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Chris Hoyt 0:00
Yes we hit record before we open the bottle we’re net we’re now recording You’re welcome open bottle
Gerry Crispin 0:05
Recording is going to trigger that then yeah.
Announcer 0:09
Welcome to CareerXroads Uncorked a series of member chats inspired by good drinks and current talent acquisition trends your hosts Chris Hoyt and Gerry Crispin, break down today’s recruiting headlines while reviewing a select beverage of choice with industry leaders and influencers. Join us for a drink and conversation.
Chris Hoyt 0:33
Alright so you got Chris Hoyt and Gerry Crispin from CXR and on the line and we have with us for today’s Uncorked Rob Daugherty. Rob, how are you?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 0:41
I’m doing awesome, man. It’s a living the life in North Carolina these days with with Lowe’s.
Chris Hoyt 0:49
Yeah and how long have you been at Lowe’s?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 0:50
I started I think the last day of January. So January 31, was my first day. So it’s been a heck of an introduction. When you look at, you know, the the book, the first 90 days, mind’s been nothing like that. So throw in. See on on about week four, there was a ski accident which led to shoulder surgery right in the middle of COVID. With civil unrest, it’s been a hell of an 8 monghts
Chris Hoyt 1:17
Oh, my God, it’s been a year I’m ready for 2020 to go home.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 1:20
Yes,
Gerry Crispin 1:22
I am, too. But on the other hand, I will say for 2020 if I pick the one person who made the most appropriate move, or for a COVID that had not yet become evident, as opposed to the middle of COVID, I nominate you as being you know, right up there at the top to have left airlines that that you know, is not going to be working a hell of a lot in COVID for her for a place that’s going to, you know, have some interesting challenges to how they are going to operate totally differently, but are are certainly going to be important for how people handle COVID it’s, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect segue, if you will, to to survival. So I think that was fabulous.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 2:17
Yeah, I tell you what, by by the time I finished this bottle, I will have told you I had the insight that this was going to happen and the airlines are crashed and Lowe’s is an essential employer with an essential business would completely take off but I really haven’t started yet. I’ll I can’t tell that story. So it was it was definitely you know, those those the things and choices you make it at certain times you don’t quite know how they’re gonna get a turnout. And this is certainly been a been a blessing and certainly excited to to be here.
Chris Hoyt 2:49
Well, I have a. Oh, go ahead Gerry
Gerry Crispin 2:52
I was just gonna say how do you handle the back and forth with family because you still have a house in Dallas, right?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 2:58
Yes, I do about Yeah. So you know, still a very loyal customer now of American Airlines. So so back and forth. They come out here there’s a lot of FaceTime. You know, so we were figuring it out, you know, during the kind of COVID times I spent a lot of time back in Dallas and we’re still working remote for the most part here at Lowe’s so it’s you know, with the kids kind of doing remote school that’s been you know, that’s been a make it a little bit easier to where they can come out here and and vice versa.
Chris Hoyt 3:35
Well, it took me as you as you probably saw it took me five good minutes to get into this bottle. I was
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 3:41
wondering, I was wondering if you had a cork issue or what was happening over there?
Chris Hoyt 3:45
I had this bottle is probably the most difficult or I’m just that thirsty? The most difficult bottle for me to get into so our theme Rob what kind of wine did you pick?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 3:54
Yes, so you know our good friends over at E&J Gallo and Ryan Cook and the the ultimate of ultimate hosts to I don’t know how any CXR client could ever top the way the the way they host events. I said go pick your favorite red wine as long as it’s a it’s an E &J wine. So cheers to cheers to Ryan and his team.
Chris Hoyt 4:18
Cheers to the Gallo team. Cheers to happy hour on a Friday.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 4:22
Yes indeed.
Gerry Crispin 4:23
Yeah. Cheers. Yeah. And and so you have the martini reserve or whatever.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 4:29
Yes, I do. So I picked out the so as I missed part of the the wine tasting last week for a work call I missed when we opened this the Louis Martini Napa reserve. So I decided to share that with you guys tonight. So that’s what I opened.
Chris Hoyt 4:45
Well done.
Gerry Crispin 4:46
Unfortunately, we did not miss that last week. And so there was no no Martini that we could continue to open or drink.
Chris Hoyt 4:54
So there was the week so seven hours that call went on for Rob seven hours. Yeah with a 70 liters and six bottles of wine each.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 5:05
There was a lot. I slept in on Saturday. Let’s put it that way.
Gerry Crispin 5:11
I did too
Chris Hoyt 5:13
Gerry what’d you bring. What’s your bottle? What Why did you pick for tonight?
Gerry Crispin 5:18
Well, I picked an Orange Swift. bottle of Palermo. That’s a good it’s a it’s a good one. It’s it’s really well well designed. I can’t do all of the words I need to get that chart that cheat sheet that I write up so I could talk about the violence and and metal and other shit that that goes on with all of this but yes, that
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 5:47
Yep, I’ve got that. Somewhere over there.
Chris Hoyt 5:50
The wine lexicon Yes. The wine list that was
Gerry Crispin 5:54
I think that’s a great one you know and you Oh, yeah. So cinnamon I you know have note some cinnamon coming through in my you know, whatever.
Chris Hoyt 6:03
Yeah, I’m getting this tattooed on my back.
Gerry Crispin 6:10
How about you, Chris?
