point possibly, and go on to do even bigger and better things. Let's also remember you could be a progressive policyholder. So how I have that interaction there.

Speaker D: Exactly why I was asking that question.

Speaker C: Plus, what can I learn from Ryan? Hey, I'm going to miss Ryan. He added a lot to the organization. But what can we learn from Ryan's experiences? He could be helping us, giving us by the feedback he gives and say, hey, right, here's the things that I think worked well. Here were the things that I think you guys could have done better. So off boarding a, uh, critical aspect in this human space, particularly to learn and grow your business.

Speaker D: Yeah. And that was the reason I was asking is, you know, if you're, and I don't know how many people were operating at that time or what happens a year, but if 1500 people leave a year, that's potentially 1500 customers or at least a high percentage, I would assume, are policyholders at some level that you have to manage that expectation.

Speaker C: It varies. But yes, you, you, first of all, you have employees who are current policyholders. You never know a candidate. So when you're going through the hiring process.

Speaker B: Exactly right.

Speaker C: You know, candidates will even say, hey, I. What interest? Well, I'm a policyholder.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And so I get to know about your company and its culture because I'm one of your customers. And, and so now I really moved by that. And now I kind of want to work in that same industry and, or, you know, company. So, uh, absolutely. It is a big circle. You never know where you're interacting, um, with folks. You may even be working with a vendor today and tomorrow. They may be a person who applies for one of your jobs inside your own company. So there's a lot of connection in this, particularly industry in the space in general.

Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms um, that matter most. Learn more@accenture.com Spotify.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: So what, what'd you do after ex. What was the, uh, you know, over

Speaker C: time the job continues to grow, you get more pieces and you, you now codified it and you're calling it hey, now you're leading our complete talent management efforts. And uh, so you're now like, you know, so think about the uh, a three, you know, kind of a three legged area, right? So you bring people in one, they're here, what's their experience? And then you've got this experience like how do people get rewarded? Right. And so those are your kind of your pillars that you're looking at from, you know, where do you move to? I was always fascinated with the acquisition side. Again, it goes back to the, the coach side, the sports side. You know, pro teams, you know, acquire talent, college teams, recruit kids. Um, that was where, um, I had a lot of passion in plus came from that operational side of the business. Right. So I was in claims for years. And so recruiting is like the closest operational job in the HR sense because it's got a clear line of sight. Oh, you want to grow or you know, Ryan talked earlier about, you know, retention. You've got people leaving, you've got to backfill. There's a clear line of sight if you can do it. Well in recruiting, you're helping the companies, you know, profit and growth. Right there, direct. It's a, you don't have to sell the mission about why what you do is important. But we all want to grow or we all need help to help us with our jobs. Hire people. There's where the connection was for me for talent acquisition challenges.

Speaker D: I want to talk about challenges. So we went through some of the, some of the bottlenecks you hit coming up in the space. Where's that differ? We, uh, obviously recruiting talent management is very different than the other things you were doing. Um, I guess it has a lot of tie ins, but it's different. Where is it very different? Where, where are the, the differences that people who are in talent management may not, or making that transition may not realize that they're going to face when.

Speaker C: Let's, let's use the comparison to when you're an operational leader. I'm leading a team of seven, right. And we say today, and we say, okay, Ryan, we got all these claims today and I want you to handle, you know, this side of the city and you know, William, I, uh, need you to go uptown and handle this, you know, so as a Leader, you're making operational decisions all day long when you're in the HR space, particularly in, you know, field talent acquisition, talent management. You're relying heavily on the influence, right? I've got leaders out there who are consuming. So let's take the talent management. I've got learning products, I've got performance management things. I've got DNI programs for folks. I've got engagement, uh, programs. I'm a leader. I've got to run my day to day business. But I also, if I want to be a great leader, I've got to figure out how to ingest this thing. Now I've got to learn how to collaborate and influence people to use those products to be even better leaders. There's where that separation starts to come into play is I'm relying a lot more heavily on influence. How do I make the business case? Ryan, here's why I think these tools would be great for your organization to help your team continue to grow and for you to continue to be the great leader you are. You got to influence on that stuff.

Speaker D: Which is why we needed a class on influence.

Speaker C: Exactly. That's why we needed an example.

Speaker D: I said, you could have cut 20 years off your career,

Speaker C: probably have hair back then. So

Speaker B: what, what shocked you about recruiting? I mean, just in general when, when you, you know, because it's, we have a good friend of ours, um, that actually grew up in recruiting, did it so well that they moved the company, moved them over to HR and, and then analytics and things like that. So it's like we talk to him occasionally. Uh, I think of him more of as an advisor, uh, and friend. And it's like he's constantly learning new stuff because it's like, it's not what he thought because he grew up in one thing and all of a sudden now he's managing, leading, uh, something completely different. And so it's like a brand new day. Every new day it's like, oh, okay, I didn't know that was gonna be there. What was the, what was the shot? Not shock, but what were unexpected.

