Episode Overview: In this insightful episode, we delve into the challenges and strategies for enhancing the internal perception of Talent Acquisition (TA) within organizations. Our guest, Kerry Karle, brings a wealth of experience and practical advice on how to elevate the role and influence of TA teams.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Understanding the Current Perception: Discussion on common misconceptions about TA within companies and how they affect team dynamics.
2. Strategies for Improvement: Kerry shares effective strategies for TA teams to improve their internal image and credibility.
3. Building Stronger Relationships: Insights on fostering better collaboration and communication between TA and other departments.
4. Measuring Success: How to set and measure key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect the value addition of TA.
5. Case Studies and Examples: Kerry provides real-world examples where TA transformation has significantly impacted organizational success.

Guest Speaker Information:

• Kerry Karle: A seasoned expert in Talent Acquisition, Kerry brings years of experience in transforming TA functions. She is known for her strategic approach and has a track record of driving positive change within various organizations.

Closing Notes: Remember, this show is independent and does not accept sponsors. We aim to bring unfiltered and unbiased insights into the world of talent acquisition and HR.

Hosted weekly by Chris Hoyt, President of CareerXroads, this podcast is your go-to resource for all things talent acquisition. Stay tuned for more enlightening discussions in upcoming episodes.

Transcript:

Chris Hoyt
Did you know I have to I have to say, Kerry, we’re live by the way. I didn’t ask you if you’d like the music. Can you hear the music in the background? The Christmas music?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 0:11
No, I can’t hear it.

Chris Hoyt 0:12
Oh, let me here, wait.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 0:16
Oh yeah, no, I can hear it.

Chris Hoyt 0:18
It’s quite terrible, isn’t it?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 0:23
Well, it’s not like Mariah Carey or anything.

Chris Hoyt 0:27
You know, I posted this the other day on Facebook, and I’m very rarely on Facebook. If there’s one, and I’m gonna get bah humbug like crazy for this, but if there’s one artist that I don’t need to hear any more of it. I gotta say, it’s got to be Mariah Carey.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 0:41
Mariah Carey?

Chris Hoyt 0:43
I’m just not I’m not a Mariah fan.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 0:46
Well, I heard that there’s a new one that Blake and shoot, what’s his wife’s name now?

Chris Hoyt 0:55
Oh uh, ba-na-nas. And the woman that I, the only reason I could spell bananas now.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 1:05
They came out with a new Christmas song. That apparently is very catchy. I heard it on the radio a couple days ago driving to work.

Chris Hoyt 1:12
All right. Well, I’m gonna get right on that. Do you have do you have Christmas plans?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 1:17
I do actually, which is very non traditional. We are going to Egypt. So we leave a week from yesterday. So next Monday. Wow. Yeah, we’ll be there. Not intentional to be like a Christmas trip. But it’s really my son plays competitive sports and travels for lacrosse and soccer all the time. And all of our vacation time is very limited to either a couple of weeks over the holidays at the end of the year or July. So we picked we picked Christmas really to go for a trip to Egypt. It’s a bucket list.

Chris Hoyt 2:03
Oh my gosh. Well, I so I’ve been to Egypt. I absolutely loved it. And I was surprised how close a Pizza Hut is to the pyramids. That or maybe it was a Domino’s. I can’t remember there’s a pizza joint. It was I have so if you’ve never been I take it.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 2:20
No, never been.

Chris Hoyt 2:21
So I’m gonna shatter this for you right now. So I imagined going to visit the pyramids. We were going to get an a jeep. It was going to be this Indiana Jones. You know adventure out into the dunes. No it’s it’s so close to the city. And I had you know, I don’t know why in my mind. It was this trek. But no.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 2:41
Yeah. So I’m gonna liken it to have you ever been to Red Rocks here and to a concert. Okay, yeah. So So in Denver, right. But you sit in like the the amphitheater and the stadium at but you see downtown, right. So you’re in the mountains like it’s this amphitheater, which is, you know, an amazing concert venue like the acoustic. Yeah. And then you see, kind of like the planes and then the Denver City and high rises. So I’m thinking it’s kind of like that right here either in Cairo in the city, I’m going to choose to take the silver lining of it. And you see, like these amazing pyramids off in the distance or vice versa, right?

