Name: Transforming Global Talent Acquisition with AI: Insights from Johnson Controls
Uploaded: 2026-03-31T18:31:00.840Z
Duration: 1 h 56 s
Description: Transforming Global Talent Acquisition with AI: Insights from Johnson Controls

Transcript for "Transforming Global Talent Acquisition with AI: Insights from Johnson Controls": Alright. We probably have some folks coming in, so, just sit tight. Welcome to the webinar. We'll be getting started in just a minute while we give everybody a chance to get online here. Thanks for joining. Everyone, thanks for joining. As Jennifer mentioned there, we'll be getting started in just a minute. We're just giving everybody a chance to get online. Thanks for coming. If you're logging in, I may be repeating myself, to some of you, but we'll be getting started in just a moment. Just gonna give one probably thirty more seconds for folks to get in here. For being patient, and welcome to the webinar. Alright. Well, I think we are we're at 01:02, so we're gonna get started. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar today. Thank you for joining today's session. We are going to explore Johnson Controls talent acquisition transformation. Like many of you, Johnson Controls have faced challenges with volume, inconsistency, scalability. And so what we're gonna look at in this session is really how they're solving it, what was the strategy, what lessons they learned, and the organizational impact, since since this journey. And I will say, you know, we're gonna learn today. Technology is certainly part of the the story, that we'll cover, but today's conversation, what I love is really focuses on the operating model transformation, the practical insights that you'll learn and ideally can apply to your own organizations in your journey. So before we dive in, a few housekeeping items for everybody joining us today. First of all, our session's being recorded. So you can feel free if you need to step out. We will send out the recording later. But please stay with us because it's gonna be some great content as much as you can. There's a q and a tab right there on the right hand side to submit questions. We're gonna do a little bit of, answering questions via chat, and we'll nominate some of those questions for live q and a. So we'll definitely address that, here live. And my final ask is we do these webinars to provide value to you, but we wanna make sure they are valuable. So please, post session, we'll send out a survey. Make sure you give us some feedback so we can make sure these webinars continue to be valuable. With that said, I am going to quickly dive in and remind you as we cover solutions today. Our product statement just reminds you to make all purchase decisions based on currently available functionality. And with that, we'll dive into our content and our guest. So first of all, I'm Jason Schechner. I am part of our AI strategy team here at Workday. And, really, my goal is to help organizations rethink how they can solve business challenges, particularly, with AI and solutions that we're gonna cover today. And I am very thrilled to be joined, by our great partner, Mike Aronson, who's global head of talent acquisition at Johnson Controls. Welcome, Mike. Jason, really appreciate you all having me. Yeah. It's we really appreciate you being here, you know, to share your experiences and what's what's what's been happening in your journey. I guess maybe just start off with the good old classic so everybody knows who you are. Can you give. us a little bit of background on your role and particularly, you know, how Johnson Controls structures the TA function? Absolutely. So Mike Aronson. I as Jason said, I lead the global talent acquisition function here at Johnson Controls. I've actually been with the organization for seventeen years. I've I started as a contract recruiter, and so I've pretty much held most of the roles that you can hold in talent acquisition here. And so I really approach kinda our work as a practitioner because I've I've there are recruiting positions that we still recruit on that I was recruiting back seventeen years ago. Just to give a little background on Johnson Controls for those who don't know us, think everything buildings, building optimization. So fire security, HVAC, you drive down carbon carbon emission, create building efficiencies, really positioned to make the places that people live and work more safe and secure. We have over 90,000 employees globally. We're in a 150 countries or more, and we do about 20,000 hires a year. And so as we were thinking about, you know, from a talent acquisition standpoint, a handful of years ago, kinda where we were, I think it was very clear, you know, kind of coming out of, you know, the pandemic that some things were enabled through the you know, through technology during that time, and we really needed to modernize our own, function. And and don't get me wrong. We are still very much in the in the middle of a transformation, and we're learning out as we go. But, ultimately, wanted to, you know, take the opportunity today to help share a little bit about our journey and what we've learned, how we've thought about it, and, you know, what our plans are for the future. Love that. You know, I by the way, I I was thought thought about what you said because I started my journey in TA in 2008. And it's fascinating, by the way, to your point, like, how many of the, the challenges even from twenty years ago still show up today. So the ways we solve them might look different, but some of the problems are still the same, which is always, always fascinating to me. Cool. Well, I I know we're gonna get into some amazing transformation, Mike. But, before we dive into how Johnson Controls approach the transformation, I'd love to actually get, some help from the audience really quick. So we'd love to know what are your top priorities in talent acquisition this year. We're gonna put up a quick survey. If you could all help me out here, you should see the survey live now, in the poll section up at the top right hand corner. What we'd love for you guys to do is if you could just click on what, are the top priorities for you in talent acquisition. You can choose up to three, and we'll take a look at the results. So I'll give you guys probably about fifteen seconds here or more, to go ahead and pick the top ones. We've got reducing time to hire, improving candidate experience, driving internal mobility, recruiter capacity and effectiveness, scaling TA operations, or advance equitable and inclusive talent practices. Again, it's funny. Like like I said, Mike, some of these have, have been around for years. Absolutely. Alright. Let's take a look once we get final poll. And it looks like our survey says we've got reduced time to hire is quickly, one of the top ones. Actually, it looks like improving candidate experience is nudging it slightly there, Mike. And we also. have increased recruiter capacity and effectiveness. It's interesting. You know, it's so funny too because I see, I hear a lot of about internal mobility as a priority from, like, c levels, but I think in