From Reactive Hiring to Workforce Strategy with John Heyliger of Lockheed Martin

John Heyliger: You gotta have skills, roles and mobility. You have to be able to move, hire, grow people. So talent management and having the internal insights to your employee supply, if you will, of skills is foundational.

Narrator: We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Talent Acquisition Leaders Podcast. If something we said today resonated with you, please subscribe, rate and download our podcast and share the episode with your network. Ready to transform your recruiting practices with Leading Edge technology? Just like our other clients at 3M, um, Comcast, Stryker and Walgreens. Then reach out@sagemarkhr.com for a free consultation.

Ryan Dull: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Talent Acquisition Leaders Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Doe, and today I have a conversation with John Heiliger. John is the VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Lockheed Martin. John, welcome to the show.

John Heyliger: Thanks, Ryan. I'm excited to be here. Appreciate you having me. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Dull: Looking forward to the conversation. Let's start out and talk a little bit about your background. Tell me, how did you get started in talent? Uh, what are some roles that you've held leading up to your current role?

John Heyliger: I started, uh, my career as a technical, uh, recruiter at Aerotech. So it's fun to run into those folks. All good stories of how, you know, we were trained as green recruiters. No experience. Spent a couple years there and went over to the client side about two years in and then eventually just grew into leadership roles, side projects. I was a business partner for a short stint, had to support a telecom company. I went through massive layoffs. So I learned what it was like to lay people off, um, the good experience, you never want to do again kind of thing. But I've stayed in Talent Acquisition basically since then. Uh, I was on the recruitment, outsourcing side for four years. I was actually a lot of fun because you got to get into multiple client company scenarios and sometimes you're implementing technology, sometimes they wanted you to redesign their process, you know, filling the recs, all those kinds of things. And then I had my first global role for a midsize software company out of San Francisco. But we were growing in China, Malaysia, uk, Japan, and got to travel the world and, you know, learn those cultures and all the employment laws that come with that, uh, you know, how do we grow and, uh, open locations there, those kinds of things. And then, you know, the last 12 years I've been at Lockheed where I've run TA for small one, uh, of our business units, workforce, um, planning, data analytics, and then for a part, probably over the last two years or so, I was on the Workforce transformation side where I've kind of handed that back off and just focused on rta. Okay, yeah, that's great.

Ryan Dull: Impressive career. And so for the viewers who don't know who Lockheed Martin is, talk a little bit about Lockheed Martin as a business, um, kind of scope out your role a little bit, size of the organization, what the business does, uh, maybe how many hires, how big is your team, those kinds of things.

John Heyliger: You know, we're, we're the largest defense company in the US but we do a lot of building and international business as well. We have over 120,000 employees. You know, we're in 43 countries. Our hiring volume is anywhere from 10 to 15,000 a year. A good portion of that is early career. So we're pretty focused on campus recruiting, high school, you know, community college, community, try to build up that talent um, at that point. And so you know, and I, it's, we're um, a largely a decentralized function today. Cross hr, not just in ta, but that's changing which I'm, I imagine we'll hit on later. But we have you know, historically worked as separate businesses over the last several years. So there's been a lot of change and try to bring this under one enterprise and how we do everything, everything from hr, biparts, manage suppliers, do contracts, those kinds of things.

Ryan Dull: Great. So let's talk about the last couple years. So if you look backwards, what are a couple initiatives that you and the team uh, have worked on that you're particularly proud of or that you'd like to share?

John Heyliger: Yeah, so we're, you know, right now we're rolling out our new applicant tracking system this year as well as new hcm. So that's number one to doing that concurrently. A lot of focus on AI, how we organize our function based on those processes, harmonizing those, the technology supports it and then how we model the function. And that's not just ta, that's all of HR and that's all the other functions from engineering, manufacturing, finance, all of those. So it's really a wholesale transformation of how we run the business. Um, shifting to model based design, product centers, all these things to try to be more efficient, drive down cost, work faster, build products faster and then emerging into sort of the new space of quantum and how that's going to shift um, our business. But you know, obviously AI is a big part of that as we try to drive automation, efficiency, you know, candid experience being the focus there. Um, so our first, our new ATF's will have a core platform and then an AI skill matching capability to it.

