UPS Recruitment Revolution with Matt Lavery

[00:00:00] Hi, it's your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls.

[00:00:16] It's time for the Chad and Cheez Podcast. Oh yeah. What's up, boys and girls? We're live from the Daxter booth at Unleash in Las Vegas. This is the Chad and Cheez Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is here.

[00:00:37] We are just giddy like schoolgirls to welcome Matt Lavery to the podcast. He is global director of sourcing, hiring, and onboarding at a little company called UPS. Matt, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting me here, I should say.

[00:00:54] I see that you survived the jump. Happy to see you in the chair and not stuff on the ground. Look guys, he's looking at you and saying glad you made it. I knew you would make it. You were going to make it no matter what.

[00:01:05] Yeah, army guy was going to make it. I was more worried for Chad and the people below Chad. Oh yeah, cheese. I think accidents happen. Oh yeah, just in case. I'd like to take this moment to endorse Depends as my leak protector of choice

[00:01:18] as I jump off the stratosphere. As Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part of jumping off the stratosphere. We knew months in advance, I think. So there was a lot of waiting. Although I think my wife had more sleepless nights than I did.

[00:01:31] Kind of like the parochial school thing that I went to. Just the threat of the ruler on the board before they grabbed it to you was enough to maybe say I shouldn't say that. Just having the ruler out there in the visual.

[00:01:43] A lot of listeners don't know who you are, Matt. They know the company. But let's talk about you. You've got a fine taste in food and sports teams. But what else do you like or would you like to tell us about yourself?

[00:01:54] I'm from the Red Southwest side of Chicago. Went to parochial school, went to Notre Dame. Been at UPS for 27 years. I've worked in Atlanta, I've worked in Brussels, worked in Chicago. But my tact has always been in the TA space. We've been called different things over the years.

[00:02:07] We were workforce planning at one point. We were in employment and staffing at one point. Some of the names have changed. My direction of what I've done hasn't really changed that dramatically. My role started as an interviewer slash recruiter back 27 plus years ago. 97? 97 you started at UPS?

[00:02:25] Want to get that right. Now, you said South Side of Chicago, but you're also a Cubs fan. That's right. How do you make peace with your God with that kind of... How do you get out of the house with that jersey on? I was only caught...

[00:02:35] I didn't go to Wrigley Field for the first time until 1984. My father wouldn't take me. He told me there was like a feed in a pig's steak by taking a South Side Irishman to the Rower's side. So I had to take myself.

[00:02:49] There are plenty of tickets to White Sox games today. If you're willing to go. Well, probably back then too. Cup games too for that matter back then. I think there was equal futility on both sides of town.

[00:03:01] That's the quickest way to make your son not a White Sox fan by saying you can't go... The funny part... Stay to a pig. That's a good Chicago reference. The grade school I went to, Bill Murray's sister, who's a nun, was one of my grade school teachers. Awesome.

[00:03:15] When I still vivid memories of game one where we won 16 to 1 against the Padres in 84. We were the only Cub fans in the classroom and she wheeled the TV in. Everyone else booed and we were the only few people cheering watching the results. Wow.

[00:03:29] So Caleb Williams to the Bears. Let's get the sports talk out of the way. Are you optimistic? I am. It's the most optimistic I've been maybe 20 years. Oh, that's not a good sign. That's not. No, but it is not bad. That's an Aaron Rodgers ACL tear.

[00:03:42] When Eric Kramer holds your single season passing record as a team and then Sid Luckman is the barometer for a career. Can I get better? It's going to go better than that. It's hard to get lower than that. You mean Rex Grossman didn't break the record?

[00:03:57] I think Jay Cutler owned some of the records. Yeah, for the longest, the best quarterback in our franchise history. Sid Luckman is generally back in the 40s as perceived. Eric Kramer owns the single season record for passing yards. That's so Chicago. It's bad.