the TA audience, you know, internal mobility may or may not be under their remit. Also, it's fascinating to see how, like, you know, with the the shifts in the last couple of years where the equitable inclusive practice practice is showing up less, but but interest results. was gonna you know, one of the things that kinda stands out to me, you know, you know, reducing time to hire is always going to be, you know, a metric that's measured in TA. But when you prioritize speed, at times, you can discount quality. And I think as, you know, we kinda talk through what we what we've learned over the last handful of years is I mean, it's probably a both, reduce time to hire, but, also, how do the the hires that we're producing into an acquisition drive impact in the businesses that we support? Because it's it means nothing if we did it fast and it was the wrong hire. And so I we've been thinking about effectiveness and recruiter capacity as a unlock for us to drive a better quality of hire. Right? We are positioning ourselves as a and and we'll get into more of the specifics of, you know, how we're thinking about that. But talent advisory, if we can position ourselves as that, you know, expert and owner of the process and really guiding the journey, some of these other, you know, the the group time to hire, driving internal mobility, those things follow. Right? Those. things can be enabled through capacity and effectiveness. Alright. Well, this is great poll results. We'll hop back to the content here. And I think it's a great transition, Mike, in into the obstacles you were facing because we we saw what the audience was talking about. But what I'd love to understand is when you sort of categorize your your sort of challenges in TA, what what were the things that were guiding your operating model transformation? Yeah. So if I if I think back to when we really started this journey, I think what we started with has evolved into something different. And so back when we had the realization that we wanted to modernize and and bring our our function into I wouldn't even say, like, the new age. It was just to get to parity with where we probably should have been. And so at the time, we were looking and chasing efficiency. What could we do that would save people's time? And it was it was rooted in the right ideas, but, ultimately, it was chasing efficiency just for the sake of efficiency. And so at that time, we looked at, you know, what we had in front of us, you know, tools, technology, and process and said, alright. We get you know, we got an investment, so we're gonna we're gonna fix everything. Okay? We're gonna take this as our opportunity to fix everything. And when I say everything, you know, looking at an end to end, if you're really redesigning your process, you can essentially design it in a way that, you know, fixes what you think was was broken. And broken may be a a more of a harsh, you know, a way to put it. But, ultimately, what we learned was you cannot solve all of the problems. Like, that is not a practical approach. And. so what we ended up doing in it with the right intent was we created you know, we're a global organization. We have, you know, multiple countries. We've gotta navigate privacy laws and, you know, all sorts of different dynamics. And so creating a global standard is is just not a feasible approach. And so what we ended up doing was really creating something that was too complex, confusing, and just ultimately added layers of process on top of process. And so when people are frustrated and adoption stalls, it really forces you to take a step back and say, alright. What were we trying to solve? Like, what was the not tangibly what were the problems that we were looking at, but, like, what are we driving to? What is our vision? How do we wanna operate? Yep. And so in doing that, we really aligned on this anchor of creating capacity for our recruiters. Right? Talent acquisition is such a interdependent function. There's a lot of handoffs. There's a lot of people involved, and so that undoubtedly leads to waste and ineffective, inefficient process. And so if we could anchor ourselves on creating capacity to create an ability for our teams to be talent advisers and we've been talking people have heard talent advisory for years, but I think the path to getting to advisory wasn't always abundantly clear. And so when you layer in new technology and tools that really can create and take some of those low value tasks off the plates of a recruiter, now you have a path to capacity. And so if we are now shifting our approach to, alright, less about transactions and more about capacity, how are we creating this human centered data driven environment that allows recruiters to focus on strategic, high value work. And in turn, by doing that, they can support the business in a new and different way that allows that business to grow, and we are part of that process, part of the enablement there. Right? In order for them to get to who where they need to go or we as an organization, we have to identify the right talent that is part of the vehicle that gets them there. And so we really needed to anchor our approach in giving recruiters the space to think, analyze, and and really show up in a different way. And so, tactically, I mean, we can go into, you know, what we did to to transform. Yeah. I'd love I'd love to do that. I just I wanna hone in on one point for the audience because this shows up for me all the time because everybody's looking for capabilities and technology and solution. And so, you know, I often talk about when I'm meeting with customers today, you know, we all wanna look at what's new in the AI for HR, in your case, the AI for TA. Right? What's the thing that's gonna give us the boost that's gonna give us the advantage? But what you're talking about is actually something interesting. It's not the just the AI, but it's actually the HR for AI, which is kind of like you know, it's the things that need to change relative to the technology. And especially as technology, there augments or, I think you used the word elevates the role. We need to actually be prescriptive about what do we expect the people to do differently. Because if you don't, you're gonna give people a lot of technology. They may even get time back, Mike, but I I I always mention sometimes we end up with, better lattes and happier dogs, because people get time to, you know, walk their dogs and and make some better coffee. So what I think you're defining that I love is the the prescription not only around the technology change, but the operating model shift that goes with this. So, yeah, I'd love could you walk us through some of the the transformation and and sort of what what you did? Absolutely. I mean and you're spot on there. Right? Giving capacity or building capacity is the first step. Because once you get it now, it's like, what are we what are you supposed to do with it? And so we, again, took a step back. You know, when we overcomplicated what we had, you know, started with, we really had to take a different approach. And so rather than undoing what