Ryan Dull: Okay, that's great. Um, let's talk a little bit maybe about um, performance and results from how you measure success in talent acquisition. So first maybe what's important to um, the executive group and the leaders at your organization and then into like how do you measure success within TA itself?

John Heyliger: Yeah, I mean it's the traditional stuff. So know time to fill. And we battled that uh, with the business because in some cases they have, they give us new dates that are unachievable. So we're, we, you know, it's time to fill but reasonable speed. But also how do we make sure we're getting those demand signals early so we can be more proactive on and we deliver that talent. There's the candidate quality metric which we've done. Or we take the feedback from the manager and the candidate at certain point to derive a net promoter score of satisfaction. Both sides are have a certain promoter score as a quality index tied to it if you will. And so we do like a uh, three month and six month survey. We also look at attrition, but not so much as we do the quality side. We look at a lot of the canup funnel, funnel metrics. Are we being efficient? Are we looking at all the applicants? Are we assessing properly? Um, but I'll tell you, the volume of candidates we get nowadays it's hard to get to everyone. So we have a lot of applicants on the table. And so we're looking at ways where AI interviewer, top of funnel sort of assessment capabilities to try to make sure that they're getting better visibility. But that's more future. We've also looked at acceptor aids. That's a big piece of are we getting our top talent at a higher rate, especially for critical skills? And then we've been able to tie recruiting outcomes to business results. So a lot of our business is uh, almost like a consulting company. So we bill labor back to the customer depending on the program. So the faster you hire them, the more you can recognize revenue. So we, we're able to tie for every day. Faster we get them on board, the more we can accelerate that revenue. So there was a big case we used to add more recruiters because we were falling behind and rec loads were getting too much. So we can actually evaluate the business by driving speed and uh, bringing our recruiters getting lower rec loads and having fill positions faster. Those are some examples.

Ryan Dull: Yeah, that's exciting. Type uh, of I guess accounting practices where you can actually show that business value and ROI for an Investment to recognize that revenue faster. Um, that makes a lot of sense and ties you much closer to business. So that's great. Um, let's look forward a little bit. You touched on it a little bit. You've got some tech initiatives um, going on right now. But if you look forward over the next say 12 months, what are some of the priorities for you and your team?

John Heyliger: There are big ones, but it kind of boil it down to some key things. It feels like a lot. So it's the holistic transformation of both modernizing our systems and how we're organized as a function. AI impact and readiness, upskilling, awareness, adoption. Whether it's individual recruiter productivity and how they use AI to synthesize interview feedback or candidate outreach or interview guides, those kinds of as we today call them on a basic front off productivity capabilities. And then how they're going to adopt the new way of whether AI is helping with skill matching, shifting to candidate, being at the center, focusing on, you know, candidate engagement, candidate experience. I would also say shifting to skills readiness of how we assess talent, those skills versus credentials. Degree is experience. So we're testing that, that out in early career of how, not, not just how we write our recs, but how we're screening and selecting those candidates. So with the intent that, you know, historically like well, we need a computer science student or if you need someone to program, not necessarily have that degree. You have civil engineering students, you have electrical, you have even community college students who can program. We'd broaden the talent pool if we were to shift to that model. Probably not the greatest example now because software is becoming more, you know, AI driven and you need less coders. But just to thought at least be able to illustrate of how we're kind of shifting to skill based, um, candidate fraud's a big one. You know, being able to detect as well as select and assess candidates. You know, I'm sure many companies at least that I know have had cases where you know, the candidate interview is not who they say they are. And not to mention they're using AI to write resumes. And so how do you truly know they have those capabilities when they're just trying to use it to match to the rec candidate experience is the top priority for us. So building our, our processes that are candidate centric, you know, applicant tracking system is a big piece. We talk about how we build out the workflows. There is happy path is kind of jokingly what we say, happy to the candidates. So are we doing everything to minimize the, you know, the Burden of applying the experience. They have nine, one and who, if they're talking to AI versus a human, those kinds of things. And then I would say, you know, the shift to uh, and I say this because this has been going on for years but we really need talent advisors. So we've been working two phases of an upskilling series with talent advisor mind data literacy, talent market literacy, AI capabilities. So it's the full gamut. So we've done a first series there and now we're bringing in specific Lockheed Martin use cases that they can apply those learnings. So they're probably the big ones.