[00:04:11] Middle linebackers we can talk about. Oh, yes. Oh, hell yeah. But linebackers not so much. For sure, for sure. So UPS, most people know the name, but give us the specifics. Some big numbers around employee count, where you guys do business

[00:04:23] and how many people you're hiring, quite frankly, is immense. A little over 500,000 globally. We're in. Hello. We have Brown. We call Brown employees in 73 countries. Uh huh. You know, we hire a couple hundred thousand people of course of the year.

[00:04:36] Our biggest area of concentration, those in peak season, we're going to hire over 100,000 people in six weeks. So we're going to hire a small town of people in six weeks period of time. And we gear the whole season up for that.

[00:04:49] So that's and you do that every year, by the way. Do it for 27 years. Take a break. 27 years. OK, so let's talk about the scale, though, because back 27 years ago wasn't that big. That more people was it more to a lot more people

[00:04:59] just to make the machine grind. Yes, it was about that. Yeah, let's talk about that. And then moving forward to today, because I think as we've been talking about, you know, HR and T.A. in tech actually understanding the impact.

[00:05:13] A lot of listeners out there don't understand the impact because many of them were around since after the Internet. Right. So let's talk a little bit about that machine. Let's go back to there's a building off of two ninety four in Chicago called Chicago Area Consultation Hub.

[00:05:27] It was one of the first major buildings that was built in Chicago. It was built in nineteen ninety five. That's where I started. We were hiring 400 people a week in that building at that time. So 100 people per shift or four shifts and all manual.

[00:05:39] And then it peaks. Yeah. And peaks. There were 23 pieces of paper that had to be completed. My God. Higher. They had to get sent down to Marietta, Georgia, which was an employee service center that keyed it into it was an older system until 1999.

[00:05:54] Then we updated it went to PeopleSoft in ninety nine. Yeah. But it was it was a whole procedure to get somebody hired. Wow. And we had a team of people in Chicago. This is just this one location data entry. We had we had over 30 admins. We had 25 interviewers.

[00:06:09] Yeah, we had 40 recruiters. Yes. And just to make all that happen. So let's let's talk about this, kids, because everybody's saying that AI is going to take jobs and so on and so forth. Well, the Internet and process methodologies.

[00:06:21] But we did evolve and we still have shit tons of jobs that are out there today. So what do you what do you say to those people when they say, well, AI is going to take all those jobs because you've been there and done that before?

[00:06:31] I think jobs are going to evolve. Yes. And I think as a leader, there's a couple of ways you can go with that. So if you're looking at a recruiter and say, now they're handling 10 to 15 recs.

[00:06:41] And if we take these pieces of work away that are time sucks and know now they can handle 15 or 20, that's one way you can do that methodology. You can reduce the number of recruiters that way. Yeah. Or I prefer to go down a road of actually calling them

[00:06:55] what they should have been called all along. Talent advisors giving them more responsibility. Because we talk about in HR all the time. He didn't the seat at the table. Yeah. But the leader of HR can't get the seat of the table

[00:07:06] unless people below him are also the seat of the table in those local areas. Yeah. So to empower those folks, give them the time, give them the resources, give them the information to be a difference maker in each of their little areas of the company that trickles up.

[00:07:19] Trickle down has never worked. We've known that through several presidents. Yes. Don't get him started. That's right. I know. But trickle up does work when other people are hearing that the space is being solving problems, solving issues now in each of these areas that will trickle up.

[00:07:33] But it does trickle up. Well, for you, though, I mean, when you take a look at if those those positions aren't filled, you're you're missing. You're you're you're revenue, revenue, revenue drops every job that we do that we can.

[00:07:46] We put a dollar amount for every day it's open. Yes. And we go in front of the hiring manager and say every day you delay your interview schedule. Every day you make delay your selection. This is what you're doing. This is what you're costing.

[00:07:56] That's genius. So do you know, is that different? It's got to be different. Different by geography and job position. But oh, my God. So you've got all that broken out as best as we can. There's some jobs that's hard to do it.

[00:08:08] The sales jobs and some of the operational jobs. Right. Those are a lot easier because there's number components that we can put to it. Yeah. Some of the stuff like marketing, it's kind of like here's the world part one when he goes in.

