S4 E88 | College Recruiting Meeting Recap

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Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:23
Hello, everybody. This is Chris Hoyt with CareerXroads. And welcome to another podcast videocast edition. Thank you for joining us. If you’re wondering how you can subscribe, of course, we make it super easy for you. It’s at CXR.works/podcast. And you can listen anywhere that you normally subscribe to video podcasts, cuz we’re just that popular. So today, we’ve got a recap session, we just wrapped up our first college recruiting meeting of the year 2021. And I’ve got some guests that were in the meeting. And we’re just going to talk a little bit about some big takeaways, what a couple of things that we sort of learned. But first, let’s start with who we who we’ve got on the line. So I’ll call you out, you do a quick introduction. So Marissa, tell us a little bit about you and what you do over Marriott.

Marissa Solomita, Marriott International 1:07
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. My name is Marissa Solomita. I am the Senior Manager on the university and talent acquisition team. I currently support both the US and Canada and live up in Vancouver, Canada. I’ve been with Marriott for the last nine years starting, you know, in operations. I then moved into HR and then joined our university recruiting team about four years ago, first as a recruiter, and now as a senior manager. So overseeing all of our internships and new grad programs.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:38
Nice, and you’ve been quite you’ve been to quite a few of our live meetings?

Marissa Solomita, Marriott International 1:41
I have. Yeah, I’ve been a few. I have some coins just around the corner from me. So I have been to the live sessions, which I do, of course prefer but the virtual has been great over this year for sure.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:52
Great, thanks. Well, you certainly get into virtual coin today. So you’ll have to watch for that and your profile. Jenn, how about yourself from Polaris.

Jenn Guerin, Polaris 2:00
Hi, Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. Marissa, it’s great to virtually meet you here as well. My name is Jenn Guerin, and I am currently the senior early talent program leader at Polaris. So I have been at Polaris for about two years here. And I’ve been in the early talent space, all things from coordination to recruitment to some international recruitment. So Marissa tapping on Canada, supported Canada, former life as well. So definitely fun to get in there. So yeah, I’ve been in early talent for about 10 years. My background is in education. I was actually a teacher before leaning into this space. So I’m really excited to be here to continue to share these great learnings from earlier today.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:41
I love that I had no idea you were a teacher. What did you teach?

Jenn Guerin, Polaris 2:43
English to seniors right out of college?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:46
Oh, wow. Good stuff.

Jenn Guerin, Polaris 2:48
Yeah.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:50
Great. stuff.

Jenn Guerin, Polaris 2:51
There’s a reason I’m here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:55
All right. And Justin, longtime member, how are you from AARP?

Justin Chow, AARP 3:00
Fantastic. Thanks, Chris. And Hi, everyone. Justin Chow, with AARP. I am the intern program manager here. I’ve been with AARP for a little over two years at this point. I’m located in Washington, DC. And I’ve been in the early career campus recruiting space for probably close to two decades at this point. So seen a lot of changes. Happy to be here and talk a little bit more about the session.

Alright, two decades, you might be our early career senior guy on the call senior person on the call just a

Jenn Guerin, Polaris 3:31
A guru.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:32
That right? Okay, he’s he’s the head resource in charge. I had a couple of aha moments. But I won’t start. But Justin will give it to you since you’ve got the seniority where that did you? What was your big takeaway? If you had one thing to just sort of take back to the team? What did you have one of those today, what was it?

Justin Chow, AARP 3:51
Yeah, I mean, I think the session itself, it’s it’s really knowledge sharing, you know, at its purest point. I think for me, the big takeaway was from the Dell presentation, it was about using the ServiceNow platform as a manager journey, you’re

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:07
You’re stealling my thunder Justin!

Justin Chow, AARP 4:09
It’s it’s a platform that we use for I our IT ticketing requests. And really to take this back, I’m really excited to take the back because it’s an existing platform that we can possibly use for something else. Love the illustration. I think it’s visually pleasing to the audience. It’s comprehensive, it’s condensed and centralized. And I think that’s something that I’m excited I want to explore this route. And I think hopefully, in the end, we can produce something similar.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:37
Yeah, I gotta tell you, I love the story. Jennifer Neville told him for members, they can see the deck, it’s it’s within the website, they can dig in there and get to it. But what a fascinating, you know, sort of delivery, and that they put all this together from a tool that was existing already in their toolbox corporate was using another division but that what I thought was really interesting is that that function reached out to the internship to the early career recruiting folks and said, Hey, would you like, would you like to use the ServiceNow platform for internships, and just the winds that sort of dominoed. From that? I’m sure there was some, some sort of maybe internal cost, but probably nowhere near the cost they would have if they had to, you know, grab that tool externally on their own or another platform, similar.

Justin Chow, AARP 5:24
Right, agree at all, all fronts there.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:26
That’s good stuff. Very, very exciting. Okay. So now, Justin, and I have gotten Marissa? Did you have a big takeaway from today?

Marissa Solomita, Marriott International 5:34
Yeah, I think it was, during the breakout sessions, you know, we were tasked with kind of thinking of what we could implement, what new programs, what relationships we could build, and kind of what our, you know, far reaching goals would be with no budget, which was a fun exercise. But I think what really came to light is, you know, we could dig into community colleges and high school programs and all of these diversity programs, but what it really starts with is the internal training of your team, and making sure that they are, you know, removing any biases, that they understand what their biases are, because you can have all these programs. But if you’re still not hiring, you know, a diverse population, it’s really an internal issue first, and I think we focused on, you know, it sometimes starts with the executives, where you do need to have that kind of top down support. But it really is also the hiring managers, the ones that are in the interviews, the ones that are actually hiring and making that decision and making sure that they’re aware if they have bias and training to remove that in order for these programs to then be successful that you build out and spend money on and things like that.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 6:43
Yeah, yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s wonderful that we’re finally at a point where and, you know, this goes to another conversation we had earlier about intent versus impact. And we’re talking about, you know, this, this injustice that has now really and most appropriately worked its way into our workforces to try to manage and handle and fix and repair and address and all of these things, and really making a difference versus just talking about making difference. So it is wonderful to see organizations leaning all in with money to address bias and to address that sort of standard that shift. It’s yeah, it’s heartwarming

Jenn Guerin, Polaris 7:20
Yep, to lean into that Marissa, that was my big takeaway, too, right. And I think there’s some of that synergy. And what Justin, and Chris, you were talking to about, Jennifer and her sharing about just the internal team reaching out. So it’s that internal network, right? It’s that inclusive culture. And it’s that has been so tough amidst the pandemic, right? We’re all working virtually and everywhere. So keeping these connections alive. So we’re sharing, hey, we have this great tool, can we use it over here, we were lucky enough actually to get a reach out to kind of lean into our teams with our IT team, and really get that training out for interns. So we’ll use that as a hub, right? But it’s just creating these relationships. And again, getting that kind of inclusive culture, right, here’s where you can go, here’s a safe hub for you interns, right. And so that again, was just kind of the theme I heard across. It’s just it really starts from within. And that was something that I’m certainly going to be taking back to my team.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:15
Yeah, that’s good stuff. Well, I want to thank all three of you for jumping on the recap call with us we do right after the meeting and there are a lot of fun, and it’s great to hear sort of the echo of just the wins that you walk out of these with I’m just and I hate that you stole my thunder but I’m glad we’re on the same page brother.

Justin Chow, AARP 8:32
Likewise

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:34
Thanks everybody.

Announcer 8:36
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