Expanding talent pipelines with alternative strategies for more diverse, and more effective, teams
[00:00:00] This edition of PeopleTech is sponsored by Cerberus Capital Management. And welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. My guest today is Melissa Cebula, The Head of Talent Acquisition at Cerberus Capital Management. She's all about expanding talent pipelines with alternative strategies
[00:00:29] so that employers can build more diverse and more effective teams. We're going to talk about how she goes about that and what the payoffs are on this edition of PeopleTech.
[00:00:42] So welcome, first of all. And second of all, could you tell me about Cerberus and tell what you look for in employees? Yeah, so Cerberus is a global leader in the alternative investment space. We've been around for about 31 years and have about 60 billion assets that are under management.
[00:01:03] The three main investment areas that we tend to dabble in is real estate credit and private equity. And what about the people you're looking to hire in retain, I guess? Yeah, so when it comes to what we look for in our talent,
[00:01:22] I think there are really three main characteristics that we look for in all hires. That comes down to integrity. We really look for people that have strong core values and ethics. We look for individuals that want to be collaborative. So we hear all voices.
[00:01:41] We're looking for individuals that are team players. They really look to empower and develop others. They respect each other and listen with an open mind, irrespective of their rank within the company. The last thing that we look for is innovation.
[00:01:58] So people that are really looking for unique ways to problem solve and think outside the box is what we look for. If you notice on our logo, we have a slant on our sea. It's what we call the surplus edge and that stands for innovation.
[00:02:14] In each of these qualities are a part of services purpose statement. And that trickles down into just tiring as well as the culture we embody internally across the firm. Do you find that there's people matching your desires out there in the job market?
[00:02:34] Yes, absolutely. It does take some interviewing and behavioral types of questions. Sometimes even a personality test to get to the core of that. But absolutely I think that there's an enormous amount of talent and people that are out there that bring those qualities to the table.
[00:02:54] Now you wrote an article for the HCM Technology Report and Recruiting Daily talking about your approach to hiring and adding people, adding the people you're looking for. One of the things that you said is financial firms need to start looking beyond the IV League.
[00:03:14] You expand on that. First of all what's the background? And second of all, why is it important that you spread your reach as a work? Yeah, so traditionally most of the financial industry is known from recruiting from top schools and
[00:03:33] Ivy League schools. And I think what you see with that over time is you find students or talent that it's almost the exact same. They're bringing the same perspective into the company. But research shows that the more diverse a team is and the varying backgrounds that they bring
[00:03:53] to an organization, the better the outcome or the better the reward or solutions are created when you do have diverse perspectives. And part of that is looking across different schools or partnerships that we have and for us we've targeted non-profit organizations and
[00:04:13] HBCUs to bring in talent from some of the non-traditional talent pipelines that could be Harvard or your Yale students as well. We even go to state universities a lot of top tier financial firms tend to shy away from more state universities. They're very selective
[00:04:31] in the types of students or talent that they're targeting based on their educational background. So for us we took a different approach to bring in talent that brings a variety of different perspectives that ultimately help create larger business or greater business outcomes for us.
[00:04:50] When you're looking to attract some of these people, some of these candidates, what's your pitch? How do you get them interested? So surface is very much so meritocracy we're super entrepreneurial. Although we've been around
[00:05:03] for 31 years I say that we're 31 years young. Why that is is we're always looking to challenge the status quo. Think about ways in which we can do things differently, innovation that
[00:05:15] came down to one of the qualities that we look for in our talent and that's really important here. And anybody that has that agile mindset or business transformation mindset is easily attracted to us in that way and that is one of the key qualities and selling points
[00:05:33] of the firm is agile thinking forward thinking and the opportunity to be entrepreneurial. Now you also talked about skills in the context of not always looking for people who have financial backgrounds. You're thinking that people who have other backgrounds and other skills can fit right
[00:05:57] in the contribute. Could you tell me about that first of all well yeah just let's start with that how does that work? You know why you approached that? Yeah so transferable skills I think is the
[00:06:10] topic we're hitting upon here what's super interesting is technology is a driver a lot of businesses in their operations and there's a lot of research that shows that financial services have a gap
[00:06:26] in technology talent in order to help fill those gaps you really need to be challenged to think outside of the box. How can you get that right skill? How can you solve the problem on the
[00:06:37] technology front and find the right individuals that can make us move faster? Can help us close that gap and continue to push the business forward? For us we need to identify skills that could transfer
[00:06:52] into our environment there still will be a learning opportunity or a learning curve and for those technical folks they might come from a fan company and they'll lack that business or their investment knowledge but our teams are equipped to train those individuals on the
[00:07:07] business side and we feel to learn the business side versus the technology side it'd be a shorter learning curve and more obtainable for those that have technical skills to learn the business rather than the opposite the other way around. We have a really interesting example of that and