[00:08:18] Did you do BS today? Yes. Did I try and be yesterday? No. No, it's some of the jobs. It's hard to put a quantified to. But where you can, we do. I love that you've had so much experience.

[00:08:29] And we don't get a lot of people that have been at the same job. Did you call him over 20 years? I'm as old as you. I mean, we're all old, man. Don't worry about that. I'm embracing it. I'm embracing it.

[00:08:41] You have the unique perspective of looking at what a job seeker was in 2000 and what it is today. Talk about the differences in the job seeker today versus 20 years ago. Sunday newspaper 20, 25 years ago. That's a big change.

[00:08:55] It's a big change when the red circles are sending out mailers and I don't think we had high lighters back then. Very early days of online. Yeah. You know, same things that you guys were at. I remember. But, you know, slowly evolving in.

[00:09:11] It's really become a sales job now. Before they had to sell to us. Yeah. Now we have to sell more to them to get them in the door. Interesting. Right. Because before it was, OK, sit down for this. Enter five levels of interviews.

[00:09:23] Oh yeah. And we'll analyze all this stuff. Panels and tribunals. And you had to feel lucky. I got to a third interview. Is there a fourth? I don't know. And you would have really auditioned yourself. Yeah. Now it's OK, come please work for us.

[00:09:39] These are what we'll offer you. These are the benefits. All those kind of things. So it's more of just not qualifying somebody as much as you're trying to qualify them. They're qualifying you. Yeah. How much of that is they have more options or? Yeah, you're shaking your head.

[00:09:54] Absolutely more options. And I think it's also more data at their information. Before, when it was a Sunday newspaper, I can go look at someone's website and go learn about them or go to LinkedIn or go to Glassdoor or go to all these areas

[00:10:08] that are out there that can go learn about you. So the smart, really good candidates when they come in, they're not asking you those questions. They're asking you, well, why did you get this review on this situation? Why do you do it this way?

[00:10:20] Yeah. And it's and you know, you have to have answers. Some people are better at it than others. And some people, some candidates look at it and say, that's not for me. Well, let's talk about it like back then.

[00:10:30] Obviously, it wasn't very speedy to get somebody in today. It is. And we know speed kills because the competition, as you just said, if they're faster to the trigger than you are, then you lost them. Right. So how have you guys been able to be more efficient?

[00:10:46] What what have you done? Yeah. What what have you been able to do to be able to ensure that you don't lose that great talent? Well, we've tried to do and we've done this for a number of years.

[00:10:55] And this is the second system that we've went to a fountain that we're utilizing today. We tried to we did it on our old system, but it was hard. OK, we care to name names. We're the only customer of it. So they built it just for us.

[00:11:10] Way back when they didn't sell it to anyone else or the only customer. Over recalibrated it. We gave them the direction how to build everything they built that they hosted it. Almost 20 years of use. Great job. They did a great job. Yeah.

[00:11:21] But the problem was it was Burger King. They could build it any way we wanted it. Yeah. But it could take six, eight months on changes. Right. So and now as we got into the pandemic and other things, we need things to change faster. Yeah.

[00:11:32] So what we needed to do was a simple flow process at the happy path. He gets someone to a job offer as fast as possible, because if you're not making that job offer and setting that hook early, they're gone. And right now in Fountain,

[00:11:45] we're getting most of our candidates to our entry level package handler jobs, our seasonal jobs, driver helper and SSDs. Inside six, seven minutes, they're going to a job offer inside 22 minutes. They're on boarded. Right. Nine's done. Wow. All their documents are done. They have a start date.

[00:12:01] And the only thing they're waiting on is their criminal background. I think I'm that clear in every 22 minutes. Twenty two minutes for our most common jobs, our driver jobs and jobs that are airports with a couple of extra steps. Yeah. You get a fingerprint at the airport.

[00:12:14] You get a badge from there. Right. You need a road test to be a driver. Yeah. So but for our standard jobs, you got 22 minutes. Everything side sealed and delivered out the door. And you're a guy that's seen everything.