Chris Hoyt 6:11
I picked a machete. So machete. It is it is an interesting red, also an Orange Swift. Right. It’s also got a racy kind of label on it. Kind of edgy. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s a good it’s a good wine. I have a funny story, if you’d like to hear it, about how, how I was introduced to this wine.
Gerry Crispin 6:34
Okay,
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 6:35
Love to hear it.
Chris Hoyt 6:35
Well, I don’t know if it’s funny. But it’s fun story. So we did our social, we did a live social back in the day when you know, people could travel and would go to meet each other. It seems like a lifetime ago. But we did it. I was still living in Texas. We did it in California. And we did it in a restaurant where there was a minimum purchase required, right where you sign a minimum when they’re when they’re hosting an event. And we didn’t meet our minimum at the social that we put on. So I had to burn X amount or it was just throwing it away. Right X amount of money. Well, the nicest wine that they had, that at that particular restaurant was the machete and so I bought eight of them. And and then two of the TA leaders and one of them live well both live local two of the tea leaders, we went back to one of their houses, or one of their homes and and drank one of them. And then the night was over Well, I’ve had a stash at that leaders house for like, for like four months. And every time I was in the neighborhood, he would come on over and drink one of these bottles. So my introduction was that and then just to keep a cache of these wines sitting over in Silicon Valley was was nice. So that’s my, that’s my, machette
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 7:46
I like it
Gerry Crispin 7:46
I think thats great.
Chris Hoyt 7:48
But it’s a good one. I like it.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 7:51
I’ve never had a bad one in Swift. So but its great.
Gerry Crispin 7:54
This this one Palermo, the smell is just really great. Reminds me of tea. And the taste has an awful lot of berries in them. I don’t know, raspberries or whatever. But I’m liking it.
Chris Hoyt 8:12
So. So Rob, what’s keeping you up at night with with regards to recruiting?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 8:17
Man, I’ll tell you, there’s the amount of hiring that we do. Right. So coming from American Airlines, like I thought we did you know high volume. It’s like, yeah, we you know, we did 15,000 hires a year, it was pretty good. And then I got here. And in the first six months, we hired over 200,000 people. So it was, you know, for us, you know, we have a we don’t have strong tech stack. We don’t have very efficient processes, right, we’ve got to throw bodies at it, what I do have some really, really bright smart people that work for me and some incredibly talented and hardworking people that, that kind of grind through things. So typically, we have, you know, seasonality to our business. So you have kind of all this spring hiring and then it kind of levels back off and drops down. Well, for us spring has never ended. So worst, you know, we just had a situation about three weeks ago, we needed to go higher, we’re about 20,000 people down and, you know, kind of really started cranking the engines back and, you know, got that down to where about 4000 that we need to hire. So, you know, the good news is we can we can do things pretty quick. There’s a lot of a lot of things that we can do. I’m excited for what kind of we’ve got planned for for 2021 and beyond. But, you know, I’ve got an organization where, you know, if if we’re not staffed we, you know, we don’t sell stuff. So it absolutely is is impactful to the business and that was one of the things I was really looking for somewhere that you know, the staffing and recruiting mattered. So it’s been a you know, like I said, it’s one of those situations it feels like I’d been here, you know, two months, and it feels like I’ve been here for years. You know, and it’s, you know, seven and a half or whatever it’s been. So it’s been a, it’s been a fun ride so far.
Chris Hoyt 10:10
That’s Well, that’s, that’s a lot. I mean, I, you’ve got an awful lot of recruiters, too. You’ve got a big team.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 10:15
Yeah. So our team right now is a little over 500 people, which is, I mean, I’m sure there’s bigger out there. Right. But but it’s the biggest one that I’ve, you know, certainly that I’ve been a part of, you know, and again, it’s it’s not efficient, right, there’s a lot of things that we can do. And we’ve got to do a better job of arming our team with the right resources and tools, you know, so they they don’t have to, you know, they’re it’s a lot of, kind of macgyvering with, you know, bubble gum and duct tape.
Gerry Crispin 10:46
A lot of the conversation that’s been going on with I think a lot of teams these days as well, is really what what are the right tools? And what is the transparency that we should be pushing down to the, to the recruiter that we’re holding accountable for any number of different kinds of activities, like diversity of slate, for example? What is the data that they need in order to accomplish that and be held accountable? And can we push a button and see whether or not what they did is what we expected of them? Yep. You know, so that you can audit that, but also audit whether or not if they did do that? Did the hiring managers choose folks with the same with the same precision? Let’s say, yeah, and if not, you know, who’s, who’s working that particular problem? Is it TA? Or is it you and your counterparts in HR?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 11:41
Yeah, it’s, um, you know, that’s an interesting one. And it’s, you know, there, there’s, you know, one of the things I always find interesting, right, there’s so many companies that, you know, you talk about diversity of slate, which is absolutely critical. The problem is that I always have and coming up through recruiting and being a recruiter, it’s like, how do you hold me accountable for something that I can’t impact, right? So so many times you look at, you know, diverse slates, it’s always that that lagging indicator, so it’s like, okay, we get done with a month or a quarter or a search? Let’s go back and see how we did. It didn’t really seem fair to the recruiter. So you know, how do you how do you leverage technology or some tools to actually be very deliberate, right to, to expand your slate, right? And do it in an anonymous way? To ensure that I can go back to a hiring manager and say, Hey, I’m giving you a diverse slate, like your job now is to interview that slate, right? And hopefully, that leads to more that leads to more
Gerry Crispin 12:42
And make the choice. And then over time, you see what the, what see what the impact of that is?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 12:46
Yeah. And the other big one, the other big piece, that second part of it, right? Is that diversity of interview panel, because if you just go right to say unconscious bias, I’m gonna choose people that look like me, if I have a bunch of, you know, three of us white males, right, then, you know, you would think that more than likely, based off of statistics, they’re going to choose more white males. And also from the candidate side, right? So if I am a, you know, a person of color, or female, right, do I see myself and these people that I’m interviewing with? And usually it’s going to be a level up? And if I don’t, I’m asking the question, you know, am I really valued here? Do I have an opportunity for career growth? Or am I kind of hitting a glass ceiling? Because, you know, I don’t I don’t see myself and the people that I’m interviewing,
Gerry Crispin 13:33
So we know. So we know, Robert B, that there are solutions to these part of that are little pieces, you know, the the unconscious bias training, the ability to audit and have quicker response rates that show on the aggregate, we hired 10,000 of the last 10,000 people we hired, the percentage of the slate was 35%. And the percentage selected was 32.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 14:00
Yep.
