S4 E62 | CXR Foundation: Céleste Luzadder shares her passion for the “1ne” project and why an industry non-profit is important to her

Announcer 0:00
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 0:18
Hello, everybody. This is Chris Hoyt with CareerXroads. And on this edition of our podcast, we’re going to talk a little bit about the CXR Foundation, but I have with me one of the founding members and members of the board of directors. Celeste Luzadder. Celeste, how are you?

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 0:33
Hi, how are you?

Chris Hoyt 0:35
I’m doing well. Thanks for asking.

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 0:38
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Chris Hoyt 0:41
So we’ve had a couple of these podcasts go out already. And as you know, this, the site has launched and we’ve got some sort of things in the works. But I just want to set the stage a little bit for those who maybe haven’t heard yet. The CXR Foundation is a nonprofit, that that was created just recently, and after months and months and months of work, to sort of put it into place for really the benefit of the community, right, the talent community at large. And in some instances, local communities that don’t have anything really to do with our industry or our talent acquisition per se. You sort of been behind the scenes on some of that, as have a number of the other board of directors and a number of the 70-80 plus members that we’ve we’ve now had joined. But for those who may not know, it kind of it kind of got kicked off with a projects, or sort of a project that we created when Gerry and myself would come in a day early to our live meetings when we back in the day of traveling.

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 1:40
What’s that like?

Chris Hoyt 1:41
And yeah, I’m losing all my miles, I feel like I’m losing all my miles. But we would we would come in a day early Barb Ruess, also, a member of our team would come in and do a community event. We might help stock a food pantry, or a local shelter or work in, you know, any number of locations that we’ve really felt helped lift up and, and help the communities that we were working in for that week. And that sort of gave birth to the idea of we really needed to be focusing at large, you know, sort of hoping everybody was doing well just wasn’t enough, right? Donating money just wasn’t enough. And we wanted to put in a little bit of elbow grease. And then that led to a project called recruiters recruiting recruiters when the pandemic hit, an awful lot of recruiters were unfortunately without work. And so we put together and you can learn a little bit more I won’t go into too much detail but folks can learn a little bit more on the website about what recruiters recruiting recruiters actually is

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 2:34
Wow that was fast, recruiting recruiters recruiting, nope see fail.

Chris Hoyt 2:41
You were really close, But that’s a project that’s been sort of propped up and pulled in underneath the CXR Foundation wings. But I want to talk a little bit with you about why the CXR Foundation and why you decided this was a nonprofit that you wanted to lean into and really get involved with.

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 2:59
Yeah, well, thanks for asking. And I’m, I’m humbled to be a part of this work because being a part of a nonprofit that is near and dear to the work that you do, but also to the values that you try to live and breathe is is nice that they’re combined, right? Helping people in the talent community is really powerful. And the way that we do it, I think looks and feels differently to everybody. You know, you shared a little bit about the charitable work which CXR Cares which I love. You also I think the the beauty of recruiting recruiters recruiting no wrong

Chris Hoyt 3:38
Still close

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 3:39
Recruiters recruiting recruiters.com There you go. My dyslexia coming through on on reading that website, and is is how we contribute to the community. But there’s a third project that is very close to me that I’m passionate about. And what the CXR Foundation will will drive is the One project. And that’s really very simple. It’s it’s how do we help our communities from a mentor aspect, which really is as simple as it takes one, right? It takes one person, one hour, one meeting, once a month, to reach out and connect with someone who has a question has a need within the community, various levels within an organization. I find really, really important as a part of personal development and career development that we don’t always have an opportunity to, to do and connect people. And I have benefited from this type of connection through CXR in a connection to someone who introduced me to one person who spent one hour doing some career coaching for me, which ultimately changed the course of my career. And while that may, may seem so minimal, and what that is investment is being willing to take an hour to do that, and connect individuals that hopefully will have an impact, even if it’s a, you know, tell me about a tool or tell me how you got to where you are, or, hey, you know, I want to be able to leverage executive coaching. How did you do that? And how have you found that beneficial or impactful? Like, I could go on for 10 minutes, but I won’t, um, but a topic that is important to help an individual grow and develop. And that’s, that’s one of the projects that I’m excited to, to help be a part of, for the CXR Foundation.