we had had just done, we looked at it and and and I and we said we mapped our process, and we looked for bottlenecks in our in the process. And there were you know, look. It's a talent acquisition process at global matrix organization. There were bottlenecks, but couldn't we fix them all at once. And so what we did was we looked at and we said, you know, where are the lowest value? Where are the lowest value tasks that return a real impact? You know, scheduling. You know? Who wants to chase a hiring manager and a candidate for does this time work for you? Does that time work? Like, things like that where it's, like, it's impactful in our process, Yeah. but it's really not a valuable use of somebody's time. And so we really looked at it end to end. We use data, and we I'm a data guy. I mean, we use a ton of data to help drive decisions. And so we use the data to tell us where some of these bottlenecks were. How long were things sticking in a certain status? How long did it take somebody to do a task? And so we then leverage our broader our HR tech ecosystem to to support the improvements, like looking at how could we screen better, how could we schedule faster, how could we be more collaborative with hiring managers. And so it wasn't just a we're telling people to use these tools because what had happened was is it felt like a lot of change all at once, and so people just didn't do it. I mean and I wanna give the caveat of you know, through all of this is, like, we have not, you know, figured it out. Like, we this is not this is very much an ongoing learning and journey for us. It's complicated and complex, but we. our goal is to improve every, you know, day, so to speak, like, just incrementally. And so some of the things that we did to kinda help with you know, once we designed, you know, whatever it was that we were trying to, you know, fix or, you know, design the process that ultimately addressed the concern was we tried to roll things out in phases, like, the adoption to catch up. Right? If you just throw everything at everybody all at once, what sticks? And so we had to get people comfortable with the idea that this was constantly gonna be iterative. And so let's roll something out. Let's listen. Let's hear. Let's iterate. Let's roll something else out that complements it. Start simple. Because when you make something very complicated, the idea that I have to remember all of these things, the click paths and, you know, what needs to be true to be doing x, y, and z, people just don't retain it. And so if we can make it intuitive, we can make it simple, people could grab onto the adoption, and then we would continuously build from there. And I think positioning those changes in process people are humans. They resist change because it's uncomfortable and different, which is totally normal. here. Yeah. And so positioning the change as well, we're doing this for you, not to you, and here are the whys. Like, in order for us to be the advisory, you know, capable function that we want to be, here are the things that we don't need to be doing in the tactics anymore. And so to your point is when we're not walking dogs or making coffee, it's in the time that you're spending that you used to do, you know, scheduling interviews or, you know, screening candidates. Are you digging into more market intelligence and bringing it out to a launch call? Are you advising your hiring managers in a way that like, I always, you know, bring this up. When was the last time we told a a manager I wouldn't make that hire? Like, I don't think that that's the right fit for our organization. Like, those are the conversations we should be, you know, impacting and influencing because we. own this process, and no one interviews more people than talent acquisition does in this in any organization. They miss you know, they may make the decisions and the or the final decisions, but, like, we can absolutely impact that. And so we have to show up differently, and you don't you can't just say I'm valuable, so you should value me. You have to show up valuable. And so capacity gives the recruiters permission to remove being reactive from their behaviors, and it gives them permission to advise. And so when you kinda pick off all the, you know, low value and you just keep moving along, change is constant. And so there is no destination that once we're done with this, we'll be good. Because by the time we get to the end of what we thought was the end, the stuff we did at the beginning is probably now changing. And so we have to be nimble and agile enough to be able to adapt constantly. And so that's how we approached it. Was, like, bring it back a little bit. Let's start picking off where we think we can make an impact, phasing out rollouts, letting people catch up. And, again, it's not perfect. And if. you talk to recruiters here at JCI, they will tell you, I didn't feel all that in the way that Mike's talking about it. But we'll get there because and the results have the outcomes have shown that we are on a path to more effectiveness, more efficiency. And so sometimes the field doesn't always feel that way because change is so impactful. Yeah. I I think it's I think you've got so many good things that I hopefully, the audience has taken a lot of those down, but I I love the the point about the the change in user behavior. I I share often because I talk about broader AI these days, and I share one of the the top five reasons for AI failure is nothing to do with the technology, and it's the change management. Particularly, like, it's what you're talking about. Like, how do you tell the person what to do differently? Do you tell them, you know, how you expect them to show up? But also giving them the the comfort around, like, what do you what do you expect their data look like differently with the tool? And then understanding there's humans, and there's gonna be some adoption. What are the the techniques you're gonna use to to change a bit? Particularly recruiters, there's some have been doing that role for, you know, like you said, you know, fifteen, twenty years. They're experts at what they do, and now we're telling them there's a AI that'll do some of that. Right? I'd I I love how you talked about the phasing. By the way, I would tell people, like, there's phasing the implementation versus phasing the rollout. And and I know they sound like the same things, but you should work with your teams and get advice. Like, sometimes I see customers, it's really smart to, like, get the deployment set up, but then phase actually the launch of the tools. Right? Because it may make sense to, like, coordinate the implementation of one thing and another go really well, like, not giving it all the users the same day, which is what Mike's talking about, could could be a bit overwhelming. So work with your teams to understand that. Different things go together in the right way and can be can be built and constructed together, but you may wanna kinda tease giving them the new toys not all at once. So I I love that part too, Mike. And I think it's just about empowering people. It sounds like that's