[00:07:25] it's not fully related to technology but I think I'll be able to make a clear point and demonstrate how we've been able to do that successfully. We recently hired the Sarah, a former
[00:07:37] intelligence officer and of the army who is an army-reacher and she has over two decades of experience in conflict zones. We brought them into our supply chain and our strategic opportunities team serving as a managing director and what's unique about him is his insights on the battlefield
[00:07:55] really quick him to help us evaluate supply chain opportunities, identify other potential investment opportunities. Granted he needed to learn the business side but his experience in the field and as a former intelligence officer is very valuable to us to consider until leverage as we think about
[00:08:16] investment opportunities. Do you love news about LinkedIn indeed Google and just about every other recruitment tech company out there? Hell yeah I'm Chad I'm cheese where the Chad and G's podcast all the latest recruiting news and insights are on our show dripping in snark and attitude subscribe today
[00:08:37] wherever you listen to your podcasts we out with all of these people with all of these different backgrounds. Is that does that make it harder to put teams together or do you have a special way
[00:08:51] of dealing with that? Yeah that's a really good question mark. We're very strategic and and selective about how we do that not every team we're going to bring in individuals that have trades for both skills. There will be certain components or teams across the business where we might
[00:09:08] identify how that can be done and where that can be done. Let's talk about data for a minute because that just really seems to have been meant into talent acquisition nowadays. How do you use data
[00:09:25] when you're recruiting? This is what are my favorite topics and in full transparency we're early on in our in our data journey. In order to get to the really innovative or sexier part of the AI
[00:09:38] side of data you need to have a strong foundation with clean data that's usable and that could be analyzed. So for us we started that journey this year we put a great foundation in place and
[00:09:50] then as we think about 2024 I foresee us leveraging this information to better to predict for attrition and job performance being able to see where things went right. What are the types of skills that have worked really well here? What are the types of skills that have not worked
[00:10:10] so well here? Where are we see what types of backgrounds do those individuals come from? Is there anything that we're missing from the talent pool and the current teams that we're seeing? Those are
[00:10:21] all I think areas in which talent acquisition data can help drive business insights across HR as a whole. You think financial companies you think data? So it does the fact that your financial company
[00:10:37] make handling the data and get other people in the company to trust the data and he's here. There's still a lot of people out there who are skeptical about data, in decisions based heavily on data and there's also a lot of people out there who are still
[00:10:55] not sure what they think about AI. So your culture is as a financial company where I would think people are familiar with numbers familiar with data. Do you find that you get resistance about these new technologies, new data analytics, new AI applications when you're trying to
[00:11:17] talk through a higher with hiring managers? Not as much as you would think. I think it's hard to combat some of that information that is there because all of our data is fact-based. We are
[00:11:30] collecting a number of interviews. We are collecting interview feedback and when we're able to go back and present that information, it actually makes it more real from for some of those hiring managers because they're hungry to see those numbers and those statistics. That I think it
[00:11:47] actually is quite eye-opening for them when we're able to provide that information. And that's part of the reason I think we've started this journey as it does equip us to have more intelligent conversations with our stakeholders. Obviously you're using a lot of technology. I assume to
[00:12:07] sort through people and identify the best candidates as you're working with all of that technology, what do you wish it offered? What can you easily do now that you want to? So it's incredible how advanced some of the systems and tools are, especially within this space.
[00:12:27] I think one of the things that has not been solved for is when you're in talent acquisition or within recruiting, there's a huge element of sourcing. Finding just the right type of person
[00:12:38] even reach out to. Not speak to, just reach out to create a short list. I have not seen a tool that's able to do that very well. I know that there are applications that are out there. I do
[00:12:52] think that there's a massive room for improvement to do it more accurately and faster. So say every week or every day, every computer can come in to their desk and have a slate of about 50,
[00:13:05] 50 or so profiles that are very much so on target and they no longer need to weed through those 50 and then could just start that outreach and that touch point to engage with talent.
[00:13:17] Well, so thank you very much. It was great to talk with you. I hope you'll come back and talk some more sometime. Absolutely. This was great Mark. I'm super excited to be here. Thank you
[00:13:27] so much for having me as well and I'll be back if you're willing to have me back. You can count me in. I guess today has been Melissa Sabula, the head of talent acquisition
[00:13:47] and serverless capital management. And this has been people tech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report, where a publication of recruiting data were also a part of every green podcasts to see all of their programs visit www.evigrainpodcast.com and to keep up with
[00:14:06] HR Technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day with the most trusted source of news in the HR Tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com and thanks to serverless capital management for sponsoring this edition of People Tech. I'm Mark Thurker.
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