Chris Hoyt 5:41
Yeah, I’m really excited about that one, as well, as you know, and you know, we’re talking about this previously, it’s just, it was kind of an interesting idea that came from a conversation we had that that literally spun out of recruiters, recruiting recruiters. And then we had a candidate who was looking for work and came back to us and said, they were really, really frustrated and felt that they were a subject of ageism. And that nobody was really taking their application seriously. Nobody was really talking to them because they were older. And so as we dug in a little bit, what we realized were the roles that the individual was applying for. And where they were looking weren’t a match at all for the history of the work and the type of recruiting that they had done.

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 6:23
Yep.

Chris Hoyt 6:23
And there was a serious disconnect there. And it’s the old statement, you know, doctors are the worst patients.

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 6:27
Yeah.

Chris Hoyt 6:28
Right. So the recruiters are not often the best candidate. And so, you know, we were able to connect with this person and say, look, if you want to get to that place in your recruiting career, that’s you can do that, right. That’s obviously something you want to work for. But if you’re looking for a job today, you know, and you’re looking for employment today, you might want to have a little bit more of a realistic expectation about where you’re likely to be a match, hand off a few tips. And I think, you know, it is to your point, it’s one conversation, it’s one time it’s one person, it’s one difference, and that is that’s not a big commitment to make becoming powerful.

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 6:59
No, it’s not. And I think that the beauty of this is, it’s it’s personal to that individual in that conversation. That it is what it’s what about what they need, it’s something that they need feedback on, or advice on, or just a connection and network connection, that the reality is, is sometimes we forget to pause and take care of our own community. We’re so busy, as HR professionals, and TA professionals, helping grow the business partnering with our leaders connecting with great talent that, but it gives us a chance to be introspective and say, how are we investing in our own community. And this is a very easy, simple way to do it. Now, I might have two hours, one month, I might have one hour, one month, I might have five hours the following month, but it gives me the ability to flex and put myself out there as a reference or a resource to someone who may, you know, ask advice. And then in in turn, I will ask them to pay it forward and do the same regardless of career level. I mean, we talked about the value in reverse mentoring, we talk about the value of mentorship. And it has to be somewhat of an organic thing, too. But there’s an easy topic to have, to your point, Chris having a flash in the pan conversation about like, hey, I want to get into tech recruiting. But I’ve been a G and E recruiter my whole career. How should I make my resume more marketable? Who do I need to connect with? That is a less than one hour conversation for someone who’s made that transition?

Chris Hoyt 8:35
Yeah, it’s good stuff. I just want to call it something too. So we’ve talked about charity, and we’ve talked about community. But there’s an element that the CXR Foundation also works toward, and that is industry standards, really sort of pushing forward with some work that will help to define particular measurements, particular deliveries, methodologies, and that sort of thing. So there are some work streams that are planned to that. And I think members can can find out our potential members, right can find out all the information that they need the new website that’s up and running, it’s www.CXR.Foundation, believe it or not, there’s no.com. There’s actually a domain that’s dot foundation. So where it’s CXR.Foundation, you can check that out. So let’s take take us out with just one thing that you would want everybody to know if they knew nothing else about the CXR Foundation was just one thing they said, sure to be thinking about or have top of mind when they go to check it out.

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 9:26
Yeah, I would be open to figuring out what works for you. Because there’s something for everyone in the talent acquisition community, whether it’s the charitable work, you know, whether it’s contributing to the community, whether it is, you know, standardization of industry experience, which you only just touched on. We are very passionate people in the HR and TA space and be open to finding a way that you can contribute, whether that’s one hour a month, or more.

Chris Hoyt 9:57
All right, so let’s thank you so much. We’ll see you at the next time. Meeting

Celeste Luzadder, Legal Zoom 10:00
Yes Thanks for having me.

Chris Hoyt 10:02
You got it.

Announcer 10:03
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Tagged as: Community, mentor, CXR Foundation.