Creating a Talent Collective with Natalie Stones

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[00:00:21] Oh, yeah, what's up everybody? It is Bob Hope's favorite podcast, aka the Chad & Cheese Podcasts. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined us always. The Woodstock to my Snoopy Chad Soosh is in the house.

[00:00:36] We're live at TA Week at the Qualify booth and we are getting to welcome Natalie Stones. There's an S at the In-Like Rolling Stone. Founder at Talent Collective. Natalie, welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:49] Thank you so much! Good morning!

[00:00:51] So good morning! A lot of our listeners don't know who you are. What?

[00:00:54] Give us a Twitter bio about what makes Natalie tick.

[00:00:58] Well, what makes me tick is talent acquisition. I'll stop it. I breathe it!

[00:01:02] We want poetry, reading. We want walks on the beach. Wine Tacing is definitely out there. That's okay. Red. Red. Okay. There we go.

[00:01:10] Love me, some Pinot Noir. I live in San Francisco, Napa Wine Country, all that thing.

[00:01:15] Good run.

[00:01:16] I am a woman in recruiting. I've been doing it for about 20 years. Both agency side and in-house corporate recruiting had talent roles.

[00:01:27] And now I run a community for women, and I do fractional recruiting. And I get to do what I want.

[00:01:34] I get to do what I want. She doesn't want to sing about a song from the 90s somewhere in the...

[00:01:40] You said Twitter bio like, what can I fit in that short amount of time?

[00:01:43] Well, you just did. So you're good. That's very good. That's not good. So let's talk about that.

[00:01:47] So in recruiting and now you have built this community, you're building this community.

[00:01:53] Yes. It's not built. You've got much to do.

[00:01:55] Yes.

[00:01:56] How did you go from one to the next? How do you go from recruiting corporate recruiting to building a community?

[00:02:03] And why?

[00:02:04] Give me the why first. Why did you think this was necessary? What's your why?

[00:02:08] Two very specific reasons. I don't know how crass I can be on this or if I say bad words.

[00:02:12] Of course. Yes.

[00:02:13] Of course. Yes.

[00:02:14] So, NSTs you want to be. We're like the two live crew of recruiting podcasts.

[00:02:18] Number one, I was so fucking tired of being laid off.

[00:02:22] In the past three years, I was laid off twice and I was like, man, how...

[00:02:26] This economy is just getting worse and worse and worse.

[00:02:28] Yeah.

[00:02:29] I need a community. I need more people to connect with at our NTA.

[00:02:32] Hopefully that'll help me find my next job.

[00:02:34] I couldn't find the right conferences to go to where I didn't feel like, okay, T.A.

[00:02:38] It's just a subset of HR.

[00:02:41] So everybody says LinkedIn is the answer. LinkedIn is not the answer.

[00:02:45] I don't use LinkedIn anymore.

[00:02:47] Okay.

[00:02:48] Actually, use recruit bot right behind us here.

[00:02:50] Okay.

[00:02:51] So a little plug for recruit bot.

[00:02:52] So we wanted to create something that didn't exist for ourselves.

[00:02:55] Opportunities to network. Get back out there post COVID.

[00:02:58] We wanted programming that was very hyper specific to recruiting.

[00:03:02] Recruiting operations. We wanted to geek out about it all day.

[00:03:05] And then we wanted to create more mentorship opportunities and ways for people to collaborate.

[00:03:09] So you say we, you mean women?

[00:03:11] Yes, my two co-founders and I, we were very passionate about it.

[00:03:15] But we created it specifically for women.

[00:03:17] Yes.

[00:03:18] Women plus, so those who identify.

[00:03:20] But the second reason we started it is because there's so many freaking communities out there that are ran by men.

[00:03:26] No offense. We love them.

[00:03:28] They are our male allies.

[00:03:29] They are a part of our community as speakers, panelists, contributors, partners.

[00:03:34] So they definitely play an important part in what we do.

[00:03:38] But when you look at all of the other communities side by side, I can't really find one that is.

[00:03:44] What's the mission of the organization to empower, advance and connect women in talent acquisition specifically?

[00:03:50] Okay.