what you guys did, and and that was the message of how do we how do we raise, you know, you from administrative order takers to true consultants for the manager. We had a question that came in, and I thought maybe we'd we'd we'd do an audible and answer one of these live if you're okay with that, Mike. I thought it was a good question and it was relevant. So Julianna r asked, AI is here, and we know that everyone is at different stages of understanding and knowledge. How do we prepare teams, hiring managers, HR, and candidates for AI? Could you give any examples of how you did that and how we convince everyone that AI does not alone guarantee success? That's a good question because, you know, as you think about change in general, you can have a change plan, but if you're not change ready, it really doesn't matter what you plan. Right? And so this ties directly into how do we make people more adaptable to, you know, these the ongoing flurry of changes that will be coming with AI. And it may sound cliche. We have I've worked with somebody that that says this often. You know? It's like the Jetsons for that's a a dated, you know, reference, but, like, AI is like the Jetsons. We have, like, all the and it's scary. And I'm like, it's not scary. Did anybody watch the Jetsons and think that I don't want that to be my reality? And so we really have to embrace what AI can do. And so some of the things that we've done is just honestly demonstrate what it can do. You know? We we use, you know, one of the generative AI tools and just share the screen and talk about, like, here's what I did. I created an agent or analyze this data for me. Like, how long would that have taken you if you had done it on your own or if you had to create a document on your like, those sorts of things, like, make it very normal for people to understand because everybody is going to be on that growth curve when it comes to AI, and everybody's at a different but that's not different than any time in history. Right? Like, everybody being ready for, you know, one thing is never going to be, you know, consistent. And so I would just tell people that they need to embrace it because it will make their lives easier. I mean, know, we'll look back on this, you know, probably five to ten year period in the same way that we look back on for those that were around in the early nineties about, you know, Internet and, you know, .coms. Like, how did we operate without the Internet? There was a time where that was very real, and it's gonna be the same for AI. And so there's going to it it it's accelerating very quickly. And so just practical examples for people to use that how they can make their current day to day much more of you know, use it for generating phone screen notes, use it for, you know, creating a document, you know you know, from the generative AI standpoint. Because then once things start moving towards, like, much easier agentic use, they're more ready for that next phase of it. And so you kinda drip it out, but it is absolutely here, and it's it's it's really not anything to be afraid of it. It's an accelerator. It's an elevator. Like, it's not replacing the human element of the work that we do, Yep. and so we really have to embrace how it works around us. Yep. I think that's I think you nailed it. I think that's the elevation piece and the the change. I love the Jetsons piece. I I remember as a kid, I think it was, like what was her name? Rosie, the robot or whatever? But I wanted one of those. I thought that was great because I never wanted that to, like, make my bed or anything. So I'm waiting for that to come out still. Yeah. Alright. One other quick question I just think relevant, and we'll kinda there's a lot of great questions coming in. I think we'll get some of these at the end. But there's one about how could you adapt to a completely new industry of your niche and use AI to do more efficient recruitment process? So, this is coming from Hanya, but she's saying how do you adapt, to a completely new industry of your niche and use AI to do more efficient recruitment process? You know, it's kinda back to what I was, you know, what I was just talking about is, like, there's never been more access to information at our fingertips, readily available, almost on demand. And so, you know, in the past, I think when you think about, like, a niche industry, the people who are most successful in a niche were the people that had the most information about that particular niche. And the paradigm's kinda flipped a little bit. It's actually the people that have the questions about the niche that can be much more informed because everybody has access to the same information at this point. You know? You can go on any one of those generative AI tools, ask a question, and and get your answer. And so if you wanna get grounded in a new technology or new space or whatever the case may be, you have access to learn in new and different ways that just weren't available, candidly, ten years ago. And so, like, I use AI personally to teach myself. Like, I have a conversation with it, because I have an expert now that can give me the insights that I need. And so when you talk about actually introducing technology into a process a little bit more complicated, you're you know, requires a little bit more integration and and some of those more intentional use cases. But diving in head first is should has never been easier because you can get you don't have to go seek out in 10 different channels of, you know, an article or a podcast or a movie or a document. Like, you can get all of this. You can literally ask your question the way you want to ask it, and you can tell them to give you an answer in a way that you would understand it. And so it'll really does elevate your knowledge quickly, and it can inform what you wanna do. Maybe it is with in implementing a tool through an integration and how you should be thinking about it and what the best recommended approach is. And so that's how I think about it is, like, what what are the things that AI couldn't help me do? Yep. And I haven't come up with a lot of them. I love that. I we're gonna dive into a lot more questions, so keep them coming because I think these answers are amazing. I do wanna you know, I think everybody always says, like, these aspirations sound amazing, but and I think you illustrated a great approach to your transformation. We know success comes from prioritizing, you know, your people, the processes, you know, rolling out these changes the way you did. I think, you know, key focus on early wins, And then I think you talked about iterating quite a bit. But I'd I'd love to share with the audience maybe some of the early outcomes because it you know, you saw that this translated into measurable and non measurable impact. And so, Mike, could you share a little bit about what what you've seen so far? Absolutely. I mean, you know, real impact being, you know, faster decision making, you know, around screening times. We've seen a significant reduction in time to fill. We're engaging candidates where they are rather than requiring them