Gerry Crispin 14:00
So that’s within, that’s within statistical, whatever. And we’re good with that. But can we Rach it a little bit better, you know, everybody wants to improve. But we don’t even do that. So we don’t usually have that kind of information in real time that allows us then to recalibrate, let alone giving that data to the to the recruiter.
Chris Hoyt 14:24
But hasn’t that always been the challenge? It’s not we talked about technology that’s going to enable us but historically, it’s always been the information that sort of hindered us like we you know, back before, all of this societal unrest bubbled. A lot of these challenges up to shine a spotlight on where we should have been shining a spotlight on for a very long time. Like, the challenge was you were tasking recruiters with creating a diverse slate but we’re hiding the self identification information from them or we’re not sharing you know, that level and it’s it’s an old argument but I feel A very valid argument today. And we just I mean, we just had a call this week with with several leaders and some of them, they’ve, their hands are still tied, they’re still not allowed to show the recruiters diversity information, and they’re trying to find technology to work around that to achieve that.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 15:16
Yeah. So that’s, um, you know, we implemented something at an American and have this on the roadmap, it blows, right, that’s, you know, it’s, it’s an in simplest terms, right? If you think of, you know, that that’s that spot between, I’m a recruiter, right, I’m, I’ve talked to people I’m reviewing, I’m ready to present my slate. So before they actually go to that hiring manager review, or whatever, whatever you call it, you know, they kind of go into what I call purgatory a little bit, right. And basically, the technology will send, it’ll, it’ll pull the EEO data, so you don’t see it, right, that basically pulls the EEO data bases off of how you’ve defined whatever your whatever however you define diverse slates, right? Could be a percentage to be a number. You know, we did one person of color one female can’t be can’t be the same, and basically kicks back and says, either yes or no, you meet the requirements. And if you don’t, right, we say, okay, you can expand like, don’t, don’t go take people out. At the end of the day, it’s still about hiring the best person, you know, but you can expand that slate, but we had a lot of arguments on our discussion early on. Right? Okay, if I’m, my typical slate is five people, right? If I take that up to eight or nine, right, to ensure that I now have a diverse slate of people, but you know, am I, you know, am I now making it hard for the hiring manager because they have more people, and you can’t have it both ways. So if you for us, it was like, we’re gonna make the stand, we’re gonna be very deliberate. And in our goal going in was we want at least 80% of our slates to be diverse. And once we started doing it, it was about 94%. Were diverse, and there were some just very, very unique ones that that that weren’t. And, you know, we saw that kind of throughout the funnel, because then what we we came back to the managers and said, Look, I’m giving you a diverse slate based off of how they’ve identified themselves. Now it’s up to you, like, I need you to interview this slate, right, we made sure we also use that same technology to drive, you know, as we put the interview teams listed, right, that pinged up against our HRS and said, okay, yes, you have a diverse interview panel, yes or no to. So we’re also to ensure that they had a diverse interview panel. So that really helped impact our diversity numbers. Just because we wanted to be very deliberate about, you know, kind of impacting that that slate received, encouraging them, hey, this, this is your slate that you need to interview. And we saw that consistency, as Gerry said, found that 35% on the front end and 32%, at the back end code we used to see was 35% of the you know, front end, you know, a 27% at interview and 20% hired right or at a higher you see this big, this big drop. And most of those times, right, you didn’t have you know, we weren’t measuring diverse slates or diverse interview panels either. So I think having those two components, right, are really, really key. So, you know, we were able to leverage that technology, and it was a huge success. So I’m looking forward to doing that at Lowe’s too. And you know, from the Lowe’s side, we’ve got a great story to tell, right? There’s what for African American CEOs in the fortune 500, which is amazing that there is only four African American CEOs in fact, the top 500 publicly held companies will have any female? I don’t know. Probably not that many. Not that many. So, you know, so So for us, right with with the leadership of Marvin Ellison, with Lowe’s being the largest, and then just looking at his track record, and just an absolutely amazing leader. You know, how do we how do we, you know, we need to be a destination for all diverse talents, right? So rather than going out and just attracting it, like how do we build ourselves as that destination to where people just think, Hey, I know I can be myself on a call last week I love I think it was DaVita that mentioned, you know, they’re kind of going down this from DNI to DNB, this diversity and belonging, and, you know, how do you how can you be your authentic self, which, you know, I love that because I think she thinks she said that DNI inclusion gets you a invite to the party, but the belonging allows you to dance
Chris Hoyt 19:23
It was towards the end of the night, so it’s a little fuzzy.
