What Makes A Great Candidate Experience? With Jenn Vigliotti, Sonos

Speaker A: You won the best. You got the best. Absolute best. The best. The best, the best talent. And mountains of it. Mountains of it. Mountains on it. Everybody's got talent. I got talent. I got talent. I got talent.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Talent Blueprint, your guide to building a company where talent comes first. The Talent Blueprint is brought to you by Bimari, the talent lifecycle management platform that helps organizations hire candidates faster, develop the skills of their workforce, and increase employee retention.

Speaker C: Hello and welcome to this week's installment of the Talent Blueprint. I'm your host, Sultan, and I am delighted today to be able to welcome Jen Vigliotti. Jen's the director and head of global leadership product and go to market recruiting at Sonos. Jen, thank you so much for joining us today. Let's get into it. Tell me a little bit about how you've ended up at Sonos and what your role there involves.

Speaker D: Thanks so much for having me, Sultan. It's really good to see you. So my background and career was mostly in executive search prior to joining Sonos. What I joined about six years ago and my role here at ah, Sonos has fortunately continued to grow and expand and currently have dual oversight over all of leadership and executive recruiting. So that's defined by director plus level searches across all functions. And then I also oversee recruiting for all levels in the organization in our product and commercial orgs as well.

Speaker C: Well, I am a huge personal fan of Sonos and certainly have surrounded myself with your products. I'd love to dig into that dual role that you have there. And what does that dual remit mean and how do you approach that when it comes to, uh, sourcing and hiring?

Speaker D: I think I get the best of both worlds because I get to have opportunity to impact the larger TA function. But then also I've kind of been building out the leadership practice and recruiting and I think a lot of what we've tried to build in leadership has helped us influence all of the roles we do at all levels. And I would specifically just want to highlight candidate experience. As you know, it's super important at, uh, the executive levels to have a very high touch candidate experience. And we've tried to take pieces of what makes a candidate experience unique and parlay that into all levels of recruiting, but also pick what's scalable because you can't really do high touch for volume quite as you would an executive.

Speaker C: And what is high touch and, um, effective candidate experience for you and how have you tried to evolve and improve that?

Speaker D: So I think it's two things There's a focus in high touch with your client, if you will, which is my colleagues and the executives that I support in the searches that my team and I do and that they need, and then also with the candidate. I do think this is a differentiator for Sonos backing up a little bit. We're a tech company that is, you know, sub $2 billion, about 1900 people. But we compete against big tech for talent. So we have to think about how do we differentiate ourselves when we're showing up in the market to candidates. And a way to do that is the experience. So I'll give you one example to start off with. And it may sound silly, but we get back to all of our candidates and, you know, it may just be a form disposition letter, but there's mechanisms in our system by which candidates are hearing back from us. And our recruiters are also really encouraged to pull down their wrecks. You know, if we have too many applicants to review, then it's time to unpost so that we can actually get through the applicants that are applying and are interested in talking to us.

Speaker C: And in that internal alignment, it sounds like you have been evolving your ways of working with your hiring managers and how you think about that process, what have been some of the things that have been most effective in creating better outcomes for candidates and how you do those alignments.

Speaker D: So compared to clients I've worked with on the search side, I think at, uh, Sonos, we ask our hiring managers to lean in very heavily in the recruiting process. And it's really a partnership, which I think is a great thing. They're asked to be looking into their networks and helping us kind of source and think about places that we should be looking for talent, because they're the experts. I mean, they're living and breathing in these fields, and they know what associations we should look at or what areas and people we should be connected to. We also have hiring managers get involved in dispositioning calls as well. If a candidate makes it really far through our process and we have a strong silver medalist or even just, you know, somebody that we think will be great talent for the future and in different capacity, the hiring manager might take the disposition call. And we've had feedback that that's been really impactful to the candidates and their overall experience. They've appreciated the candid feedback and the, you know, 10 minutes that the hiring manager took to have that conversation. In some cases, we even have hiring managers extend offers, you know, at the end of the search, we're hoping that the hiring Manager has a really deep relationship with the candidate because we're trying to provide all of these touch points throughout. And so sometimes they're in a better position than the recruiter to extend the offer.

Speaker C: I love that. And when it comes to how you think about scalability with those types of initiatives, obviously some of this is very high touch and may be different in the exec process in particular. But what have been some of the boundaries where you've tried to create scalability and how you communicate and create a good candidate experience and how you even run these internal initiatives.