to kinda figure out how to engage with us. We've been able to handle higher volumes without hiring proportional headcount that we would have, you know, in years past. We've definitely seen a shift from tactical work to becoming more strategic and being included in conversations in the organization around talent discussions. And it's not something that we necessarily can measure, but we've seen meaningfully deeper relationship or partnerships with our hiring managers that they are looking for us. to be, you know, the subject matter experts that we've always wanted to be. I think that that's the ultimate irony of it. Like, I think as a as a group, recruiters, myself included, for a long time have been we wanna be at the table. We wanna we wanna have, you know, strategic input into what's going on. And once you're at the table, you have to know what to say, and you have to know what to do. And that's where you start bringing value, and we've been invited to the table, and we have a perspective to share. Now these numbers on the screen here, they're very real, and they are very they're achievements. Like, I I'm very deeply grateful for the team. We have an unbelievable TA operations team, We've and got leaders around the globe that are, you know, champions of the work, but we are constantly learning. Like, this is not a finished product. We didn't and don't always get it right. You know, it's just an effort to constantly improve. And so just telling people to use tools doesn't just get you here. There's gotta be a commitment and discipline around, you know, continuous improvement and improved efficiency. Because as I said, TA has so many different handoffs that it really doesn't create a lot of different areas where you can have bottlenecks and and waste. And so to have anything completely optimized or even standard, especially at a global organization like Johnson Controls, is just not feasible. But if we're on the path. to continuously approving, then we're on the right we're on the right path for sure. You know what? What's so cool about the these metrics, and I hope, audience, you can see this, clearly in the stats, is that you're you're showing, I think, multiple vectors of of value. So on one hand, you talked a lot about, like, the recruiter capacity freed up to be a talent adviser, and that led to better hiring manager relationships. I imagine that that shows up as, like, hiring manager NPS too and things like that. So that's that's one vertical. That's experience. Right? That's that's better capacity. But you're also showing, like, velocity in a lot of these, which, by the way, you know, again, if I if I, you know, know your business well enough, I know some of these roles are, you know, again, manufacturing or revenue generation. And so I imagine if these these time to fills are quicker, those are people enroll quicker, so value the organization quicker. So I think what's cool about these and and, I mean, I personally always love this stuff. It's like when we get the stuff right, we're we're we're not just doing what you talked about, Mike, which is obviously, you know, transforming the TA process, but you're you're driving a lot of business impact in multiple areas. And I think some of those are listed on that slide there, but, really cool to. see. And and just kinda add on that. I mean, you know, when we talk about traditional TA metrics, time to sales cycle, and all of that stuff, I think what we will eventually as, you know, our industry evolves into more of the talent advisory, you know, capabilities across the board, we'll see things like time to productivity. Right? Time to effectiveness. You know, things along those lines which are directly tied to a business impact. Because, again, if you can fill something very quickly and then they are it still takes them twelve to eighteen months to be proficient in their job when you could have high had had the hiring process been maybe more insightful, could you have gotten somebody, you know, productive in six months? We should be the engine that kinda helps articulate that. Right? Time of vacancy, Yep. time to productivity, put those together. Now we're making real impact in the organization. So how is the how are the hires that we have helped recommend and and generate impacting the transformation of the organization? And so it's less about how long it took us to fill it and more about how long did it take us to get the person that we wanted as productive as we need them to be to do the things we need them to do. And that's how the that's. how the industry has shifted. Yep. Yeah. It's exciting. Maybe we'll these results are awesome. And, again, these are what's exciting for me is I I think, you know, every company is a bit different, but, you know, I I see this story play out over and over again where when when we apply, you know, AI in this case and transformation the right way, customers can continue to see sort of versions of these results. So, so it's it's great to see. But in any transformation, there's always learnings. Right, Mike? And so things you might have done differently, things, that could have been better. People people like success, but they also wanna learn from what didn't work. Right? So would you mind sharing, you know, some of the key learnings from your journey as well? Yes. And I could have done a whole forty five minutes on the the lessons we've learned on this journey. The you know, I it's like, first and foremost, entering into any sort of, you know, operating model adjustment or redesign, you have to be real with where you are as a function and as an organization. Right? When you get tools and demos and, you know, all these things that, you know, profess to solve the problems that you're experiencing, if you don't understand where you are, not only in your journey, but also, like, from a technology standpoint, what you saw in the demo may not live in your own instance. So you have to be real with what you're trying to accomplish and how you're trying to get there. You know, starting simple and building things that are in intuitive are so critical because it's very easy to get complicated right off the bat. And. I think the intuitive part is actually really critical because if you build it intuitively, if you if you create a process that's intuitive, there's less change impact because people understand how to kinda go about it. I always use the example of, like, the apps that you have on your phone. Like, every time we get an app update, you get a change management document that tells you all the new changes that are do you get a training demo every single time? Like, often, maybe they update it in the App Store, but you you just click around and you touch buttons and you try it out. And so if you could build from a simple place that's intuitive, adoption will follow, and it it's much easier to scale. Do not do everything at once. There is no problem. There are no, you know, one solve or one size solutions for all your problems. And then with the problems you fix along the way, they create other problems for the ones that you either fix before or after. And so