Speaker C: I guess for the most part you interact with people, operate with a good sense of core values. But there are, there's a handful of people who, for whatever their circumstances are, are really needing to get a job and will go to different lengths that are probably not appropriate to get that job.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And the uptick of that recently that we're seeing is where you sit back and say it doesn't always feel good. Right? Because you don't think, you don't think. And like, when you're moving into the job or you're coming at a call, you. You don't. You're not wired to think about that. Right. Uh, and so, you know, was I as sticker, uh, shocked as some. I don't know. I grew up in New York City, so you get to see a lot

Speaker B: of stuff and, you know, um, you can't be shocked. Come on.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, you know, work there for a period of time, you know, as a leader in claims. Uh, so. But it is a little disheartening when you see that type of activity going on. And, um, you've got hundreds of thousands of people who are doing it the right way, and then you've got some handful of folks who, for whatever reason, feel the need to cheat the system. That's probably where you're getting into. Hey, that's probably where it's like, I wasn't thinking that was going to be happening on an everyday basis.

Speaker B: Right. Ryan can attest to that because he was in staffing. Executive search.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: It takes a little. Steals a little of your humanity.

Speaker C: Uh, that's a great way to say it.

Speaker D: It does. But in the end, when you, when you're helping somebody get to their next step, get them out of a jam almost, you know, it's like they get really. They genuinely get excited. You almost want to be friends with them. And then you remember, now I'm just making money, I need to go.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker D: I'm the person he doesn't want to hire. But at that time, I was money motivated. You know, it was, it was, uh, it was executive search. I needed to.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: But even there, that's okay. You still have, you still have legitimate external and intrinsic motivations.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: Okay. It's when you don't listen. There are some people who are trying to get in to do something nefarious once they're in, and then there are others who just. They're that desperate to get a job because they need one. And that's the thing you're pulling on this, um, you know, the heartstrings there about, hey, you're able to make it, because we know that what happens when you feel valued as a human, when you're able to contribute by working.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And that's what makes it really tough. It's like, uh, that difference that Ryan was talking about earlier gets a little bit muted when you have that kind of situation every once in a while.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: You see that in AI. Do you see some of this in technology or the misuse of technologies or is it just bad, bad, bad actors doing bad things?

Speaker C: Just, uh, I would say, listen, some people are using AI as a tool, but I think it's, I think it just comes down to there are bad actors. And we've had that no matter what industry and what of society in every corner of the neighborhood. So, um, that just is what it is. But.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Um, for the most part, many folks, many companies use AI responsibly and there are some people who take advantage of that.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So, so you've been at this for a while and we're coming down on time. So I'll make this my final, my final question. But you've been at this for a while. What's the next act? Where are we looking at? Where are you growing to in the organization? I'll say in the organization. It could be outside.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, definitely. Why, why leave? You got a good day going.

Speaker C: Uh, that's, that's. You're almost in my head, William. I think you're my retirement.

Speaker D: He's like, retirement, I got, I gotta

Speaker B: go learn a new company.

Speaker C: You're gonna, exactly, you're gonna put. Yeah, yeah. So, um, I still have a lot to where I want to take the organization in terms of what I want to accomplish. You know, there's always that challenge like, hey, this is a new job coming. Can sources of skills for the company to continue to grow, can we continue to scale? Can we find that, you know, that, that really cool technology that makes folks lives a lot easier. So you have those day to day challenges. I think if I was to leave tomorrow, uh, here's what I would do. I think the biggest challenge in the talent acquisition space, particularly just recruiting and for particularly young folks particularly, is learning how to compete. Remember how we were talking about they didn't offer influence in college, they didn't do a whole lot of teaching yet. How do you compete for jobs in the real world? Right, yeah, they had a career center and you may get some tips. But you know, listen, sometimes you don't get a job not because you are, you know, you're not. You don't have the skills or it's just that there was someone better. And so that notion of how do I compete, maybe I go up against Ryan and we're neck and neck, but Ryan brings something new and different to the role. That's why they hire Ryan. It's not that I was bad or I didn't have the skills or I didn't meet the minimum quality. It was just Ryan's better. So that ability to compete. And so I think what I would do in my next journey is helping young people learn how to compete for jobs. Because we all agreed on this call on one thing is the feeling you get when you can get a job and how that makes one feel and the difference you can make in terms of a. Your personal life, your family and society. It all starts with helping people compete. And really, isn't that what coaches do with players? How do I compete? How do they. How did you know Dave Roberts helped the Los Angeles Dodgers compete and ultimately, you know, beat my Yankees? Right. It's all about helping me there. Which part of that.

Speaker D: Definitely, definitely helping people compete for jobs. I actually think that could be your own podcast. Like, I, I love that as a series of episodes. That would be fantastic. But definitely the Yankees not winning.

Speaker B: Oh, stop.

Speaker D: Um, it was fantastic.

Speaker C: That was a bonus 3 on the podcast today.

Speaker B: Yeah, last, last thing, uh, for me, Neil, is advice you'd give your younger self. If you could go back into the, into that.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Kid at UGA taking his 300 level HR classes and stuff like that. What would, what advice would you, uh, give Neil?

Speaker C: You know, when you're motivated in life and you're trying to move up the ladder, um, you know, sometimes you may push a little too hard. Right. And so at times there's a time where you got to think space and grace and allow the human elements to kind of work their way in patience. And, you know, if you're, if you're wired to do the right things in life, it'll pay off in the end. But, you know, sometimes we forget that as we're trying to compete and move up the ladder. But sometimes you don't know what other folks are going through. Space and grace sometimes.

Speaker B: Dude, that's an episode title right there. That is awesome.

Speaker C: There you go.

Speaker B: Uh, thank you for carving out time for us.

Speaker C: I appreciate you guys.

Speaker B: This has been absolutely fantastic. Thanks to you and thanks to the audience and we'll see you next time.

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