Speaker D: So I'll try to give a two part answer to scalability. I think when you think about executive and leadership searches, there's always more touch points with the candidate and whether that's, you know, prep calls and debrief calls, really making sure that they have what they need to show up really well in their conversations. And I want to make sure, and my team, we want to make sure that our executives can start an interview at a kind of deeper level so the candidate has the baseline knowledge that they need to really get into a good conversation in that, you know, hour that they have together. But like I said, that's not always scalable. For every single search we're doing at Voluum, maybe that translates into, you know, just quick email check ins with candidates along the process to ensure we're thinking of you, we're here, we support you, and we can jump on the phone if, if you need. So I think that's one piece. And then something we do throughout at all levels of recruiting is we've tried to create a more structured interview process to maintain equity. So we introduced a few years ago structured interviewing, which is hopefully helping us mitigate bias in the interview process and creating a more equitable hiring process overall. So something that I think is somewhat unique that we do is we actually host an interview kickoff meeting. So before we're bringing a panel of candidates in for interviews, we're going to bring all of the interviewers together and the hiring manager, we're going to prep them with the job description and all of the areas that each of the interviewers should focus in terms of their competencies that they're assessing. We're going to get together for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and allow the interviewers time to ask questions on the job, understand specifically what the hiring manager wants and needs out of this role. Not what me interviewer, you know, as I think you need in this role, and then also allow the interviewers to ask any questions about the Areas that they need to assess so that they feel really prepped and ready to go into these conversations and interview candidates.

Speaker C: It's clear that, uh, folks at uh, Sonos dedicate a lot of time to creating this thoughtful interview process and an equitable process and a good experience for candidates. When you try to help quantify the importance of this amplified candidate experience to justify such a big time investment from folks across the business. But how do you speak to that internally? What is the rationale, uh, that you narrate to capture why talent experience matters so much?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think it's, it's a little bit about what we talked about before is like we are competing with big tech for talent. So if we want the best of the best talent, we need to lean into that. We frankly, you know, don't have the budget that the big tech companies do. But what we do have is a really, really great culture where people can come make an impact. We have a lot of very passionate people who don't shy away from solving hard problems and are very smart, but also down to earth and respectful to one another. And that's attractive to people, the culture and being able to come in and solve big problems. So I think our interviewers, once they have gone through the experience themselves and been hired, they're kind of primed to lean in with us and help in the process. And I'll also say our executive leadership team is really great at this. I mean, in working with our CEO Patrick, and he leads by example and he's right in the boat with me when we're working on a search. And I think that helps. The expectation is before any debrief, all of our interviewers should be submitting feedback beforehand. And that allows a few things, not only for us to have a more rich discussion when we get together in a room or a zoom room, but it helps us hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls of bias. You're sitting in a room with a more senior colleague. They share their feedback about a candidate that may sway your feedback. But the truth is we've had everything kind of written down and reviewed before. So we will, myself, my team, the recruiters, we will probe interviewers to kind of suss out the feedback that they've already provided in written form so that the hiring manager can make the best and most informed decision on their hire.

Speaker C: Well, I love the level of thought that you and the team have put into this. And does this differ for different parts of the organization? As you mentioned at the beginning, you guys are an, uh, organization that has A technology talent side to it as well as other parts to the business. What does the challenge of a effective talent experience and M recruiting program look like for different parts of your business?

Speaker D: If we think about technology specifically, maybe zooming out. So if we think about how we're positioned in the market, you know, somebody may assume or look at us and say, you know, you compete directly with Bose, let's just say. And, you know, I'll be honest, while they're somewhat of a competitor, when we think about where we're looking for talent, that isn't necessarily our default. So when we're looking to hire roles within our product organization, which includes hardware, software and product management, we're looking at other companies that have that hardware, software kind of crossover and synergy. Because as you can imagine, hardware and software together makes for a unique challenge when you think about the product development process, roadmap timelines, and how that all works together. So it's important that we're looking at companies that are similar. So we would look at things like, you know, connected home. We might look in gaming, home entertainment, places like Garmin, if you think of health and wellness, Peloton, Fitbit, Tonal, some of the auto companies, the Teslas of the world, Lucid Motors, and even smart appliances, in addition to, of course, you know, big tech. I've mentioned a few times.

Speaker C: And, um, how are you seeing the evolving landscape in the last six months or as we start the year? Obviously, we've had different waves of both innovation happening, drawing away tech talent, especially with artificial intelligence, driving a different pattern of hiring. You know, we see more and more competition for tech talent and talent in general coming not from other tech firms, but from traditional businesses starting to recruit from tech firms. I imagine it's also a retention question, you know, how do you keep tech talent you have when there's now a higher appetite for hiring folks with tech backgrounds from more traditional businesses? How do you think about that element of differentiation and how do you see the market evolving and your strategy evolving? As we start this new year, it's

Speaker D: easy to get caught up in some of the headlines we've all been seeing in the last 12 months or so. Right. With tech layoffs, in some ways, I will say there is more tech talent available than there was, you know, two years ago. But, uh, to your point, I think, you know, there are traditional companies recruiting tech talent. Everybody's trying to figure out AI and how that works and growing their businesses there. So there's always key roles for us that regardless of the headlines, are Challenging to hire because companies across all industries are really looking for this type of talent. And then there's the niche roles that we do within our hardware organization. Let's say that we're always somewhat limited to find because there are only so many other organizations that have the specific hardware needs that align with a company like ours.