really take a deliberative approach on how to approach, you know, the issues you're you're trying to solve for. I'll leave it at I'll leave one this one at that is there are no global standards. Like, if you think you're gonna have a process that is one size fits all across the globe, I'd love to talk to you because I I I haven't been able to figure out how to do that. And then lastly, I would say just change is an ongoing thing. It's always been, but it feels more pronounced now that teams need to be agile and adaptable so that we can continue to innovate and do things differently. And so, you know, learning all of these through not doing them this way was my learnings. Like, not having you know, trying to solve all the problems at once, not making things intuitive, that doesn't work. Didn't work for us. And then kind of the first point that I made was understanding where you were or where you are. We I don't know that we took full inventory of our shelves at that time either. And so we thought we were doing one thing and ultimately saw a different thing. And, ultimately, what happened there was, like, who was right, who was wrong. It doesn't matter, but where were we off? It was probably making too many assumptions without really knowing where we were or having a vision of what we wanted to get to. And I think the last point that I'll make is the transformation is never done. Like, we're always transforming. The goal. is to create a system that enables us to continue to to evolve and transform. So those are just some of the things that we've learned along our journey. I love it. I mean, such such helpful guidance. I would if if you're in the audience, we'll resend this recording out. But I think line for line, those are some great great, great things to follow. Mike, there was actually a question from Audrey C. Piggybacks, and and maybe you feel like you already answered this, but was curious if you would add anything. Said, what was a hurdle you didn't anticipate when shifting from a transactional TA model to talent adviser approach, and how did you navigate. it? Cut it cut could you say that again? I didn't I didn't catch that one. Yeah. No problem. It says, what was a hurdle you didn't anticipate when shifting from transactional TA to a talent adviser approach, and how did you navigate it? Well so we have a lot of recruiters. I mean, we have over 200 plus people in our function. And so I think what probably showed up is different capabilities. You know, asking people to be advisers when maybe they're not fully comfortable with that. And so, you know, you have mixed results on how we can influence. Like, some people are very good at it, and some people, you know, aren't as comfortable. And so, you know, we did some sessions to help kind of illustrate what a good launch call would look like, you know, different than order taking or, you know, making selection decisions, how that looks in a more advisory capability or capacity. But when you've got a wide range of experiences for people, I think you're always gonna see some variance in in how ready the grand, you know, change is. So I don't know that we fully anticipated that. I mean and, honestly, we probably should have. I don't know why we had I I didn't think about it in that way that if we just were if the maybe I I anticipated people were like, oh, this is what I've always wanted, and now it's here, and I can do it. I don't think that they really drew some of the dot or connected the dots or drew the conclusions that we needed to. And so we had to, again, take a step back and and try to, you know, Yeah. bring people along to, you know, show them what it would look like and let them ask questions and, you know, do all of the things that because everybody learns differently. So that was. probably our our our biggest opportunity was that everybody was at really different levels of being ready to do this. Yep. No. That makes total sense. You know, there's something in here that you described that actually I've experienced in our our own journey. You know, Workday is a, you know, is a traditional SaaS application. And as we move into, you know, an AI first era, even the skills our team have around AI is evolving. And so we've had to think about similar to this, like, move to talent adviser, like, how do you teach someone to talk about AI? And it's not just the capabilities because, like, the shift and the change is different. You don't just give somebody AI and say configure it. Right? You've learned that. And so, even even, like, that idea of, like, role playing, like, we have, one of our acquisitions, Sana Learn, has this ability to, like, build, like, little, playbooks where you can try out, you know, content and and role play it and then quiz yourself at the end, which is cool. And so even giving that to some of our teams to try on new AI pitches so they get comfortable with that Because it sometimes it's not even the new capability. It's just I haven't I haven't been a talent adviser before. So how do I do that well and getting them comfortable? So I I love that and then finding ways to facilitate that. So really cool stuff. We're gonna keep keep plugging along here because there's so many good questions I wanna get to them. So maybe just last thing before we get to some live q and a. Mike, next phase. So you've delivered some great results. You've learned some lessons. What are you thinking next is the next step in your your TA innovation journey? So we've been on this, you know, kind of furious roller coaster of tools and technology over the last, you know, handful of years, probably four or five. And so for the for the future for the I don't know what future means, six months, a year, eighteen. What for the foreseeable future, the way we're planning on or what we're planning on is really stabilizing and optimizing, continuously refining how we use the tools that we have available for us or to us. You know, we're building a talent system that is try and it essentially is trying to create all the things that we're trying to do with Allen Advisory. And so we have to get really good at what we're already doing before we continue to build on top of it. And in doing that, it's better aligning our recruiters to be aligned with the businesses in the ways that they need to be supported. I think in the in the future state of how I see us operating, and I think AI is such a powerful influencer in the moment, we have to know or we have to at least have a per point of view of how AI is impacting the roles that we're hiring for and how are we advising hiring managers what they should be looking for in talent. And if we're not doing that, then we're hiring people that could do the old job and may not be able to do the new job. And so how do we get every day one step closer to that being our reality? And so it comes with, like, listening and stabilizing tools and technology today, listening to the feedback, you know, making some adjustments, optimizing it in a more effective way. And then we can help rethink the roles and responsibilities of not only our own jobs, but the jobs that we're helping