Chris Hoyt 3:23
You’re 100% right, and it is magnificent. It was just shockingly close. And I missed my, my adventure into the, you know, out into the desert to go visit it, but it did. And it’s it

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 3:33
Your camel ride for like a mile in. And then

Chris Hoyt 3:37
You’ll see the Sphinx and you’ll see like, all the stuff. I hope you go to the museum. That’s a wonderful, I assume you have everything planned out. Do you have a tour guide or any of that?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 3:46
Yeah, yeah. And then we’re taking a boat trip down the Nile and then we’ll go a little bit further out. So we are doing some like intra country flights as well. So we’ll get away from like the city.

Chris Hoyt 3:59
Oh, you’re gonna love it. Well, I hope you have a great time. Well, are you ready to get started? Let’s Okay, here comes to the bumper.

CXR Announcer 4:08
Welcome to the CXR channel. Our premier podcast for talent acquisition and Talent Management. listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting engaging and retaining the best talent. We’re glad you’re here

Chris Hoyt 4:38
All right, are we going? Are we going? It’s a little buggy today. There we go. We’re back on okay. So thanks for joining us. I am Chris Hoyt, otherwise known as Marky Mark with no Funky Bunch. Going to be talking to you today in the next 20 minutes. I’m your host as you are part of the recruiting community podcast. I’m excited we do this almost weekly is pretty much live where we bring in a practitioner, a leader from the talent acquisition space to talk about stuff that’s keeping them up at night. Wisdom, you know, insights that they’d like to share. We do that here. We do it in the format of just a 20 minute conversation. So we may ‘Hey Squirrel’ off in another direction. But that’s okay. That’s what you’re here for. If you are streaming with us, if you’re watching us live right now, you can and you’re on LinkedIn, there’s a little chat window there. If you want to ask any questions, you want to chime in questions for a guest questions for us in general, or just say, ‘Hello’, go ahead and you can do that there. Let us know this thing’s working. If you’re on the YouTube or the Facebook, I think we see those messages come through on Facebook, you can drop a ‘Hi’ in there, we’ll let you know if we see it. But otherwise, on both channels, excuse me in LinkedIn, and Facebook, we go ahead and make sure that we answer any questions that may come in even after the fact. So if you’re watching this after it’s been recorded, and of course, you can see all current, and future and past episodes at cxr.org/podcast. We’ll come back and we’ll make sure we get any of those questions answered. As a reminder, this is an ad free labor of love for us. So we do this because we enjoy it. This is not a revenue stream for us. So you’re not gonna get 10 minutes of conversation and 20 minutes of ads that you got to jump through. So this is just a quick off the cuff conversation we’re going to have. The thing I’m going to remind you about, however, that we are excited to share with you is that we have launched a new updated CXR directory. We’ve got about 350 vendors and solution providers that sit inside of that platform. We’ve got about 6000 ratings and reviews that have been collected from our members. And our membership has designed a massive upgrade for this. If you saw it in the last couple of months, well then you haven’t seen it yet. So we’re excited to send you there. It’s just the CXR dot works slash directory. So that makes that super easy. All right, so with all of that I have a fantastic guest today, no stranger to pop in and out of that window. There she is. Kerry, welcome.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 6:52
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Chris Hoyt 6:53
I think we have a little delay here today. We have some tech, tech challenges, but we’ll work through them. Kerry, I’ve known you. I’ve known you for quite some time. You’ve got you’ve got a history even as a CXR member, you’ve been at Wells Fargo, private your at Dish Network, obviously now, you were at Wells Fargo, you were at HP. And I think you were even at Wilson H C. G Yeah. RPO. So you’ve been in the space a little while.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 7:18
I have been 30 years. It’s hard to believe.