[00:12:24] And I'm sure that you are PO multiple services was. What was it about Fountain that sort of cut above the rest? I've yeah, I mean, the reason we went to that other service for an ATS 20 some odd years ago, we looked at all the ATS I did.

[00:12:38] There wasn't anything for mass hiring. I think Unilever, a company out of Portland, yes, was something that did hourly hiring. They still will rec base. Yeah, I looked at it and said, that's not going to work for us.

[00:12:48] So we went to this company was doing our IVR at the time. So they all the people are scheduling interviews for their service. They said, oh, we can build this other part of it for you, too. That has an application.

[00:12:57] And for us, when we went to Fountain, it was there were the first ATS that I saw that could handle our high volume hourly hiring because they're nimble and quick. I gave them our process flow for a basic package handler in two days.

[00:13:10] They didn't come back just with a prototype, the workable prototype that I could give to anybody in my company to go do a job apply. It had the videos that we used, had a language, the questions that we asked and the happy path.

[00:13:22] You can get through to a job offer inside five minutes, six minutes. Yeah. And that was working on it for two days. So was that was that the intent from you or did they like did they overkill on the overkill? I mean, I didn't expect them.

[00:13:33] I said, well, I talked to everybody. I talked to these. They said, well, we're flexible. We're this for this. Here's my process flow. Make it happen. Captain, I go, if you can make this happen. And then they came back.

[00:13:44] And I was expecting a phone call a couple of weeks, maybe a month on the line. First I'm talking to Matt, you ready to look at it? Yeah. Like, who's this? Like, really? What was that time frame? Two days. Two days. Yeah. Holy.

[00:13:55] So when they came back and they said, all right, what kind of two days? I go, what kind of stuff are you doing? Like, yeah, they put a PowerPoint together or something. They put some macro together. Is it Figma? Yeah. So it was like the thing.

[00:14:07] Let me play with it. They gave me the link and I played with them like this actually works. So they got my attention. And then what we had to do is build the business case to make the switch.

[00:14:15] That was took a little bit of time to go to our friends in IT and, you know, go back and make a business case. Because anytime you switch a solution, you're paying for that old solution for a period of time.

[00:14:25] So you got to account for that in the business case. There's transition costs. And you got to make sure make it all work. And what was the reaction from the recruiting team? We've talked to companies that are big, make a change. No one wants to change.

[00:14:37] How was it? What was it like at UPS? You get some of that. And no matter where you do whatever change, even if it makes their jobs easier, it's new. So but we got full adoption pretty quick, but we also did a Cortez approach.

[00:14:51] We kind of burned the old ship so they couldn't use it. So they had to switch. Scorch earth that shit. So we heard that story before, right? Like we killed it. So they had no choice. They had no choice. And they learned pretty quick. It's intuitive product.

[00:15:03] So it was easy to learn. And we ended up hiring over 100,000 people in six weeks last year with it. So it worked. So are you actually because you have all the numbers that go to the bottom line, which is beautiful. And we love that.

[00:15:15] Are you actually showing that you're filling faster? So therefore we're saving this kind of money. I mean, and pushing that back up and saying, this is why we do this. This is how fast you're filling jobs today. The table. Think about it. Think of it this way.

[00:15:28] We were on a cycle with our old ATS. They were replacing jobs on our UPS jobs board every four hours. OK, so we're up and down any changes. We had to flip it to an hour because jobs are getting filled that quick.

[00:15:41] Candidates were coming back four hours after posting and some are getting filled already. So and now we're finding even an hour is too long. We're moving towards real time. We want good candidate experiences. So I don't want someone to see a job on our board, come to it,

[00:15:55] and they say there's no more openings. I want to get better at it because I want to meet their expectations. Because the human element you can't lose in all of this automation discussion. You have to account for it and still be human with people.

[00:16:07] And you have to be straight with them and speed and transparency are what they want. We're trying to get that to them. So what are you guys doing on the engagement after? So say you've got some people that didn't get jobs, right? Filled all those positions. That's awesome.

[00:16:19] What are you doing to keep them engaged? Because you know there are going to be new positions opening in a minute or two. And you want to get them into that new that new pool. We have drip campaigns on every location that comes available.