Gerry Crispin 19:27
And belonging is, is kind of a foundational element for community where people do care about each other. Yeah. And to do that they need the kind of data that allows for them to better understand where they where they fit, how people engage them, etc. And very few large company share the kind of data that allows employees to see that they’re part of this Yeah, that they that their pay is equitable compared to everyone else. That you know that their treatment in terms of opportunity is equitable compared to everyone else. And there’s data that that companies could be sharing around that, that some, some instances might might cause concern. But if you have the come, if you have the data, you can have the conversation, you can start to make changes. I’m just a fan. Yeah,
Chris Hoyt 20:20
I think there’s sort of an interesting so I had a realization not too long ago about a concept that sort of flies in the face of everything we were taught as recruiters back in the day, and then everything that we as recruiting leaders for the longest time were trying to deliver on and that’s hiring the best talent right in quote, unquote, war for talent. And and one of the examples I gave you today, I think Gerry and I were talking about this on a members call is the concept of of hiring, the most qualified versus qualified, and how that has an a downstream impact. I think, from an equity standpoint, and an example, the example I gave just a level set really quickly was, this is an organization that I spoke with that hires fleets, thousands and thousands and thousands of drivers, and they’ll post a job and it’s open between seven and 15 minutes, and then it’s closed, right when they post the req. And that’s because they’re not looking for the most qualified driver, they’re looking for a qualified driver
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 21:16
A qualified driver.
Chris Hoyt 21:17
That’s right. And they know that when they get 12 applications, or 15, or whatever it was, the minute they have that number, they shut the wreck down because of those 15 X amount will pass the drug test and X amount will accept the offer and excellent, you know, they’ll actually have their CDL, etc, etc. I think there’s a really interesting delivery, especially for an organization like Lowe’s, conceptually, for the retail right, of looking for the most experienced or most qualified cashier, or the guy that works over in the, you know, the nuts and bolts aisle or like, I don’t know how they’re broken up. But do I need the most qualified guy, the guy who’s done that the most the guy who has the most experience? Or am I better off, you know, sort of cutting that and looking for the one that has enough experience? And that has that learning agility that we can we can get them in?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 22:08
Yeah, go ahead, Gerry,
Gerry Crispin 22:10
I just going to say part of the problem. And the real fallacy in thinking about the most qualified is who’s making that determination.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 22:18
Exactly.
Gerry Crispin 22:19
And then the employer is not capable of of managing all of the variance that’s required to determine what most is because it’s the, it’s the motivation of the candidate in the decision that they make. That is the missing variance for the remainder of it. And there’s plenty of people who are not necessarily the most skilled or the most experienced or the most whatever on those criterion, but might be the most hungry to demonstrate that they can in fact, perform and they’re willing to do what it takes. And that does not come from the employers insight. It comes from the candidates motivation in how they’re treated. It’s their engagement that does that. And so I’m convinced that we need to change our headset from the fact that there is one person who can do the job. Best to, there is a pool of people, all of whom are equally potential high performers for what we want. And within that framework, if it’s diverse, we can choose any number of those. And that’s really where we have to move to.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 23:34
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right and Chris, right, that’s the HR, the age, our age old argument, right that you have with hiring managers, and we have this today because, you know, I don’t care what work is more especially we’re hiring, you know, high volume hourly hiring, I don’t care if they have any retail experience, right? Give me somebody here, here’s what I want, right? This is as simple as it can be. And still trying to figure out how to measure this if I see a customer at the end of the aisle walking towards me and I’m I do I walk to the customer? Or do I turn and try to walk down a different aisles, I don’t have to find like, if I could just figure out how to hire the person that’s going to walk to the customer smile and say there’s anything I can help. That’s like that is success, right? That’s going to drive sales that’s going to give good good customer experience. So they’re going to come back right we did some analysis around a big focus on our pro services. So our pros are all of our general contractors right huge business, an area we haven’t done well as a company and this year we’re really starting to nail it So historically right? We always said okay, we need to go find people who were general contractors or you know, ran their own business right know everything about the pro service. The best people that we have in our pro today are ex cashiers because they know how to treat customers, right and, and these contractors come back, you know, four or five, six times a week like they’re in there daily, right? So they just want to see smiling face, ask them for help, you know, they want to make sure that the products there, you know, if we say we’re going to deliver to the job site, we deliver the job site, whatever that is, I don’t have to know how to pour concrete in order to to be able to sell concrete. And that’s a big, you know, from from a brand perspective, that’s going to be a big focus for us next year because really, where are we have several opportunities from underrepresented groups, but when I look at store managers and district managers, you don’t have very many females at all. And I think there’s this perception of right, I have to know hardware, right? I have to know, home improvement in order to, to go work there, versus going and selling kind of soft line, right? or working in, you know, whether it be a target or clothing or something that’s, that maybe just feels a little a little safer, right? Cuz I, you know, it could be intimidating. I can imagine here, you want me to go run a tools department? Like, I’ve never worked with tools. So how do we, you know, for us, like, I don’t need them to know what we can teach them that I can teach them, you know, what they need to know about a department, I can’t teach them to be good leaders, I can’t be teach them to be good, you know, operators, like those are things that they bring to the table that, you know, can be incredibly, incredibly successful. So that’s gonna be a big push for us to just kind of rebrand and Lowe’s in general. But if you go into Lowe’s, you know, our orange competitors down south, you know, we build our stores with the female in mind, right? Bigger signs brighter, our shelves are lower right to make it easier to reach things. So, you know, we’ve really designed our stores and the shopping experience from a female’s perspective, because, you know, we’ve we’ve all been, you know, married in relationships, at the end of the day, we don’t really get to pick what counters we want, or what cabinets we want, we may have to install stuff. But we really don’t have a say in which lamp or, you know, chandelier work, we’re actually actually buying.