Chris Hoyt 7:21
Yeah, well, wow. So let’s do it started when you were 10. Something? Yeah. So Kerry for those who have not had the pleasure of meeting you yet. Why don’t you give us kind of an escalator pitch on who is Kerry Karle and why should we be listening to what she has to say today?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 7:40
Yeah. Kerry Karle, my gosh. I mean, I’ve been in the industry for about 30 years. That interesting and fun thing, I think is that I’ve seen all sides of the coin of town opposition HR. So I started as a recruiter practitioner for an agency than I really that was during the.com boom and then bust really in Silicon Valley. But I got really interested in technology and automation. So worked for a few recruitment technology firms as a consultant implementing the tech, the recruitment technology, globally did some international assignments through old company called Resumix. And then really went into multi process HR outsourcing and Recruitment Process Outsourcing with Exalt and Hewitt Associates back in the day, which is now Aon, and then that moved me into again, more pureplay RPO with a Wilson HCG, I was a recruitment and Talent Management Consultant for an HR management consulting firm. And then really decided that I wanted to go in house because I really enjoyed being able to see things through fruition. And when you’re working as a service provider on the outside, you’re really advising and consulting, but don’t really have a chance to see the fruits of your labor or go back and fix things that you made a mistake on and then make it better. And that’s when I ended up going in house with HP and then Wells Fargo and then Dish ultimately now, here at Dish, you know, I lead all things talent acquistion, soup to nuts from executive level all the way down to like frontline hiring, volume hiring, and then our University Relations campus program. But it also includes immigration, internal mobility is any program that we implemented this year to centralize all of our internal mobility to create the kind of value add programs for employees to be taken as well. And then, you know, we continue to go through a transformation here. For me, the interesting thing with Dish is kind of a a well known secret, I guess is that we’re moving into the wireless space to become the fourth wireless carrier. So Boost Mobile, which is prepaid and Boost Infinite, which is postpaid competing with you know, AT&T, Verizon, T Mobile etc. And so it’s just expanding into new areas, we’ve had to completely transform our recruitment organization as we transform the business or the company overall.

Chris Hoyt 10:16
Let’s well, that’s a big shift. That’s a big announcement for those who didn’t know, but I’m still I’m still kind of shaking off the flashbacks of like Resumix, I heard Resumix, and I was just like, I just remember like, way, way long ago in the day.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 10:29
Yeah, they were like, you know, in their heyday, they were the it company around, you know, applicant tracking systems. And oh, yeah, at first.

Chris Hoyt 10:29
Oh, my gosh, I can’t, I can’t. That’s all. Now you do a whole, another show on that. So we look, we got about 15-20 minutes. And I think that we kind of presented this was that, you know, we know that talent acquisition is is super important to the organization. We’re a little bias for sure. Right? We know. But not all organizations necessarily feel that way. And I think you’ve got some inputs, Kerry, with regards to sort of improving that internal perception of TA with business leaders. Do you want to, I do have a couple of questions. I want to ask you. In a couple of examples maybe and we haven’t prepped for this, obviously. But do you have a sort of a stance on the importance that the TA sort of plays within the broader picture of the business? You want to share that before we sort of dive in, dive in with any questions?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 11:25
Yeah, well, you know, I think, from the perspective of having been a Talent Acquisition Consultant, so really, thinking of it from the outside in of trying to sell the value of talent acquisition to stakeholders, customers to buy or purchase my services, essentially, that I was selling, like at Hewitt Associates, I certainly saw the value, and had the opportunity to see how, you know, organizations across hundreds of companies were managing Talent acquisition overall. And then we’ve been in house and really a lot of, I think I learned through mistake and trial and tribulation, making errors that talent acquisition in nature, in general tends to think that they’re doing a great job if they just deliver and execute against their metrics, or, you know, hire the people that they need to. But if they’re not singing their own praises and shaping the story, or a message themselves, that often gets told for us, and it’s never told in the light, or in the manner that we feel we’re delivering against. And so that’s where, you know, I think, driving or managing the internal perception and owning our own story and message internally, which by the way, is part of what you see this? Well. These are our objectives and key results for talent acquisition internal at Dish, but every year, we go through a process of defining our key objectives. And one of my very top I don’t even know if you can see it, but it’s story. So telling our own story internally and externally in order to improve our brand, and our ability to recruit, both internally and externally. Because it requires like, extreme partnership internally and trust with your stakeholders to be able to do the right thing, but also help attract talent externally.