[00:16:31] We're going back into our old candidates first. We're marketing to them. Right now we're still experimenting hot waffles. We don't want to spam them. I love Matt. And we're so we're I love Matt. He's very lovable.

[00:16:41] We're trying to figure out all the logarithms and OK, they applied six months ago. Is it good for two messages this week? You know, because we don't want to over you know, you don't want to become a pain to it.

[00:16:50] But you still want to reach out and touch those folks. Yes. And then what we do is we go back to the advertising wall. So we are saving money on both sides because we're able to re utilize our database of our cancer we paid for.

[00:17:00] Oh yeah. And put them into hires. They just don't want to be a bad touch. Not bad touch, Matt. No, no, no. There's no doll here to touch and figure out where it is. No, only good touches. Shoulder and above. I lost my train of thought. Thanks, Chad.

[00:17:14] We talked about the reaction from the recruiters. Talk about the reaction from the job seekers. Did ghosting go down? Did your scores go up? Because applying to these jobs are tough sometimes. It's kind of a it's kind of a mixed bag there, to be fair.

[00:17:26] Yeah. Our surveys were ninety five percent plus almost in positivity on the experience. OK. Is that like an NPS score? OK. OK. OK. So it's gone up. It's gone up, but we were in the 50 60 range. Oh, very nice. Because those people will use UPS or a competitor.

[00:17:43] Everyone we hire is a potential customer. Everyone we interview is a potential customer. So that's why we take it seriously, because we don't want to harm our brand. The part that really we're still trying to figure out is the ghosting.

[00:17:54] And it's it's probably equal to what it was before. And again, in the pre fountain days. Yeah, a little bit. But we're getting. What do you make of that? I think it's the competition, but we also cut out steps. 22 minutes, though.

[00:18:07] I know. But I get but the part of it is before we were only measuring the cutoff at the time of job offer to the first day of work. There were other steps there that also had drop off rates.

[00:18:16] Gotcha. So we only have one drop off rate, not three anymore. So when I say that when we're saying about the same with the same from the same sort of the process. But if I go back and look at the whole process,

[00:18:27] our dropout rates are about a third of what they were. But the last step, we're about the same. OK. So within 22 minutes, I get the job. Do I automatically start the onboarding process right then? So you get you get messages depends on the job you're in.

[00:18:41] Yeah, some of our jobs, they have an on-person piece. It's called we call cornerstone, not the company. That's what we was. That's what we called it before the company was there. It's the training and person. Other seasonal jobs. It's a virtual.

[00:18:54] So you get links to our LMS and to go inside and to to start. You can see you can see the engagement and that they're not being engaged. Then we're reaching out to them, nudge them. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's that's awesome.

[00:19:07] And I would think that would help from the anti ghosting aspect as opposed to just sending out an email and then step. I firmly believe I think there's always going to be a percentage of people that will ghost now. Yeah. And it's because of the competition.

[00:19:19] Yeah. And it's you know, it's nothing that we can we're going to keep looking at it because UPS were constructively dissatisfied. Well, we want to improve. Yeah. But at the same point, point, you can't be a man of all seasons, every candidate. Right.

[00:19:33] And we're going to do the best we can to get them in the door. But we're also not going to try to do better. But there's only so much better that you can do in some cases. Yeah. You talked about job seekers being smarter,

[00:19:44] having more ammunition going into an interview. You are a business that has a lot of threats of automation. We talk about self driving trucks, self driving or self flying, whatever. And a lot of heavy packages can be lifted by machines.

[00:20:00] Are job seekers coming in talking about these issues of why would I work for someone where I read and read the news today that all the trucks are going to be self driving? Are those issues and how do you tackle them? We're a union based company.

[00:20:12] So it's all in the collective bargaining agreement, all those things. So people can go read it and see what the union has to say about it. There's a lot of things that in our union agreement that we have to go talk to the union before we institute things

[00:20:23] and even consider some things. So a lot of people say you need to union company. It's scary a little bit to some people. Our founder brought the union in on a handshake back in the 20s and 30s. It wasn't Pinkerton's. There wasn't like fights.