people make decisions on. And so it's just building that capability. Like, all of these things get us closer to that that approach or or that, you know, state. And then who knows what it'll look like when we get to that state? What are we pushing what we constantly have to be pushing the balance of, you know, what we're thinking of. Like, there is no destination. Like, the journey is the destination. So how are we more ready today than we were yesterday is is how I think about it. Yeah. There's a there's a cool thing we've been workshopping with customers around continuity, which is, like, if you take the person who's vacating the role whether, you know, you know, we'd view that as negative or positive attrition or irregardless. Right? Like, there's voluntary and then top involuntary or or something that you expect or not. But irregardless, like, we had Jason in the role before, and now we may want j something like Jason. We may want something different because Jason was great. But, like, if I had a chance to hire again and future proof this, I may think about that. And I think people aren't always taking the time to even evaluate the answer to that question because they're copying and pasting the job or the the role from before. But even that is part of that talent advisory you talked about. Right? Like, what is the next version of this so that we're not just, you know, helping you grow your team, but we're helping you future proof your team, in in a in correspondence with the skills in the the market. So I I love give. you a practical that. example of of how we would how we should be thinking about it. Like, most organizations in some form or fashion hire salespeople, And some sales roles are territory driven and, you know, a lot of, like, historically cold calling and prospecting. Well, I'm assuming some of the, you know, CRM tools for salespeople do some pretty detailed digging and prospecting and can give you a customer prospect list and a readiness and all of these sorts of things. If we were only hiring for people that can do door knocking and cold calling, how is that helpful to the future of that job? And so a manager. may be thinking about it in those terms and be like, I need somebody that can knock on doors in this ZIP code or, you know, in this vertical. Or we could say, listen. Here's how you should be thinking about it. You know? What tools do our salespeople have at their fingertips? What does prospecting look like for them today? Because maybe the person you want doesn't have this experience that you think you need, and that's how we influence. That's how we show up differently. And I think that that is a real world. example of how we should be positioning ourselves. Like, we're the tipping tip of the spear when it comes to talent identification. And so if we can influence. at the entry point, then it really impacts how our organizations operate. So Love that. Such a good example. Well, we have just a growing first of all, thank you, audience. Thank you, Mike, for this great overview, but we have some great questions. So I'd love to get to these if that's cool and start knocking some of these down because they're really good. So we have Aaron and Angela asked a combination of questions around shifting from regional t TA to global TA, and you talked about some of your challenges with with global while maintaining regional alignment with local labor laws, compliance requirements. How did you balance, like, rack volume, regional nuances, language capabilities, you know, with this idea of, you know, having global process and reinvention, but also being sort of, like, localized as well. I think that there's there's gotta be a methodology where you have flexibility within your framework. You have to have a framework, obviously, to be able to, you know, execute anything globally. Now the flexibility within that framework, you know, works councils, GDPR, you know, data privacy, all of those sorts that kinda is more particular to the local markets. And so there's gotta be a somewhat of a flexibility in that. You know, some of the things when you talk about, like, rec volumes and languages and all of those dynamics, and those are real. Like, the like, what we handle in The United States is very different than what, you know, a recruiter in Germany handles is different than a recruiter in India handles. And so Yep. that has to be realized that it's not a one size. Why can't they just do all the same as what everybody else is doing? There are cultural dynamics. Yep. There are other, you know, parts of the process, you know, offer agreements and things or employment agreements. All of those things are real. You know, one of the but we also can overcomplicate things too. Right? Like, asking questions about why things happen, or is that legal? Is that a preference? Is that something that we did to ourself? And when we went live with our ATS, you know, years ago, we decided to translate our ATS in 17 languages, which we thought was a very good idea, you know, engage with candidates in the languages that they work and, you know, live in. But when we looked at the data after about a year, 90 literally, 98, like, 7% of our languages were English or Spanish. But every time we wanted to change one word on our careers page or our career or application or anything, we had to change it 17 times. And so we overcomplicated it thinking we were solving. So the the point is is when it comes to, like, those types of complexities, languages, if you have data, let data tell a story for you and inform that decision. If a process needs to take longer in another country because of some sort of, you know, works council or, you know, some sort of, you know, local dynamic, is there data that shows that, or is there something that you could benchmark it against? I mean, really understand what is a we have to do this because it's this location, or we just chose at one point, and we're still sticking with it. But the reality is is wherever you land, whether it's it's legally required to do or it's a preference that you decided, it will never look the same across the entire enterprise. So as long as you have some foundational framework that'll and your flexibility is allowed to operate within, you should be able to kinda, at least, to some degree, customize what you wanna do region. to region. Alright. So we're we're we we're moving into because just say I wanna try and get to these. We'll move into, like, as much as we can rapid fire, but these answers are so good. I don't wanna I don't wanna rush any of this, but I wanna try and get to as many as we can here, Mike. So there there's one thing that keeps pulling up, which is you talked about the capacity increases. How how would you can can you share, if you're comfortable, what, like, average rec volume look like across the team? And and then sort of what did that look like after this? Because you talked about changing that and and how it's improved, if at all. Is it do you have any definition of what, like, good capacity rec load looks like, that came. up? So it's a it's a hard one for me to answer because our