Chris Hoyt 13:20
So I love that because what I think I hear you saying curious a little bit about the transition from and it’s that aspirational goal of advisor and partner, right, but getting away from just being the order takers, and really having an impact on the business. So getting past maybe just the standardized metrics of, of what I imagine is time to fill, cost per hire, you know, the these sort of things that the good TA leaders do struggle with and to excel at delivering on. But what I hear you saying I think is there’s there’s a lot more to that to add value to the organization.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 13:52
Yeah, absolutely. So I’d say, you know, again, I tend to when it comes to an organization, and I would say every organization that I work for, has had challenges around internal projections of the value that the recruitment or talent acquisition function delivers. And quite frankly, it’s not a one and done. From a project or initiative perspective. It’s requires ongoing care and maintenance and kind of rethinking what the value is that the business needs from you at the time or in the moment. So like, what I do typically is go in, and I do it also on an annual basis, but I’ll think of it in terms of meeting with my stakeholders and leaders at all different levels, on one on ones doing focus groups, or having my team do focus groups to also learn what is actually what what does the business or the business leaders at all different levels think of us from a recruiting perspective. What is their perception? And usually, like you said, it’s, we’re reactive, not proactive. We’re not delivering candidates fast enough. It’s not a diverse slate of candidates. It’s not a it’s not a, you know, all the x, y and z’s of what we’re not doing for them really kind of thing. And it’s, it’s typical, you usually hear the same things. And so that’s where it’s again taking that. And sometimes it’s, like you said, having to reshape the role of the recruitment function. But sometimes it’s also just reshaping the message and telling it a different way in which the business understands. So, you know, TA and HR can fall victim to using our own internal speak, even by saying TA, right? Like, what’s TA? If you’re not living and breathing it, what is it to the business. And so using business speak of what matters, like even from the perspective of, you know, I had a learning at Wells Fargo, I didn’t want to measure and tell or communicate to the business, time to start, because I didn’t necessarily always have control of the time after offer accept to when someone starts. But that’s not what the business cared about, right. And they don’t care about the time that the rack is opened, they care about the time that they asked for it. So really trying to think about, you know, there’s what you measure your team against, but there’s what you report against to be able to tell a story of what the business needs to understand. And then breaking that apart into things like, you know, time and process within that, and then highlighting where there are opportunities and ownership of where the business can really own and help support the process.

Chris Hoyt 16:26
Well, I think it’s a really good call to you’ve got Kerry, you’re talking about, you know, not just business perception, but like, what what impacts the business right from from from the work that you do? How does it impact the business? And candidly, I think a lot of times the business, or I know, a lot of times the business has very different goals. They’re working towards very different things than we are as as TA leaders. So I guess, in your experience, whether at Dish Network directly or maybe at some of the other organizations where you’ve just had a great, great breadth of experience, how would you recommend people sort of align TA objectives with broader business goals? So because because I think that that inherently sort of demonstrates the value of TA so you might have a skeptical stakeholder who says, I don’t have time for you TA I’m busy working on this or that? I mean, is there an approach that you take or a philosophy you have to sort of align TA with those broader goals?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 17:41
Yeah

Chris Hoyt 16:27
(disconnected, smartphone connected). The smartphone is now connected.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 16:32
Perfect. I’m glad someone else has joined with us Siri. So it’s a couple of things. And I think of it kind of as a cascading approach. So you know, every year, we think about what does our business need? We’re in that cycle. Right now. We’re actually just finishing that for talent acquistion, but we think about it from the outside in, what does the business need? Overall, like, what are their objectives and goals for the year? And then we think about how does talent acquisition or how can we support that? So I’m gonna give a really specific example, the last couple of weeks, we’ve been planning for our OKR subjects and the Q results for the time of the year.

Chris Hoyt 18:12
Everybody, nobody likes it.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 18:13
Yeah, we’ve taken a very different approach. So one of them is instead of going through, like, what’s behind me, right, it’s, we call it Seek, Story, Experience, Agility and quality. We’re taking it actually from the perspective of the business, like, enable retail wireless to grow and build subscribers, that’s one of them. Another one is, you know, we need to save costs and be more efficient. So what is that right? And then we translate, then what can talent acquisition do to support that and drive our like he initiatives and objectives overall, so that we’re driving and aligning what we do to what the business cares about. And then we set up monthly and quarterly business reviews. So with each business leader, so the EVP level, their direct reports, separate from like monthly business reviews, which would be at different levels. So what we’ve done is we’ve looked at all of the different stakeholders within the business line and aligned individuals within a recruiting function with the appropriate level. So recruiters are working with hiring managers right at this level, on you know, they’re probably going to like weekly meetings or whatever it might be, then there’s the director level, like our managers are working with a director level and their cadence or sequence and the types of conversations then there’s the VP SVP level and then the EVP level. So we have different levels of communications that are defined for different levels of our recruitment function and tier that stack up with the business so that we have a good communication plan across the board for the year. And then at that, so the monthly business review would be another level of detail that they go to And then quarterly business reviews, but at the quarterly business review, and that’s what we’re planning for those now in January coming in for the new year where we do end of year reflection of how we did quarter on quarter and how that compares to the previous years, and then look at our new objectives or strategies that align to their business needs. So it’s using their speak, and then what is our strategy or plan to achieve those results. And so that’s where like changing the conversation to be able to have a business conversation and derive additional value and report out the things that are important to us to tell our story. But how that translates to their business.