Speaker C: I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier in terms of your hiring process, not just being about candidate experience, but being also about a more equitable approach. You talked about the structured interview process, the alignment. When you look at the initiatives to drive equity and diversity, what other things have been front of mind for you and what's worked, what's been a success?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think the structured interviewing has been a big one in terms of our process. But in TA our team is really responsible for top of the funnel and maintaining an equitable hiring process. So we've leveraged bimmery of course, to help source candidates, help nurture candidates. I mean, we have not had a CRM M at Sonos for some time now. So this is a great new kind of capability or renewed capability for us. We showed up last year at events like Latinas in Tech and Afro Tech and now we actually have a way to connect and nurture these candidates and hopefully create relationships for the future if we can't already just turn them into candidates and hires. Today we have a small team as well within our TA programs. Team that's constantly thinking about how we alter our process and add rigor to ensure that DEI inequity is embedded throughout. And something we look at very closely, quarter over quarter is our screen pass through rate. With an analysis called chi square, it's essentially used to determine if there is a statistically significant difference between the observed and expected frequencies in categorical data. So example of this is for the total women applicants that we're seeing in any given quarter. Are we seeing an expected and proportional number of them making it through our pipeline and process? And when things are off there, fortunately the numbers look generally pretty good. But when we see any differential, we're digging in to say what's happening and what we're trying to move to as a team. And we've certainly not figured this out yet, but is what we've been calling a screen in culture versus screen out. And I think when you and I had lunch last, we were talking a little bit about transferable skills and competencies. And I think like that's the holy grail, right? Is how can we be hiring for transferable skills and do more competency based hiring. So we haven't cracked that, but that's, we're making slow steps towards that. Is that's the goal.

Speaker C: You've uh, touched on several points I would love to dig into there. General. Firstly, I think this is the first episode, uh, where somebody's mentioned a statistical technique, but it's actually a really interesting framework. Right. You guys are looking at something that's often used to look at things like AI models and how we determine whether what we actually get is what we expected. But just to touch on that, how do you guys determine what's expected when you look at this? How do you determine in your screening rates etc. Other processes by which you say this is what we think should happen and then you review whether it happened. How does that work?

Speaker D: So our uh, people data team is so good with this, but we look at a qualified applicant pool. So that sort of is the baseline that we're using by which to compare. So you know, more generally speaking, the research and data out there that shows the total available viable applicant pool for a certain, for software engineers, let's say. So we're using that as the baseline and people much smarter than me are doing the analysis on this.

Speaker C: But in essence what you're saying is, you guys look at if we were to have an equitable process, given the size of the market and the diversity of the market, this is what we should be seeing in terms of applications and conversions. And that's actually something that I think very few firms do, even though the data is actually quite available to look at that kind of stuff. The other part of this which you mentioned, the screening culture and also the approach to skills, I, as you know, love both of those mentalities and I think this element of hiring for potential and skills over degrees and all of these initiatives that allow you to identify people's capabilities are huge drivers of going to use your example above the target, you can actually screen in and attract people that traditionally wouldn't apply. Because one of the challenges for firms hiring diverse tech talent, for example, is, is fewer female, uh, applicants apply when it's a role description with degree requirements and experience requirements than men who have the same experience as those women. Sometimes because men are more likely to have the confidence to apply without having all the experience and sometimes because of further biases that happen in terms of how people get degrees. But when you guys look at the mechanisms to course correct when you're seeing we're not having the conversion we want or the screen and culture is working, uh, as you expected how do you try to quantify success and what are examples of why you've course corrected?

Speaker D: So we have certain, um, kind of the measures and targets again based on the qualified applicant pool. And so we kind of get a red, yellow, green on how we're doing against all of the dimensions that we're looking at. And to your point, some of the things that we're doing in course correcting is tweaking our job advertisements and descriptions. And you know, I'll admit we're not, we're not 100% there yet. But um, in the leadership practice we're always, you'll notice our job descriptions are competency based. So there might be one line about like the industry experience and skills you need, but then there's four or five bullets that are led with competencies. So it's less about the hard skills and more about the competencies. And that's something we hope to kind of cascade and roll out, um, at all levels. Uh, for Sonos, we also have basic and preferred qualifications and our, our team is pretty well trained on keeping those basic qualifications, you know, minimum most viable, if you will. So it shouldn't be, you know, number of years of experience necessarily, it shouldn't be a college degree, but it might be something like, you know, experience the next industry and ability to relocate.