model is somewhat of a hybrid stuff. We have full life cycle recruiters that handle all of the process for the racks, and then we have some that handle kind of candidate facing, some that can handle business facing. We have a sourcing team, and there's all interdependencies. on that, so it's hard to get to. I would say, you know, a full life cycle recruiter in The US, I mean, we're probably somewhere in the, you know, the low thirties in terms of requisitions. Obviously, varying. stages, some are the offer. You're not putting as much time and effort into that. It's lower in in Europe. It's probably somewhat similar in in Asia, but it's a hard one for me to answer because our model just it's not really set up for, like, average rec volume per recruiter because we have a lot of different parts and pieces to our model. Yep. Makes sense. You know, for what it's worth for the team across our f 500 class customers, we see the average record is in that 25 to 30 range, across customers. You'll you'll have exceptions like health care skews very weirdly. You'll get, like, 80 racks on a desk, which is, you know, 20 of them are nurses and stuff like that. But in in Mike's industry, that that number holds up pretty well. And we're usually seeing on average, like, anywhere from, like, 20 to 40% increase in capacity. The thing is, to Mike's point, how people use the capacity will vary. Some will say, keep the same rec load, but I want you to do the relationship management and the talent advisory instead. Others, I had a, you know, large manufacturer say, we're just gonna shift that to capacity and, recruiter, you now have 35 recs. It varies, and that that's really up to you how to use the efficiency. The point is that you gain the capacity for sure. Alright. Next one, Mike. We have I think this is a good one. How has this helped with hard to fill roles that require very specific industry experience, technical knowledge certifications, etcetera? How has it helped the advisory? I'm assuming each other, how has the advisory approach helped? Yeah. I just need the transformation is really what, you know I think it puts us in a seat that is more capable of advising. And so especially for some of these more new age, you know, functions, like, it's it's timely. Right? There is a lot of uncertainty. on, you know, what I remember a couple years ago, prompt prompt engineer. Like, that was a role that do we do we need those still anymore? And and so, like, advising on some of these, you know, more high-tech roles. Because in many ways, a lot of the jobs that not only we have, but everybody has is a job that's never really existed. And so when you're advising in that capacity, there's a responsibility to kinda understand how what this role does in that marketplace, and we should be positioned to be able to do that. I mean, we have tools that give us market intel, and we have you know, you know, you can use any of the generative tools that that would give you that. But it it arms us with more information to share and provide value, And it only becomes more pronounced when it's, like, kind of a newer industry or it's a newer vertical or whatever, you know, the segment is. If it's, you know, somewhat unchartered, we can help frame the narrative for our hiring leaders to give them a perspective of how they should be thinking about talent in that space. Yeah. I think the cool thing I've seen too, Mike, I don't know if you'd agree, like, the AI gives you quicker signals that it may be a hard to fill job or a challenge. So rather than waiting three weeks to find out we're not gonna get, you know, the candidate flow we're looking for when we post the job, we may see, like, pool dynamics really quickly be weak or market intel. And that, to your point, can inform not only the conversation with the hire manager, maybe we shift the requirements, maybe we shift the location, maybe we shift the I mean, even down the road, we shift the talent type, the worker type. We have some customers talking about that. But but but, ultimately, it can inform the sourcing strategy, and maybe that's why you have, you know, dedicated sources. You can go out and attack that problem or whatever it may be. So I I think this sort of allows you to maybe the problem is still the same, but you can address the problem much sooner and and we're correct. also gives? you, like, saying something's hard to fill to a manager. They're just like, ugh. That's an excuse. And so now you have tangibly well, this is why it's hard to fill. Here are the things that you're looking for, and these don't usually show up in this type of role. And so in order for us to find these skills, these are the types of profiles that we should be considering, and they don't always have this in their profile or in their experience. And so having a back and forth of really positioning the you know, what what our what our approach is and and developing an actual sourcing strategy. Right? I'll these are more important, so I'm gonna focus on these skills and these attributes, Yep. and then we think we could train for the rest. My quick question that I know a lot of people are wondering coming from Brody, how long did it take you from start of the project to get to the point you are today? Like, when when did this journey start? '21. So, like, '21 is when we've really started, like, looking at tools, technology enablement, and and model redesign. Like, it's when did you, how long did it take to implement? we're still in the middle. Like, there's they we're still I mean, there's different tools and, you know, and whatnot that, you know, had us implementation in a finished date. But, ultimately, the end to end model, it's a it's an ongoing transformation. I'd be happy to talk more details in specifics on, like, which tool, what tools, all of that sort of stuff offline, but Yep. I look at it as all one journey. Like, these are just, you know, parts on that journey when you talk about, like, what what are the tangible tools. Cool. Well, believe it or not, somehow, we've we've actually gone through an hour. That felt like it snapped my fingers and went through, which just tells me it was a great conversation. Unfortunately, it means we didn't get to all the questions, but I appreciate everybody logged them. We'll try and get you answers to them. Mike and I are also available on LinkedIn. Hopefully, that's okay to. mention you're out there, Mike. Feel free to reach out. Hit us up, and we're happy to support you. Just kind of, obviously, thank you for everybody who joined our session today. We greatly appreciate it. As a reminder, first of all, huge thank you, Mike. That was awesome. Yeah. Your expertise and your power, your story, I think, is, it's no surprise we had all those great questions. Reminder, you're gonna get an email with the recording, additional resources. And please, please fill out the survey to help us know if we're doing a great job and how we can get better for you. Most importantly, thanks everyone for joining, and have a great workday. Mike, thanks again, and have a great week, day, everyone. Joe. Thanks for having me, Jason.