Chris Hoyt 20:36
I think the pace of communication at the varying levels and ultimately, ultimately up to the the quarterly that the QBR I think is quite brilliant. Is there, is there flexibility? Because it’s not necessarily new practice. But but but it is certainly effective when you’ve got the right stakeholders involved. So is there is there sort of a Kaizen approach to those QBRs. I mean, like you’re in a very volatile is probably not the right word like in telecom, like it’s just, it’s, it’s always on, I mean, I was at AT and T for, you know, decade. I mean, it’s, it’s just always on, it’s always moving, it’s always go, go, go, go go. Is there that same flexibility that the TA team or the TA structure is afforded when working with the business partners that way?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 21:22
Yeah, absolutely. So like, as an example, I mean, we, stepping back, right? When I came on board, we had very discreet teams supporting each business, nobody was working on for the same process and all of that stuff, right. And so we’ve spent the last couple of years just to try and drive things in a foundational level. But it’s been important for us to be able to have them fungible resources that they can flex and support different business needs, depending on what the need or volume. So like, as an example, right now, I mean, cash for us from a business perspective, cash is king, and our revenue generating part of the business really needs the greatest level of support. And that’s, and so we’ve shifted a number of resources to be able to support that, and then we report against that. And so it might be like, to your point, we’re sharing that perspective, with the business leaders, do they understand that we can shift and be flexible to support their varying needs? Overall? I don’t know if that’s answering your question. But it’s kind of operating at all different levels.

Chris Hoyt 22:27
Yes, yeah, you have that flexibility, you know, you’re not suddenly super staffing suddenly super downsizing suddenly. So you know, it’s not, it’s not a back and forth ratio, you’re literally shifting those resources. And you’re shifting your alignments a little bit based on the needs of the business, which I think is great from a flexibility standpoint.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 22:42
And I mean, along this line, as well, maybe this is a squirrel, I don’t know. But the other thing that we do is, you know, we’ve been tracking and trying to predict and forecast hiring needs on an annual basis. And then we re-forecast or reset it each quarter as well. And, you know, our business, depending on the business line is not great about being able to understand how to forecast their workforce plan or their hiring needs or demands. And so we just use, you know, it’s pretty rudimentary, but we do the same thing we leverage, you know, what our hiring trends have been, anything where we think that the business is going to be growing or reducing for the upcoming year, we’d look at attrition rates and assume some percentage of backfills and then internal mobility, which is going to open up additional roles. And so, you know, then then we play that to the business and say, Does this look right?, Right, rather than saying, you know, tell me what your forecast has been a year, you know, they, they can’t come up with that themselves. But if we come from the bottom up, and share with them what their trends have been, then they they’re able to react to it, and then help work through a better forecast as well.

Chris Hoyt 23:50
To get a broader they get a broader picture of that, too. It’s no longer you know, as siloed it’s funny, because so we have a chat, leads me to my next question. So I think I hope I’m gonna say it right, Gina Molina’s and I’ll put it up on the screen, but it’s going to be super big if you’re watching. She says in her last position as an executive recruiter for large hospital system teams only thought of as recruiting nurses and technicians. I was the first executive recruiter, and it was really hard to get executive buy in. So Kerry, let me ask you, what challenges have you have you faced not necessarily at Dish, but if it’s DIsh, great, improving that internal perception, getting those stakeholders involved? And then maybe, maybe how did you address that challenge?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 24:36
Yeah, I mean, again, it’s all about communication, quite frankly, and delivering against expectations consistently and consistently communicating that. So I mean, I’d even say from an executive recruiting perspective, so when I came on board, we had had a number of failed attempts at being able to support that internally. And so we were outsourcing or, you know, to retain search firms and spending an exorbitant amounts of money. And we consider executive being director level and above. And, you know, retained search firms didn’t want to take director level positions because they weren’t at the right level where their Rolodex is or the right, you know, commission compensation. Exactly.