Chris Hoyt 27:09
So interesting, I think, I think it’s fascinating that it’s easy for us to, to, to have the conversation about most qualified, right versus qualified for for entry level, and for retail or customer facing type of roles, like fleet drivers that type of
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 27:32
Yeah.
Chris Hoyt 27:33
And I wonder how long because we wouldn’t have had that conversation 10 years ago, broad broadly throughout our industry,
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 27:40
Right, yeah.
Chris Hoyt 27:42
And I wonder how long until it hits the, you know, professional level for accountants, right, and finance, or for marketing, you know, people going into marketing or directors, because I do think we get to a point in some roles, and certainly in some markets where the advantage goes to the people who have always had the advantage. And so my experience continues to snowball, while you continue to struggle to get any experience. And what you’re looking for, is someone to take a risk on, on you, right to take a chance on you to invest in you and I’m looking for is the person who’s going to add $40,000 a year to my salary for my next role, you know, that kind of thing. And I just wonder how long and what it takes for us to get to that place? Because I think that’s when we approach the pay equity issue at warp speed, right? Because that is the shift that in all of the variables, right, for all of the demographics, and the protected classes that are sort of struggling, if that makes any sense.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 28:42
Yeah, it does. Right. And you have, you know, I think there’s so much that, you know, and we’ve led some classes, both at American and starting here, right? Those of you know, when we talk about when our women’s leadership events, right, and, you know, there’s all the data that says, right, if I’ve got I’ve got seven qualifications on a job, and female I hit six owner, like ads gonna hold me out, a guy sees one he’s like, I can do that. I knew the rest of it. So a lot of times, they don’t throw their hat, their name in the hat, right. And we talked about things like, you know, go fight, who’s going to be your champion, but go find a champion, you know, somebody who’s going to be an advocate for you that you can, that you can learn from who’s going to, you know, say, you know, what, yeah, they did really good work. Right. So I think a lot of times, you go back to some of those, those old stereotypes were, you know, if you have a if you have a male, right, who is I don’t know if aggressive is not the right term, right. But if somebody is kind of Type A driven, like, you know, they’re in there, they’re in meetings, they’re controlling meetings, right? They’re like, Oh, look at this guy. Like, look at him go, you can have a female doing the exact same thing. Exact same words, and it’s like, oh, god, she’s, uh, you know, who knows? Right?
Chris Hoyt 29:56
So I’ll say it. I’m on my second glass of wine. What a bitch.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 29:59
Okay. But but it’s just like, it’s so unfair, right? So I’ve seen, you know, really strong, powerful women take a backseat, because they’re worried about how they’re going to come across and rightfully so, which really sucks. Um, so hopefully those things start to change. And there is more. There’s more acceptance, right. And I think it’s just just having the conversation, right. And just just like what we’re going through today, from a, from a social perspective, just having the conversation talking and listening, I think is step one.
Gerry Crispin 30:30
Well, I agree with you. I mean, there’s two sides to this one. One is the shift in attitude of the individuals who are doing the selection itself. But I also think that the technology has to enable us in a wholly different ways. So we were talking about percent of slate, but let’s talk about about the pool that we’re drawing from. So if I consume the existing job description in some professional job, and and then I put 100 people who say they’re interested for one reason or another into the pool, I would like the system to tell me what the demographics look like in that pool. So they might say, a 12% women 4%, black are in this pool. And I would like that AI tool to also say, here’s some suggested leavers about what you have said you want and need that you might want to rethink, are they really necessary? They need a master’s degree in marketing for this, whatever. And you drop that, And oh, by the way, it just went from 8, you know, 12% to 18% women and 6%. Black, yeah, you know, or, or something along those lines. So that there’s a, let’s say, there’s a negotiation phase in which a smart, sharp upskilled recruiter is able to work with strong solid tools to be able to rethink the pool itself, as these are, this is what’s a qualified candidate that enhances what we’re pulling from in a more representative fashion. And then we operate on the basis of the second issue, which is, okay, if I build a slate against this, I’ll have a fair and diverse slate, are you capable of managing the selection of fair and diverse slate that I’ve given you? And and so I think there’s two things we have to attack. One is the enablement of looking at the pool differently, with with that kind of variability in it, and and I’m not saying we’re all there yet, but I do see some new tools that are doing some of that. And that’s pretty powerful, in my opinion.