[00:03:51] And we do that in the three different ways.

[00:03:53] Networking professional development and the mentorship.

[00:03:57] And what's membership numbers?

[00:04:00] What's the, is there a threshold to get into the organization?

[00:04:03] Talk about that.

[00:04:04] We launched June of last year.

[00:04:06] So we're in month seven.

[00:04:07] In the Bay Area, we started as kind of a beta test.

[00:04:10] And we now are at a little over 270 members globally with the most being in California right now because that's where we are.

[00:04:17] And then the other half across the US.

[00:04:20] And we have since launched other local communities, San Francisco, L.A., Seattle.

[00:04:27] We have Orange County tomorrow.

[00:04:29] And then I'll tell you about the other ones later.

[00:04:31] But really the threshold there isn't it's just you're a woman and your entire acquisition and benefits are.

[00:04:38] So you get the opportunity to be a part of our circle platform, bunch of resources, partner discounts.

[00:04:44] We have four to five workshops a month.

[00:04:47] We have in person networking events, in person speaker events.

[00:04:52] We have our partner experiences like last night we hosted a TA leader dinner.

[00:04:56] We have boardroom peer groups and we have mentorship programs.

[00:05:01] And that's part of our like standard.

[00:05:03] We call it our essential membership.

[00:05:05] But we also have an executive level one.

[00:05:07] So if you're a director level and above then you get kind of the amplified experiences.

[00:05:12] And then you get different exclusive events that you get invited to.

[00:05:16] So what if you're on the track to be one of those right because not everybody is a director, not everybody but they could aspire to be that one day.

[00:05:24] Are there like tracks to be able to get there and I know you guys are really early in the exception.

[00:05:29] We will do that.

[00:05:30] Thank you for the idea.

[00:05:31] No, we don't have formal tracks yet.

[00:05:33] But as part of our essential membership.

[00:05:36] We have recruiting coordinators that are in their sorcerers and we make sure to curate the virtual experiences.

[00:05:42] To make sure that it's content that could be relevant.

[00:05:45] Like throughout the month, we want there to be a topic that is recops focused, a staffing topic for our agency people.

[00:05:51] Something that's for more junior talent.

[00:05:53] And then something that's just more of a generalist topic.

[00:05:56] So no formal track but we try to make sure we have something for everybody.

[00:06:00] Okay.

[00:06:01] So how are you guys monetizing to be able to feed this because this is going to take a lot of a lot of fuel to be able to get in our looking to be a 501c3 or other.

[00:06:11] Yeah, we are.

[00:06:12] We're actually in the process of filing all of that right now.

[00:06:16] But early on we made a first time founder mistake and we started hosting our in-person events with like, you know, the light membership dues that we had every single time we were running negative.

[00:06:28] So we're like, okay, we can't do this but we still need to have these experiences.

[00:06:31] So we're monetizing by having partnerships with other recruiting technology companies, recruiting firms, HR tech.

[00:06:39] And so they help us co host these events.

[00:06:42] Other things that we're going to do is we have a partner directory.

[00:06:46] So any of these partners that want to be featured on our platform, they pay a cost to be on the platform.

[00:06:53] We also are co-writing content with people.

[00:06:57] So mostly right now is like sponsors and partners and kind of content collaboration.

[00:07:02] Gotcha.

[00:07:03] In the early days but more to come on that.

[00:07:05] In terms of conversations that the group is having what's what's trending?

[00:07:09] What's like the hot topics?

[00:07:11] What do you think it is?

[00:07:13] That's a trap question.

[00:07:15] Not touching whatsoever as a non-woman in recruiting.

[00:07:19] What do you think it is?

[00:07:22] Yeah, you know pay equity is one but it's actually not the most popular.

[00:07:26] What about leadership positions?

[00:07:27] I mean, what is it like 8% of Fortune 500 companies have a female CEO?

[00:07:33] I mean, there are plenty of topics that we could talk about.

[00:07:36] That should be burning topics.

[00:07:38] Which on the inside?

[00:07:39] Yes, exactly.

[00:07:40] I know which is going to reveal them now.

[00:07:42] Yeah, it's really like...

[00:07:44] Well okay, number one is like AI and recruiting.