Ryan Dull: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot there. Um, I wanted to double click on one thing that you mentioned specifically interested in. Um, you know, as you start going into the skill based assessment um, of candidates and things, obviously that is a big change for any organization, especially an organization of your size. So what are some of the challenges that you found that ah, you know, in moving in that direction? There's a lot of people that um, are starting down that path or are midway down that path, but it's not easy. Um, and so interested in hearing from you on like maybe some of the challenges that you ran into of making that change and how you are working to overcome them.

John Heyliger: This is um, the fun part about what I do is that I don't get to just play and talent acquisition, I get to play across the HR function. So we're, we're, we're big believers. The nature at least in our HR of being more systemic and integrated. So when we talk skills, you got to have skills, roles and mobility. You have to be able to move, hire, grow people with the basis of you know, skills, intelligence. So what skills do they have? What gaps exist? So talent management and having the internal insights to your employee supply, if you will, of skills is foundational. And so we've talked to a lot of our peers that are struggling with this, whatever tool they're using. I don't know if anybody's tracked that code. We have a home built skill inventory that we're using that's employee self validated, manager, uh, and peer endorsed. It's kind of like LinkedIn, but we don't have control over the skills that are being included. And there's skills that are random, that have no like business context. So the taxonomy is important, you know, the skills that can be inferred. If you say you know something like um, recruiting, what are all the variations of skills that might be better associated externally versus what we might call it internally? So there's that inferred sort of intelligence connecting to the external market. So when you're, you have a sense of what your internal supply looks like. When you bring in new people, you're, you're synthesizing the skill taxoni if you will. And then how do you constantly uh, how are you updating your skills of uh, your workforce real time? You know, you can use it based on like voice notes or information pulled from a presentation that someone did that might suggest they're an expert in whatever topic they're presenting. So this real time updating versus I got to go in manually an employee and update on myself. So those are all like foundational things regardless of what coe you're in in hr. But we'll be, we'll be testing it out with our new applicant tracking system of when we trade a wreck, it'll take the skills in that wreck and it'll use industry agnostic, more external taxonomy that would be able to match candidates more intelligently. Knowing that out of the box it's probably going to have to learn Lockheed Martin. But um, I think the LLM that we're getting has billions of records to suggest it's going to have some value on the front end. But with that I would imagine as a recruiter or hiring m manager. Are these really the skills they have? Can I really trust this yet? So we're planning for skepticism that will be in as a part of adopting that new technology and whether are uh, they really a five stars out of five or that, you know what I mean. So the flip side of that is they put too much trust in the matching and make assumptions that you know, they are you know say top candidate without doing the selection. So anyway it's, it is, it is sort of the architecture, the skills, intelligence capability and the taxonomy that we have to solve that before we can do any of this stuff. Um, knowing that we can do some practicing right with a career in how

Ryan Dull: we write our yeah really critical lay that foundation and uh, for change and then um, iterative as you go through the process. So thanks for that level of detail and transparency. I appreciate that. Uh, the struggle is real uh, but a lot of people are going through it and I think there's value out the back. Yeah, uh, great. Uh, last question I would have for you is what's some advice that you would have for others in the field? The audience here is made up mostly of people that are either in TA or interested in ta. So what's a piece of advice that you would give others in the field.