Chris Hoyt 32:48
So I’ll retract. I said information before. And when I said it’s information versus tools and technology, I wonder if it’s knowledge, not information. Hmm,
Gerry Crispin 32:57
I would agree. The right and,
Chris Hoyt 32:59
yeah, we have to rely on the tech, are we gonna have to rely on the tech to kick the shit out of the bias? Is that how we get it done?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 33:08
You know, I think, you know, Gerry, you said something, right. And I think we just we were going through this thing. Now as we go through our transformation we’re building like, what’s our internal persona? Like, what do we need? So let’s take a corporate recruiter, like what does a corporate recruiter need to have? Right? And, you know, I can teach him sourcing, I can teach them, you know, whatever our ATS is, right. I really hard to teach them to be influential, right? It’s hard to teach them right so when I look at those some of those skillsets and those those competencies, like being an influencer, I think is so critical because your point Gerry’s I’m so I need a master’s in marketing. I want my recruiter to say, huh, do ya, why don’t tell me why they need a Master’s right, then and medically comfortable pushing back a VP SVP VP to say, Tell me why you need that. Do you? So if I had somebody who had this profile, right, coming out of, you know, a high profile competitor at this level, who was really interested in this job, you’re telling me you don’t want to see him? Well, no, that’s not the case. Let’s make it preferred. Okay, right. So you can you can influence versus so many, right? Just sit there and say, okay, okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Right. I’ve sat in meetings where, you know, I’ve seen a recruiter say, Where do you want to post this? And I’m just like, oh, we’re asking a hiring manager and finance where we should go source candidates, like, we’ve just lost all credibility, like, right, why do you know, so Gerry, why am I paying you whatever? I think
Gerry Crispin 34:39
So upskilling when I’m talking about upskilling recruiting, I mean, that there may be recruiters who are should be doing something else with their will be very successful and we should help them accomplish that. But But I’m, I’m convinced that that we need this level of expertise to be respected. That they can come to the hiring manager as an equal. Yeah, they should have the knowledge, the education, the skills to be able to sit down with them. Now obviously they’re gonna have to be get paid to be able to do that. But
Chris Hoyt 35:15
But I don’t know if it’s a comp issue though Gerry feel like it is a cultural. So here’s here’s another, it is a systemic challenge to have recruiters to Rob’s point I think that feel empowered enough to to make a difference to have a conversation to take people with them versus be a little order takers makers.
Gerry Crispin 35:39
Like, but if Rob hires bunch of people who didn’t do that I would be all over Rob as to what the hell are you doing hiring people that don’t have these capabilities? So you know, he’s, he has to deal with the issue of how do I either train or upskill them to be able to do it. And if they can’t do it, in the long run, they need to find something else to do, or I need to help them rescale to do something else, you know, all those are positive outcomes, really, for the individuals. But yeah, but I will say that, you know, recruiting is a profession, and we should be hiring people that we can put in even at the lowest level
Chris Hoyt 36:20
The bar is so low Gerry the bar so low to get into recruiting that everybody has that challenge that Rob has every-frickin-body has it. I know your recruiter.
Gerry Crispin 36:32
I know, but we take them one at a time.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 36:34
Yeah, but and Chris, to your point, right? I do think there’s something that says okay, if I’m a you know, I’m a recruiter slash senior recruiter, right? And I’m working with a VP like, Am I able to talk back, right it can it can I challenge this person, right? So it’s building that that safety net that says, Look, if I get a call from, from a hiring manager, saying that you’re pushing back, I’m going to come high five, you, I’m not going to scold you, right? I’m encouraging that. I always say like, give me give me I take if I ever and I have yet to get a call to this day, if I ever have a hiring manager call me says your recruiter is calling me too much or following up too much on the resumes. Trust me, I’ve got the recruiters back on the edge yet to happen. But we’ve all gotten enough calls it says haven’t heard from our recruiter in three weeks. And they asked the recruiter while I sent them resumes. Okay, now what? So? Yeah,
Gerry Crispin 37:26
Well, so I have one point. And the one point is the three of us in this room have in the past at some point in our history, been recruiters.
Chris Hoyt 37:36
Yep.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 37:36
Yep.
Gerry Crispin 37:37
And I have I know, I can stay, you know, work for myself, I quickly learned I would put it on the line, because I just don’t want to be dealing with assholes. Yeah, who are hiring managers. And so I would push as hard as I could. But the first thing that I did, when I left that room where I know, I pissed off, that guy was called my boss, you’re gonna get a call,
Chris Hoyt 37:58
Buckle up.
Gerry Crispin 37:59
And, you know, now I had, I had the confidence that my boss trusted me enough that he would hold that hiring manager accountable. And that’s those things, some of those things, you can train some of them you can your willingness to take risks, you know, because you know, it’s right, because this is my company as much as your company because I am equal coming into this, even though you may be making more money than me or you may be a director, I’ve had the kind of education that allows me to better understand what it is the business needs, in addition to what you think you need, and I I need to be respected as well as respecting you for what we’re trying to accomplish, together at for this company. And I’m convinced we can train some of the recruiters to be able to get there. Because they want to be they want to be the next Rob Daugherty. They want they want to get there. But you know, not everyone.
Chris Hoyt 38:59
So to in the same vein, Rob sorry about being an influencer? I. So we talked to a lot of ta leaders all the time, like all the time
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 39:07
That’s your old job, right?