[00:07:48] Everybody's you know in a frenzy about that.

[00:07:50] What is it about?

[00:07:51] Which is great from a vendor standpoint because you can get a lot of vendors to be able to get into this community right?

[00:07:56] And then again, this is an educational scenario.

[00:07:59] I mean, this is good on both sides for vendors to be able to help educate but also for obviously the community to learn.

[00:08:06] The value for us in having these partners is less about the financial donation.

[00:08:11] It's about bringing the innovation to the community so that they are constantly in the know of like all the technology, the innovation.

[00:08:19] Because not every tool is right for every company or stage or size or person.

[00:08:23] And so having these innovative conversations and topics is big.

[00:08:28] So AI is one.

[00:08:29] At the leadership level, they're talking more about like how do we strategically in the future hire back TA teams?

[00:08:36] Like will we ever need full time recruiting teams again?

[00:08:40] Or what about fractional?

[00:08:42] Fraction of recruiting is a thing. Could there be a benefit to scaling up and down your recruiting team as you need it as your business grows, seasonality.

[00:08:49] So that's actually a big, big one right now.

[00:08:51] You sound like an RPO right now.

[00:08:53] Well, we do also have talent refinery which is a fractional recruiting firm.

[00:08:57] So you know, a little plug for that on the side.

[00:09:00] But other things, yes, pay equity is a very important one.

[00:09:04] And another one, I think we're just at the most basic level right now where just so many of our members are laid off because of the economy.

[00:09:12] We're really talking about like how to create more opportunities for each other, how to partner on roles, how to make introductions to get a role, to pick up a project.

[00:09:23] So a lot of it is about work and staying relevant as a recruiter right now.

[00:09:29] But more will come the more that we have more female voices and passionate, you know, things that they're excited about talking about.

[00:09:38] So I didn't, I didn't answer your question, but I'm going to tell you what I'm surprised that you didn't say in your answer.

[00:09:44] Chad and I almost weekly, at least monthly talk about the demise of D.I., whether it's companies pulling back funding laying off leaders in the D.I movement.

[00:09:55] You didn't say any of that in terms of a concern with your members.

[00:09:58] But what are your thoughts on you know, the trend of me too, Black Lives Matter George Floyd, we're going the right direction looks like we've backed up your thoughts.

[00:10:10] So what we kind of see in recruiting is it was like this trend in this wave.

[00:10:16] And then once everyone was doing it, then how does anyone remain relevant with their D.I initiatives without making it like a very specific thing that we're trying to put out there, you know, like having good perks and benefits and everybody's having the snacks and the, you know, the dogs at the office like everybody's now doing the same thing.

[00:10:36] So how does anyone really diversify themselves as a D.I employer of choice?

[00:10:42] So I think what you're seeing is a lot of companies now are if you aren't really going to make a concerted effort to continue to maintain D.I initiatives or if you were just doing it as a trending initiative, then stop don't do it anymore because then you're not being authentic with it.

[00:10:59] And it's just becoming a thing to do because everyone else is doing it. So I think that's why you see some companies backing up with it because they don't want to be out there as, okay, we're doing what everyone else is doing instead like let's just focus on D.I initiatives that are important to us without having to make it a like marketing campaign type of thing.

[00:11:19] So I don't think it's going away. I think the buzz around it is demising a little bit because it became a very big marketing thing.

[00:11:28] So to kind of like fight back a little bit on that one, let's fight before when there were marketing budgets right they were marketing budgets they weren't they weren't diversity budgets right you had CDOs that were put in place that had no staff that had no budget right now this is when people were focused on it.

[00:11:46] Quote unquote focused right to actually do the right thing which we all know was bullshit in many cases Facebook spending millions of dollars and getting you know almost a bump at the end of the day if there's no pressure.

[00:11:58] Then nothing happens right so I agree with you 100% there was a smoke screen out there for years that we called D.I.

[00:12:05] Yes, and we put we put people in place that had no power they had no resources but the question is how do we how do we pivot into something that does

[00:12:15] matter it is meaningful without having an emphasis on it at all.