[00:20:36] He was he was a founder of the company. He wanted his employees to be the best represented and also that the highest paying the industry, our drivers for years. They've been the highest paid in the industry. They get a pension still today.

[00:20:48] How many jobs have a pension today? Our drivers are delivery packages. They have a defined pension plan. I mean, their total compensation all in over 100, about $150,000 salary benefits and a pension plan. Yeah, there's not many jobs that you can do without a high school diploma.

[00:21:04] They go out and make that. Well, and and you guys started putting AC in your like Florida trucks. And I mean, it was like, I mean, I mean, you have that collective voice, which is telling you that, which is why I would say that the founder

[00:21:16] did that in the first place. Probably so got to hear from the people. And we and we listen and in some cases, like any negotiation, everyone comes up with a pile of things that they want. Yeah. And you can't get everything.

[00:21:26] So you negotiate. That's what that's what they do. That for a reason. That's what it is. So it wasn't they've asked for AC before the other priorities. They wanted more benefits. They wanted a better pension plan. So that's where money went.

[00:21:37] That was going to could have gone to that in the past. So and again, the other piece of it is we turn our truck off every time we make a delivery or stop. The key goes on your pinky ring as part of the training.

[00:21:47] Ever start your car and try to put the AC on in a hot day right after it's not so after I peel my leg. Yeah. So. So I mean, what we're trying to do with our package cars now,

[00:21:58] there's a lot of there's a lot more fans, more white roofs. We're trying to decrease the heat in the pack of cars. But AC and some of these areas are essential. We know that. And we're responding to what our employees want to want me.

[00:22:11] Yeah, I love I love the union. And in many ways, you guys were mavericks. I mean, we talk about the auto workers. We're talking about hotel workers now. But you guys were the first really that we started talking about

[00:22:21] the rise the rise of unions in the last three, four years. Just curious about your take on on labor unions and maybe the benefit in recruiting and retention. Well, obviously, we had some disagreements. We're always but it's more of like a brother, sister kind of situation.

[00:22:37] And the family union has been part of our company for almost 100 years. So that's awesome. It's hard for me to gauge what it wouldn't be because we've always I've always dealt with them. In some cases, you have to look at it from their point of view.

[00:22:49] It forces you to look at any situation through someone else's eyes. Because sometimes you get typecast or it has to be this way because it's I'm the management person. Then you have to come back and sit. All right. That does make sense.

[00:23:02] And why do we do it this way or why should we do it that way? It's kind of like hiring. Yeah, recruiting and retention. Where does it play in that aspect? I think we get more questions about it depends on whether or not

[00:23:14] you're from the right to work state or not. So the biggest question is, do I have to join the union in a right to work? Sure. In non right to work states, they ask about what are the union dues, those kind of things, what are the benefits?

[00:23:26] And that's where the fine line is because we're not supposed to talk about that to the employee, because that's where your representation comes in. We can give them information where to get it, those kind of things. Right. But again, it's not as adversarial as one would think.

[00:23:39] Yeah. It's more sibling rivalry in some cases. And you fight over things because we both want to be profitable because they don't want their jobs to go away. Exactly. And we want to be profitable for obvious reasons. And they're also the face of our company.

[00:23:53] Our drivers are beloved in their communities. Yeah, you can go scan and put an article in about UPS driver about every month, someone retiring after 35, 40 years of service. And they held parties for him in these little neighborhood communities. So that's something that we we like, obviously.

[00:24:10] And we want to foster and we want to make sure that still remains there. There's our drivers good access and buildings that our competitors don't get. Let the person around behind the counter. We trust that person. I see that person every day. That's my driver on my route.

[00:24:26] So there's a lot of brand to that. The brand plays. Let me embrace. Most companies are fighting tooth and nail with unions. You guys are embracing it. So having an old style. Let's jump back into tech real quick. Where do you see?

[00:24:38] Because obviously, you know, going from back in the 23 pages days. Oh, my God, that's hurtful. Up to today. And we got audited on each page. There was a cross off. We got we got we had a file. We had a file folder audit.