Chris Hoyt 39:09
That’s right. That’s right. That’s the whole job. That’s all we do. But probably once a month, maybe maybe every five or six weeks, I’ll get a call from a recruiter or senior recruiter who’s trying to make director and can’t understand why they’re getting passed over and can understand why that why they’re not getting there. And the lesson that I learned that I think is kind of the same thing. You’re saying Rob and it’s anybody can do the work right? A good director doesn’t just get the work done. A good director takes people with them, right can influence the team to go with them on the journey, right? You can make somebody a director and they can slam shit in all day and push buttons and make make stuff work but a really good director and influencer gets the entire team behind them to go with them. And that is a hard thing, I think to your point, to to teach, because somebody’s got to want to inspire people and get them fired. And maybe some of that is an innate, right, a personality trait?
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 40:03
Yeah, I think there it’s it’s development other than it’s, it’s all of the development you do as a leader, not as a recruiting expert, right. So, you know, we’ve been to multiple ta conferences, and there’s always great things I learned, but what I, when I, when I get the really good ones, right, when I get in front of the, you know, the top ta thought leaders, I’m never talking about what technology they’re looking at, I’m talking about how they’re leading their team, right how they lead through transformation, how they you know, how they convince their hiring managers to do things that are sometimes kind of crazy. You know, we’ve done that we’ve taken on you know, we may take on my team, all frontline hiring at Lowe’s at some point, we build a couple of teams to go in and, and do that kind of as a triage for when we get behind but the stores like, well, you guys, can you know, better than my assistant store manager, my store manager, you guys know, talent better than we do? Why don’t you guys do all of this? You know, but our plan is for 2021 is to automate a lot of that, right? Which is going to because I’ll tell you today, and you guys both know how big of a fanatic I am on candidate experience. Our candidate experience sucks today. No, we had two and a half million candidates in the first six months and we’ve probably talked to 350,000 of them the rest summer just sitting out there. Like we’ve got to fix it like technology process. There’s all sorts of things that we’ve got to do to fix you know, but it’s it’s one of those that and I had a good point in my head, which is completely gone now is trying to chase something.
Gerry Crispin 41:51
Well, yes. Well just refresh your your glass and it’ll come back. There you go.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 41:55
Well, there you go I will.
Chris Hoyt 41:56
So how our glass is doing Howard glass is doing does anybody have any insight on their on the wine of choice that they’re drinking? Do you have any nice thoughts?
Gerry Crispin 42:04
Mine’s good, it’s gotten spicier as a result, so I’m, I’m kind of liking it.
Chris Hoyt 42:11
I like mine. I’m looking on my wine, lexicon and mine sits clearly in the red wine. Fruit section.
Gerry Crispin 42:19
Yeah, mine too
Chris Hoyt 42:20
Fresh and jammy. But but not the not quite dried fruit.
Gerry Crispin 42:25
No, mine. Yeah, fresh.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 42:27
Mine mine’s pretty dry. Let’s see, I’m a I’m a big fan of and I my lexicon is over on a on my counter. But you know, I’m a big fan of my vivino app. So according to vivino it’s a deep garnet knows of wild strawberries and currents, a palette of crushed red cherries and on jute airs, the rich layered finish. And then you know, I think a lot of them just throw out a lot of the words for me. It’s, it’s really good. And I keep pouring more. So if I keep pouring more, that’s I you know.
Gerry Crispin 43:06
And it goes down easily.
Chris Hoyt 43:08
Yeah. So I don’t know if I should get upset. I do. Obviously don’t go to the grocery stores with everything going on it I have the food delivered. And for the last four weeks each week, the person from from the beverage order place that I get drops the alcohol off and says are you guys having a party? We’re not having a party. Oh, we’re just refilling the tank.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 43:32
That’s where you just say my dog is a lush?
Chris Hoyt 43:38
I’ll tell you, Rob, I think you’ve got a fantastic team. And I don’t say this just because you guys are members, I say you’ve got a lot of recruiters and a lot of different places. They’re doing a lot of different things that are hungry. And we know that because you guys created your own lows exchange on the CXR, our website, which has been pretty interesting experiment. But I also know that because this morning, I got a call. You don’t know this yet. So I got a meeting request this morning from one of your recruiters to just catch up and ask us what he should really be focused on to get the most out of his network.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 44:18
It’s awesome.
Chris Hoyt 44:20
To talk to him for about 20 minutes, I’m going to out him Can I out him? Please do yes. I love it. Marco Marco. fun to talk to him. He had he’s responsible for 12 different stores. He’s got a passion for analytics. Of course now he’s gonna get recruited like crazy when we publish this, but
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 44:39
don’t give them the last name.
Chris Hoyt 44:41
Yeah, there you go. And he’s he’s known for bad attendance. poor attendance, right? He’s on a write up. For anybody that’s listening.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 44:48
That’s right.