[00:12:21] I think what we're seeing evolve from that is unbiased hiring right like how do we just unbiasedly consider all talent based on just purely skills and qualifications less on okay do these hires tick this box based on this diversity you know category.

[00:12:38] So like in my last role we were an agency and we really focused on unbiased hiring but we would get a lot of clients that would say you know we only want to hire women so only send us panels of people that are women or certain ethnicity so and so far.

[00:12:52] And we said we don't do that because we kind of feel like that's reverse diversity well what about the other people that don't meet that category that are qualified for your role so instead we will go through an unbiased exercise

[00:13:05] we'll present you the right talent panel and you can choose who you want so I think what we're seeing more at least within our community is how do we just create an unbiased hiring experience that could help amplify diversity without focusing on like we need to get X more

[00:13:24] amount of whatever category that is I hope that answers your question it does but it's really hard because a lot of let's say for instance like females who want to be CEOs yeah they don't have the standard requirements right so therefore they're not qualified because they're not getting the opportunity

[00:13:41] that's right and if you take a look at if you take a look at some of the statistics to be able to get where we need to be with parity it's going to take 75 years do you think we have that long I don't so how did I know I will be but at the end of the day how do we how do we make this happen without being too crazy

[00:14:00] to be reverse of discrimination discrimination whatever it is problem is we're not fixing what's been broke how do we how do we fix that and in your community I would I would say could be a good cornerstone to some of this yeah I mean I think like you guys were saying you're trying to help amplify female voices so I can only speak to the female perspective but

[00:14:20] you know having allies and people that are not from our diverse category helping advocate for us and amplify our voices making the right introductions is kind of the only best right answer that I have right now but we're trying to do everything we can to elevate the confidence level of women in in recruiting specifically trying to give them as much professional development opportunity to help them grow

[00:14:44] and then creating that mentorship so that maybe they're getting access to more of those connections so that's the only best solution that I have right now clearly no easy

[00:14:53] easy answer to it was easy we would have this

[00:14:56] I'm going to give you another one that I'm surprised you didn't bring up in terms of trending topics so the pandemic we know is an imbalance of stress on women which typically the burden of child care goes to them

[00:15:11] and the work from home movement seemed to be something that was a very big positive for women you see more and more stories about return to office get back to work and not impacting women sort of in a in a negative way for sure is that being discussed your thoughts on work from home and companies that maybe don't consider run by man consider the impact on women in return to the office

[00:15:34] is that a topic that you guys discuss or have a pretty nice is and it's more like the the T.a. leaders trying to really have concerted conversations with their stakeholders in their companies to help them understand

[00:15:47] you know really good talent is going to be self accountable at home man woman otherwise and so why can't we continue to have work from home

[00:15:55] we do talk about you know the impact that it has on women specifically because myself and Christa we are single moms and we run two businesses and the way that we've created the opportunity for ourselves is creating our own business

[00:16:07] but not everybody can do that not everybody has the right access community support financial means whatever

[00:16:14] and so we really try to have conversations about like how do you advocate for yourself to push back and or not accept opportunities just purely because you know you like the company or whatnot but does that meet your personal means

[00:16:30] actually heard last night someone was telling me that there's this new I don't know if some movement but there's this new concept of both parents going part time

[00:16:39] like let's say you're not single parents both parents working part time yeah so that no one is off-balanced on the burden of work or the burden of at home

[00:16:49] so they're trying to create these equal opportunities where instead of one person not working and losing one full salary how do we both work part time to support the family

[00:16:58] and support your career so it's like interesting try to make on the rise of part time jobs yeah maybe that's a point I'll see

[00:17:07] try working part time and living in San Diego you mean that's not to mention I mean you have I mean here in the U.S

[00:17:16] I think that's a little bit easier in Europe because they have healthcare here the way it's tied to a full time position

[00:17:24] right so I mean that's those are those are great ideas but again I think for some people who have the means to be able to do that they can do that

[00:17:32] but unfortunately the ones who can't it just they don't have the availability to keep a roof over their head food and their kids mouths

[00:17:40] so yeah the one thing that you know was part of that topic was then you do away with the entire daycare expense

[00:17:47] so that like helps that family save you know on the cost of that but kind of to finish answering your comment on that