[00:24:51] How did you ever hire anybody? Anyway, OK, I digress. I got 30 admins working for me. I digress. Looking forward, you know where we are today. You're skating to the puck. Where is it going, especially in this space? Efficiencies, those types of things, because I mean,

[00:25:07] you're living it right now, but it's not stopping. No, I think for us, it's how we want to embrace AI is going to be the question. Yeah. Do we want to become better informed and better predictability? I think that's where it's going to go for us.

[00:25:19] OK, where we can predict things better. Where how much money we have to spend in advertising? How many people can I get from my internal database? More metrics on that better reliability. So if I get an opening in Bozeman, Montana, they don't have to advertise at all.

[00:25:31] I only go through my internal candidates and we get better metrics on that. The other side of it is we need to make sure our recruiters, the things that the time we take away, what are we filling their day with to make them better talent advisors

[00:25:43] and become masters in their area of when there's a problem, maybe it's not even tier related. It's employee related. Let's talk to my talent advisor on how they can help. That's what I'm looking at is to use AI to make us better, better people, better employees,

[00:25:58] and they'd be counted on as a resource within our organization. Have you have you checked out? I'm sure you have just the math on how much money you're saving now that you're going into your internal database first instead of just going

[00:26:13] direct. I'm not going to give you numbers, but we are saving a fair amount of money. Yeah. So you're seeing you're seeing the savings enough to be able to. And so much so that like the reps of some of these companies, what are you doing?

[00:26:24] Why aren't you spending money with us kind of stuff? So they're noticing on their end. So they're coming and asking us questions about those kind of things. Yeah. Actually building an ecosystem within itself as opposed to. And again, we say this a lot on the show.

[00:26:38] If a CMO bought a bunch of leads and then just let them atrophy, that CMO would get fired. Right. And we should be. Yes. And we realize that we're buying those amazing people slash leads and we need to go back to them. So that's awesome. That's awesome.

[00:26:53] On that note, talk about upskilling. That's a big topic now taking your current workforce. I know you guys have a really great plan of moving up the ladder, but talk about upskilling and how UPS approaches that again. We're a union company for the most part.

[00:27:07] So up to a few years ago, about 80 percent of our positions were all filled from within and all of our driving jobs for the most part are filled from within. You start as a package handler, you work for in some cases,

[00:27:17] you might work as little as six months. Other cases, a couple of years. Then you're in line to become a driver to get that to get that job. But there's other jobs that you can put a bid in on.

[00:27:26] So on the union hourly side, everything's promotion from within. Get hired at the entry level and then bid on jobs as they become available. But there's another track, there's a part time package handler. I can go the management route.

[00:27:36] We have part time supervisors that manage six to eight part time package handlers. So we can we're going to promote those people from within too. And then those part time suits become full time suits, managers and operations and so on.

[00:27:48] But we've done over the last few years is we've gotten better to try to get outside talent because sometimes when you only have one way to think you don't grow as fast or as easy as you can.

[00:27:58] So we brought in, you know, we brought in the first time Carol's the first time we brought it out, CEO from outside the organization, Darrell Ford, we brought in from outside the organization, my boss, Dan Hawksworth. Tio, we brought in from the organization, other areas

[00:28:10] to help give us some different perspectives. I embraced it because I kind of always was outside the organization. I was a little bit different than some of the other UPSers. So there it was refreshing to have people come from the outside

[00:28:20] and say, yeah, we've met with. Yeah, you're right. Because often it was, well, we're going to go hire a consultant. They're going to tell us what to do. I'm like, no, that's why I'm here. Yeah, I got it. Yeah.

[00:28:31] And like, I know we don't want to do that. But again, it's the easy button in some cases. But now when you're getting outside thought into organization, it's it's helping us grow faster. Talk about when you're talking about the outside, pulling people in from the outside.

[00:28:45] UPS has an amazing veteran hiring organization. Not to mention you have the business, you know, resource groups inside. Talk a little bit about that. Why was that so important to UPS to build such a robust veteran hiring and also BRG system? We're very much a militaristic culture.