Chris Hoyt 25:18
It’s the money.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 25:20
Exactly. And so, you know, we really spent money to hire like a really, you know, dedicated Executive Recruiter and have the right structure. And then, honestly, like, we were in stealth mode, and then started to just get some good wins, and then started to set expectations and took like a, you know, a playbook from retained search firms and think about in terms of retained search firms, they set up weekly meetings with executives and go through and look at, you know, hey, here are the top, you know, 10 candidates that or profiles that I sourced or that are in the market, like bringing, you know, market data to it like with, I don’t know, talent, insights, or whatever it is right, to start the dialogue. And it was difficult, right, I like I insisted, and put on weekly or bi weekly, and we still have it today, with every single executive and my executive recruiter, and myself. We’re, we’re reviewing and talking about openings, candidates and pipeline status. And having like, we’re always bringing profiles to the table to have that dialogue for comparison, but it’s, it’s really about the communication, and preparation. Otherwise, honestly, like if, if recruiting goes a week or two, without some sort of communication with some leader, that leader is going to create their own story, right? Recruiting isn’t supporting me, they’re doing nothing, whatever it is, right. Like, in the absence of information, someone creates a story. So it’s all about staying on top of the storytelling and us telling our story. So it’s a lot of meetings really, like it’s a lot of, but we’ve, you know, executives don’t look at emails, they don’t look at reports. I know that I don’t. But, I mean, if an email is longer than like three sentences, they’re not going to look at it. So we’ve got to meet our leaders where they are, and, and put ourselves like, create the, the seat at the table, if you will, and just be consistent about it, they can cancel it right. But you’ve also have to get in with their executive assistants. And that’s been a big

Chris Hoyt 27:39
Pro tip right there.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 27:42
Yeah, our Executive Recruiting Team, you know, we’ve got an Executive Coordinator, and then to, like Sourcers, or Pipeline Developers, and, you know, they, they make friends, with Executive Recruiter or the Executive Assistants in order to make it top of mind. And they’re using them as a strategic partner for communication with the Executive as well. So, you know, we always send like, you know, reports, or updates or information to the Executive Assistant, to get their feedback, like, you know, treat them with respect as a valued team member with the executive to say, hey, you know, how do you think? I don’t know, Mike’s gonna absorb this information?

Chris Hoyt 28:24
Yeah. Kerry, are you implying that the C suite doesn’t log in to your ATS and check the status and check the step and like, directly? That’s crazy. No. So I hear you concise communication, which is, I mean, that’s the solution to so many, so many challenges we’ve got in almost any space, but concise communication is certainly key. But let’s talk really quickly before we have to wrap up. Let’s talk about technology and trends, helping support the value of talent organization, do you see any? And I’m certainly not asking for an endorsement of any of them. And you don’t have to name one if you don’t want to name one. But are you seeing any type of technology or any trend in that tech space that you think will lend itself to as that as that partner? Right as that value partner?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 29:24
As the value partner?

Chris Hoyt 29:26
Yeah, cuz I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I’ll go. For the double click, am I going to right click, let’s right click, let’s come back out of that just a little bit. So we were talking about technology trends is everybody wants to talk about AI? Right. Everybody wants to talk about you know, new systems, and we’re all waiting on New Year new budget. We’re excited about it and an overarching message that came out of our leadership meeting in Napa right we had 80 TA leaders in the room with us that day. And one of the messages that came out very clearly was we’re reevaluating our tech stack. We’re re evaluating our tech partners. We’re simplifying, right we’ve got a lot of tech we don’t use we’ve got you know, tools that sit dormant, we’ve got tools that we don’t take advantage of, we’ve got tools we don’t know how to use, because they’re just so newfangled and fancy. So as your team is sort of looking at this, or as you are seeing stuff in the industry, I guess my question is, are you seeing any technology or I’ll even say AI, you know, AI generated or language, language models that could help with that mission of, of raising awareness of the value TA has for the organization?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 30:31
Yeah, so, again, I’m gonna go back, right, like, being in the space for 30 years and starting, you know, my second job out of college was with a technology company. I mean, the reality is, there’s no silver spoon, right, and there’s, there’s no silver bullet, not silver spoon. I am the worst at analogies. But there’s no silver bullet, and any technology firm is what you make of it. So you could have a great one, you have a great partnership, and you really derive significant value that requires a significant amount of your time and investment as well. They don’t just go off and, you know, do wonders on your behalf. And, you know, but and I think that that’s where people fall down and ended up taking on more disparate or discrete technologies, because they’re not looking at what they have, and really trying to make the most of it or even thinking about where is that partner technology company going in the future, because they’re all trying to build a business as well. And so, you know, by the time you acquire a new one, they might be deploying the functionality that you’re trying to acquire. So that’s just like, my general thought or perspective is, overall, but I do think that there are some, I mean, you know, conversational AI, for us is the next thing that we’re deploying or implementing, I know a lot of organizations have already done it. But that will be, quite frankly, as we can see it a game changer for us to be able to deliver the higher touch that’s needed for candidates in an environment where our candidates, our customers, we’re a consumer based company, and that’s part of what we are pitching as recruiters opportunity to be able to support the business. So we focus on how can we gain subscribers and subscribers of Dish TV, right and subscribers of Sling for streaming, gain subscribers for Boost Infinite or Boost Mobile, like all of these, like, that’s how we will continue to grow as an organization, and what can recruiting do and in any organization can think about this right? To be able to support that. So we’re looking at things like, you know, leveraging conversational AI, to be able to not just like keep candidates warm, but give them an amazing experience, like, Are there discounts that we can automatically deploy to our entire candidate population? Right, we, we have a million to 1.5 million applicants a year. So how can we turn those into proponents are advocates of our company and our products as well. And so those are some things that, you know, are really important to us, not just from a recruiting perspective, and delighting our candidates who are our customers, but also giving them something of value through the process.