[00:17:55] what we actually are discussing the most is so many women want to be their own decision makers they want to be their own bosses

[00:18:04] they want to like have creative control of the work that they do so many of them in our community are becoming fractional

[00:18:10] like they just want to be solo premieres have a lifestyle business enough to kind of maintain the life that they want

[00:18:17] but still getting to pick and shoot like standing up their own business become their own boss pick and choosing the types of work that they work on

[00:18:25] and so they're kind of amplifying themselves by taking it into their own hands

[00:18:30] it I mean gigs me or your original yeah you're working gigs yeah

[00:18:35] curious about we're here at T week we're in the exhibit hall and there are a lot of companies on the vendor side who preach unbiased recruiting

[00:18:43] you see sites like fairy god boss or in her site that are specifically for women you mentioned quitting LinkedIn

[00:18:50] so feel free to expand upon that but what are vendors in your perspective getting it right are they moving in the right direction

[00:18:57] or is a lot a lot of false promises that you're saying I think vendors are getting it right I think where the hesitation is is actually on the user

[00:19:09] because we are still in an era where there's a variety of different generations that are used to hiring a certain way

[00:19:17] please email me over the resumes I want to look at the resumes and then they scroll the bottom to see when did they graduate

[00:19:23] or the gaps or whatever and so while the vendors are doing great job to kind of create the unbiased user experience

[00:19:30] I think there's still a lot of resistance to it and so there's not as much adoption as we would hope

[00:19:36] because they still you know their brain their muscle memory is still wired to like I want to see it all

[00:19:41] I want to know who this candidate is and then they make their biased impressions

[00:19:46] I think you take a look at the tech stocks that are being built today and I would say in the very near future they're not going to have that opportunity

[00:19:53] the amount of scale that we see today with regard to the amount of people who can apply

[00:19:58] and then the new apply bots that are out there they're half the B technologies that go ahead and filter out

[00:20:05] according to the requirements of the job right and then allow that recruiter at some point to actually have access

[00:20:12] but I mean yeah so hopefully we're getting past that and not to mention a lot of those recruiters

[00:20:19] who've been doing the old school 1990s way of recruiting they're not going to last they're going to be gone

[00:20:27] and the new breed will definitely take over

[00:20:30] Not only based on like you know generationally they're going to be working out of the workforce

[00:20:35] but they will also maybe not become as relevant to your point

[00:20:38] I feel that same way about AI I don't think AI is going to replace recruiters

[00:20:44] but the recruiters that don't choose to adopt that into their effective processes

[00:20:49] will become kind of dismal

[00:20:52] I'm sorry I tried to serve it up but LinkedIn what's up is it a why?

[00:20:58] It's so damn expensive

[00:21:00] Gosh you can't ever get out of the contracts

[00:21:04] like why do I need to pay 25 I don't even know what it costs anymore for a license

[00:21:10] when I can still kind of find these same people on my own

[00:21:13] so I mean I'll give another plug for recruit bot

[00:21:15] I work on a free LinkedIn account

[00:21:18] I don't even have to use it they have all of the content that you can source in there

[00:21:22] the AI will then tee up additional candidates based on how you're qualifying them

[00:21:28] I can then put them through my emails campaign there's a CRM piece

[00:21:33] and then I can status them with kind of the ATS

[00:21:36] like why do I never need to go outside?

[00:21:38] I'm morally opposed to the death star

[00:21:42] there's that right thing a little less sexy but it is an answer that a lot of people give us

[00:21:49] Natalie thanks for hanging out with us today

[00:21:51] our listeners that want to know more about you in the organization where do you send them?

[00:21:54] To talent collective doc community

[00:21:56] that's our website

[00:21:58] that might be the first doc community on the podcast

[00:22:01] it was available so I took it

[00:22:03] we appreciate that

[00:22:04] community

[00:22:06] dacomunity

[00:22:07] you can't go or something

[00:22:08] Chad another one in the can progress maybe we out

[00:22:11] thank you

[00:22:13] thank you for listening to what's it called

[00:22:16] podcast

[00:22:17] the chat

[00:22:18] the cheese

[00:22:19] breend

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