John Heyliger: I mean, I would. So if, if you're getting, if you're thinking of getting into the field or new into the field, I think find experts that you can mentor, peer relationships, you know, learn from what you would consider the best. I mean that's, that's probably what I would recommend. But as, as folks want to get into leadership and sort of what pivots or things you can think about as the market shifts. Because now we, you know, I think in January we had record layoffs, so the highest rate of layoffs since 2009. Um, and so now we're being saturated with candidates applying. I would imagine many of us are facing that. Um, not to mention AI and how do I adopt it and still be more relevant and effective? Um, the fear that might come with whether my job gets replaced, I would say on the AI side, don't be afraid, jump in. Because it's the ones that are afraid that kind of resist, that may struggle having relevancy. So learn all you can, Experiment, share with others, create communities within your own company or your fellow recruiters using it. We created a community of practice that's been really valuable. Um, learn from folks externally and then as you get into leadership and um, I'd say even as recruiters or if you're a sourcer, know the business you're in, know why you're hiring, the talent, know how then to also understand external, the extra funnel market, which you know. So if you specialize in say engineering and engineering disciplines, what are these folks doing on a day to day basis? Talk to the folks doing the work, use that to create success profiles that, you know, can really, uh, narrow down their critical skills. You know, what are the challenges with the role, what are the annual outcomes, this role, how do they contribute to the business? And then you can all use that to market, pitch and figure out how you address and sell the candidate. So business knowledge and then uh, I think we're really big on operational excellence. How does a recruiter know if you're having a good day? And if you are a recruiter, ask your leader to help you with that. Is speed important? Is quality important? Is candidate experience important? Sometimes it's all of it. We know how hard that is to achieve. And so really, you know, ask leaders, what is it? What does success look like, what matters? And how do I know if I had a good day or week? I think those are some of the big things. I think if you're in a senior leadership role, if you're running a talent acquisition function and you're struggling with workforce planning or you're, you know, you're, you're making progress there. The advice I would give is make sure that the business owns the demand, not hr. They're the ones that, they know what talent they're going to need and that HR owns the supply side. So if you can get to that level of agreement and contracting and partnership with the business where you're sharing that ownership and then you have common systems and processes to be able to, you know, regularly look at demand even within a year, uh, it's amazing how many companies just aren't there yet. And it's a massively strategic advantage not just for ta, but for the business, you know, because we all know, and I'm sure your audience knows, we can be pretty reactive. Our demand signals a wreck. You don't know what's coming. Next thing now you have this new wreck, you know, for skills you never heard of or it's on top of the dozens of other wrecks you have. And so the more senior, um, TA leaders can really drive workforce planning, practice and ownership. I think, I think that just sets the function up really well. And then I'm a big follower of, uh, Josh Burson and others that are really talking about how in some cases we, we as TA professionals, um, have the ability to come our own citizen developers of creating our own sourcing tools. And so I think find the folks that are adopters and, and you know, really want to stretch their capabilities in AI because there are tools that can do a lot and it may not mean you, you go buy a product off the shelf, maybe it's something you can build yourself. So I think that's probably more on the advanced side, you know, versus the traditional. Tried and true. How do we recruit? The other thing too is the best recruiters, the best leaders are the ones are like, what are the latest marketing tactics? You know, we've all gone through the evolution of search engine optimization and mobile recruiting and texting and now candidates are going on Gen AI and doing their search on ChatGPT or Copilot. So how do you set your business up when those cans are doing that? Your company showing up, uh, that's new to me and that might be new to others. So these are all the things that good teams, good leaders, good recruiters and sourcers need to keep up with. So hopefully that helps.

Ryan Dull: Yeah, that's great. Thanks for that level, uh, of feedback and guidance at each of the levels, um, of the potential listeners. So I appreciate that. John, great job today. Um, always fun to have a conversation with you and really appreciate you joining me today on the podcast.

John Heyliger: Appreciate you having me, Ryan.

Narrator: We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Talent Acquisition Leaders Podcast. If something we said today resonated with you, please subscribe, rate and download our podcast and share the episode with your network. Ready to transform your recruiting practices with Leading Edge technology just like our other clients at 3M, um, Comcast, Stryker and Walgreens. Then reach out@sagemarkhr.com for a free consultation.