Chris Hoyt 33:24
Yeah, I love it. And it’s always kind of an interesting juxtaposition of, of strategy, right? So if you’re on the consumer side, and TA wants to get up in your social, and TA wants to be part of the messaging that goes out, like the consumer side, a lot of organizations certainly is so customer facing as a Dish, don’t want anything to do with us on the TA side, because you’re taking away from our one mission. And that is to get this click to get this sale, distracting for career not so great. But if you flip that and you go to the TA side, we will take all the coupon codes, and all all the marketing stuff we can get give it all to us, because we will use that to continue to entice the candidates to let them know that we know that they are customers, we acknowledge that they are, you know that they are people who we may be working side by side with, and we want to delight them as well. I love that.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 34:13
Yeah, and that’s a really good example, you know, appropriate for this topic, which is how can we provide additional services or value add the business and help bring that to our business leaders. And quite frankly, even in the you know, the last month we’ve been doing this, and they hadn’t thought of it, and they’re so excited, like, yay, you know, another love that value points that, you know, talent acquisition can provide for us and then they’re going to think about it differently. And then hopefully, then we’re a part of aligning our marketing, our communications externally, and then they start to think of us as being part of their strategy to go to market.

Chris Hoyt 34:14
Yeah. 100 100% Look, so I asked this question of everybody Kerry when they come on the show. So as we wrap it up, if you were going to write up book on this on this subject, right, increasing that partnership that value add to the business. If you were going to write a book, what would the title of that book be?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 35:13
Oh my gosh. What have you done for me lately?

Chris Hoyt 35:20
I’ll take it, it’s a great book title.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 35:23
We’re constantly trying to tell them what we’re doing for them.

Chris Hoyt 35:29
100% I think that’s a great book title. So present company excluded. This is a fun question. Who gets the first signed copy?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 35:37
Oh, Gerry, of course.

Chris Hoyt 35:38
Oh, that’s no fair, just because Gerry

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 35:40
I thought you’re co-writing it with me.

Chris Hoyt 35:47
I’ll write, the forward or the backward or the subject. Alright, so if it’s, if not Gerry’s, is there anybody else in your life, you give that book to?

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 35:54
Oh, my gosh. Um, yeah, you know, I probably give it to a couple of like, the great leaders that I’ve worked with, like, Dave Scott, my, our CHRO previously or Cheatham Genser. She was my CHRO at Wells Fargo, a phenomenal leader. couple, a couple of the great leaders that have have really, like made an impression on my career. And you know who I am as a leader.

Chris Hoyt 36:27
I love that, I love that, well Kerry look, I know you’re superduper busy. I really appreciate you cutting time out for us and the listeners. It’s Kerry Karle. And you can I had the LinkedIn reference up there. She’s not difficult to find. You’ll find her online. Kerry. Thank you so much for your time today. So much gratitude. Really appreciate it.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 36:44
Likewise, Thanks, Chris.

Chris Hoyt 36:45
All right. CXR dot work slash podcast, listen, subscribe, do all the things that the buttons tell you to do. And we’ll see you guys next week. Take care everybody, have a fantastic holiday. Enjoy Egypt.

Kerry Karle, Dish Network 36:55
Thank you.

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