Speaker C: It's fantastic to see how much progress you guys are making in this competency and skills over degrees and experience shift that I think so many companies are aspiring to. And when you talked about your larger goal to move to a screen in culture, part of this, uh, sounds like it's about creating transferability of hiring the kinds of folks that can then have more agility once they join Sonos. How do you look at that post hire experience in terms of whether you have hired folks who are going to be able to upskill or reskill or adjust once they are within the organization.

Speaker D: That's a great question and I'll be honest, not an area we have cracked completely. But we have a, uh, great new head of our talent team who has started to look at this as we think about frameworks for succession planning and how to assess our internal talent. And we're about to embark on, I'm actually projecting, managing. We're going to refresh our values and behaviors so we're going to be able to, you know, in a number of months, hopefully tie our both recruiting assessment process but also the performance process to these reshaped values.

Speaker C: That's fantastic. Well, it's impressive how much progress you guys have made in Just the last year or two. I know that some of the initiatives that you started, including the things you guys have been doing with Bimmery on vents and nurture, have come a long way in a short time. When you think about what you have been able to bring to the role, are there things that have enabled you, especially in your dual role of managing these programs, to be better at your job? Are there things that you personally, in your career or in your personal experience, have given you those types of skills or competencies that you think have made you better in your role?

Speaker D: It's a good, good question. I think just on like a personal note, I. I've worked since I was 14 years old in some capacity growing up in, who owned their own small business. So that really taught me quite a bit of discipline, if you will. Actually, fun fact. I was a competitive synchronized ice skater in my youth into my teenage years. So I traveled like the country and the world and ice skated on the, um, number one team here in the U.S. and it's again, I think like the collaboration, teamwork, discipline is sort of formed from a lot of those things. And now as a mom of two young, very energetic boys and balancing, you know, motherhood and work, I've had to really ruthlessly prioritize where my time and energy goes. And so as a recovering people pleaser, I've had to be just sort of more direct and intentional with how I operate and what I do. But I try to bring that to my team and our team and Sonos as well, and thinking about how can we bring our best selves to work every day and be really intentional about the time we're spending and the things that we're working on. So we're always trying to prioritize for our team and be really cognizant of, you know, the amount of searches our team is working on at any given time and how we're pacing things so that everybody can be most efficient, effective, and show up as their whole selves and best selves at work.

Speaker C: That is a very impressive Jen and I imagine having navigated the last five to 10 years while juggling your family and having to ruthlessly prioritize, you'll have gleaned up perspectives on things that you'd, uh, do the same or differently, or advice you'd give somebody going through a similar journey. If you were to give advice to somebody embarking on a similar journey in the talent space and a path to a leadership role like yours, what would be advice you'd give?

Speaker D: One piece would Be just sort of be open and say yes to opportunities. I feel like I've been so fortunate, especially here at Sonos, to get new opportunities, projects, roles, and I've just sort of opened and embraced those and said yes. And it's been able to kind of round me out and also give me the ability to wear multiple hats in the role that I have, which I love. Something that we always try to instill with our team is kind uh, of test and learn and fail quickly. So, So I think 10 years ago Jen would have been really afraid of that. And you know, I have a high bar for myself, so that would have been a scary notion. But we actually branded, uh, our team the Talent Lab. So we're really trying to embody this idea of like, okay, let's test things, let's try things as a, uh, as a team and be nimble enough and accepting enough that if it doesn't work out, we can shift. I love that our team fully leans into that. It's great.

Speaker C: Talent Lab. I love that name. Uh, as a final question for you, Jen, especially with this Talent Lab mindset in mind, what are you most excited about in the year ahead? Are there experiments that you guys are running that you're testing and learning? Are there things that you are, uh, personally excited about that's, uh, currently in flight?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think a few things. I think this idea of moving us incrementally closer to more of the screen in culture that we just discussed and then I think this refresh of company values and kind of look at our culture will be really exciting and important as we think about, you know, where we are as a company today for Sonos, what our ambitions are, uh, where we want to be and what we need. What are the values that we need to embody to get there? And then of course that there's so much derivative work is once we establish that we can actually take that down to the competency based interviewing level, we can look at it through our performance management process. So that's over on the Talent Team. Not, not our team, but it's exciting. It will help us mature as a business and organization. It will help us hire, hopefully the, you know, the right people for the future and give us a shared language or renewed language and framework by how we operate day to day.

Speaker C: Well, Jen, thank you so much for, for the incredible insights and uh, the candid conversation.

Speaker B: The Talent Blueprint is brought to you by bimari, the talent lifecycle management platform that helps organizations attract, retain, redeploy and develop the skills they need. Learn more@bimari.com.