Chris Hoyt 44:49
It was great to talk to him and catch up. And I just think that you know, when you’ve got a leader who’s got people in the team are proactively saying what am I going to do to get better, what should I be focused on? That’s pretty impressive. Not just of the team, but I think of the leadership that empowers them to do that.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 45:03
Yeah. So it’s, um, you know, it’s it’s fascinating when you know, the team of 500. Right. So it’s interesting, I have the same. So first tell you that that a lot of them, like they’ve had a rough year. So a year ago is we went through HR transformation. We, you know, new, we moved to workday, not workday, recruiting, but core HR and some others. And then with some new processes that ended up not not working out, we had, we had some some issues. And then I still hear this from EVP of stores who brought this up the other day said, you know, so we’re talking about 2021, he was bringing up stuff from 2019, right? of last year, you went through this, and we couldn’t hire for six weeks and you cost you know, ta cost me 100 million dollars. He loves that love to tell, tell that story, right? So like through that, like, so many of these recruiters like they got beat up and they got beat up daily for six weeks, to no no fault of their own, right, they, they didn’t have system access, and it was, you know, it was pretty ugly. And, you know, is we’ve kind of turned that corner and and had a you know, a really, really good year so far. And we’re still working, you know, living with kind of this brand of TA is a mess. So we’re going through and kind of rebranding that Manal, as we kind of go through this next really ta transformation, you know, one of the things I’ve worried about is, you know, this is a lot of change for them and bringing them along. And the feedback that I’ve gotten about how excited they are about this is phenomenal. So I do this, I get, you know, especially living here in North Carolina by myself, sometimes I get bored, and I have these, I’ll send usually about once a month, this email, that’s called Rob’s Ramblings, and it is literally everything from there’s some, you know, business input, there’s some recognition, you know, we’ve talked about what’s happening from with COVID, we’ve talked about kind of civil unrest, and I’ve, you know, I’ve used this as an opportunity to kind of open myself up, right, kind of that vulnerability and talk about here’s, here’s my thoughts, right? Here’s why, you know, I have white privilege, right, I’ve never been pulled over because of the color of my skin. And I never will, you know, and and some of these conversations that we’ve, we’ve had, and kind of through this, basically just throw up of, of information that usually I try to keep pretty funny. And there’s been lots of Tiger King references, it’s been all over the place. So it’s a, you know, maybe 30% work and 70% other other random things that come into my head. But the feedback I’ve gotten from that is kind of this connection, because you can’t connect with 500 people consistently. So how do you know, to me it was like, how do I connect with with this team that I need for me to be successful, and for our business to be successful. So it’s little things like that, but I just kind of learned along the way that’s really, really helped. And I think help from an engagement perspective, and really pushing along to where they’re really excited about this, this transformation. And, and I’m really looking forward to to the next year, but it’s people like like Marco right, that have this drive and desire to be better. And I get emails weekly about hey, how do I, how do I improve on this, or, hey, I’d love to be part of this project, or he just thanks for being, you know, open and honest. And, you know, the, the whole exchange through through CareerXroads. So nobody had ever even knew a CareerXroads was until we set up the call that that Barb kind of walked through Barb and Shannon, and, you know, after that they’re like, Oh, this is great. Like, here’s a community of my people, right, that I can go out and talk or learn. And they still talk about this today. And I you know, somebody that day, volunteered, Hey, I’ll go help and leave this. And, you know, I think again, it goes back to what you guys, you know, do and are passionate about to give that platform for like minded people to, to engage and ask questions and, and participate, I think that’s great.
Gerry Crispin 49:27
And we’re learning we’re learning from you, too, we realized that we need to get deeper into organizations but that the cost return of charging you to go deeper is just It doesn’t make sense. So you have to make it part of the part of the membership. So we’re starting to think about and we just talked today about and and you you came up as an example as well. In talking today about we need to run a couple different things that are just for recruiters, but don’t cost, you know, a seat or anything like that, yes. Just set it up so that it’s part of membership. But for that level, you know, offer, I don’t know, things related to sourcing or things related to marketing, whatever, that that are more relevant to the recruiters at the trench level.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 50:24
Yeah.
Gerry Crispin 50:25
And because, you know, obviously, in the past, we’ve said, we don’t want to be a training organization. But on the other hand, if we’re talking about peers, who are sharing with each other, and that’s, that’s the, you know, the content that goes on then yeah, we’re, we’re focusing in on what our platform can best do. So, it’s helpful to us, you know, your, your interest in ensuring that your, your 500 folks get that you have resources for them, is something that resonates with us from that point of view, too. So I thank you for that.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 51:05
Oh, absolutely.
Chris Hoyt 51:06
So look, what let’s we’re gonna wrap it up. We’re gonna wrap it up. This has been an interesting, this has been an interesting uncorked, we got three white guys with different red wines. And we’re just hoping that somebody walked away with at least three laughs or three, three things that I feel like we could have, we could have marketed it better. But Roberts, it’s always fun to catch up with you. I still miss lifesize Jenga in Austin. I feel like that’s a whole nother story, but maybe for another podcast.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 51:37
Yeah, that’s like late night on court that that’s
Chris Hoyt 51:40
Half an hour.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 51:42
That’s right.
Chris Hoyt 51:42
I think we were at a karaoke bar.
Rob Daugherty, Lowes 51:46
Yes, that is true. We’ve been in a couple karaoke bars. You know, and for me, you know, when I when I think about CareerXroads, right, these there’s all of the work content that I get out of it. But I think more importantly, there’s, you know, I feel honored to call both of you friends and you know, it’s it’s great because I learned I learned so much from both of you. But the same time we could, you know, go sing karaoke and and play giant Jenga. right before we go play karaoke. So
Announcer 52:15
Thanks for joining us for another episode of CareerXroads, Uncorked. Chris Hoyt and Gerry Crispin look forward to sharing more drinks and conversation with you next time. Until then, cheers!