[00:29:04] I mean, the way that we promote people within the way that our diversity goals are. I mean, we didn't start with the diversity when George Floyd happened. Yeah, we diversity was inside of our nature. We've won awards for many years on many different areas,

[00:29:16] like for the amount of female pilots that we have, for the amount of management that we have that are minority based. All those things were pretty good. And and I think any any company that wasn't good before George Floyd, they used George Floyd to do some things.

[00:29:31] They're probably not good now. He had to be good before that to be good now. And for the veteran, for the veteran space, we attract veterans. This is the nature of our company, because you can get promoted by doing a good job and doing the right things.

[00:29:44] And that's what the that's what they're used to in the veteran space. They put their time in. They can bid on jobs, those kind of things. It's core to them. It's it's about service to the company instead of the country. And they see value in that.

[00:29:57] I'd encourage you to make one plug here from someone that works. Lloyd Knight, who runs our talent acquisition for veterans. He just started a podcast over the last couple of months. Nice. He's got about 15 in the can already called the Landings Zone.

[00:30:09] How am I not on this already? What is going on? I don't know. No, no, no. This is the landing zone, not the bone zone. That's a different podcast. So but it's something that we're trying to connect to veterans in many different ways.

[00:30:22] And we see there's a lot of value to it. I see value to it. I'm not a veteran myself, but I see a value in what they bring to our organization and also to give back to the service they gave to our country.

[00:30:34] I think that's an important piece of it that shouldn't be lost. It's 2024. It's an election year. I don't know if you got the headlines. Yeah, I got the memo. There's a there's an election year. Yeah, the border has been highly politicized. Immigration has been politicized.

[00:30:50] We don't hear a lot from companies about the impact on immigration, the importance of new workers coming into the country. What are your thoughts on immigration as a whole and how it impacts UPS? I'd really like it as they brought people in

[00:31:01] if they would give them eligibility to work easier and faster. Yes, because we're an E-Verify company. We everything is tracked. I can't hire a lot of the folks that I want to. We wanted to get involved in the Afghan piece

[00:31:13] when that came in a few years ago when that started. But they weren't eligible to work right away. And it was hard to get them on board. It was it was a chore. So I think when we do these things as a country,

[00:31:24] we should be able to get these people jobs if they want them. Because in my mind, if someone wants to work here and earn here and pay taxes here, God bless you. Let's go. Yeah. Because the amount of talent that we need again, I'm an ex.

[00:31:37] You guys are exes. I think too. We're not going to be another baby boomers for these jobs. They I wish they would all retire. That's my personal. Get the hell out. But it'd make poor opportunity for some other folks.

[00:31:48] But we're not like Europe yet where we have negative growth. Yeah, but we're slowing down. So we need to bring in people who want to take, quite honestly, some of the lower end jobs. Sure. But build themselves up. Yes.

[00:31:58] And again, that's we have a country that can do that for them. Let it work that way. Give them the opportunity to work, earn a living and create a family. You know what? Every thing you talk about, whether you're red, red, blues, whatever, there's commonalities between everybody.

[00:32:12] I guess everyone wants to have a family, treat their kids, do better than they did. Yeah. No matter what part of the political spectrum you're in. Right. And these people that are come in and that's all they want. They want to provide a life for the kids,

[00:32:24] make it better for them than it was for them. Is it too late to start our mat for president? I don't think so. I think we can launch that right here right now. Live from the Daxter booth. Unleash that was Matt Lavery, Matt,

[00:32:39] for our listeners who want to know more about UPS, maybe even apply to a job. Where do you send them? Applying to a job with a UPS jobs dot com. If you want to hit me up, my profile has been updated in a while,

[00:32:50] but I do respond. You can go to look me up on LinkedIn. Excellent. And we're here in Vegas. I think the over under on the Bears this year is seven and a half. Are you going to bet the over?

[00:33:00] But I'm going to double down and I'm going to double down on it. I feel as I leave this podcast, I'm feeling dizzy right now. I'm going to go bet the under on a confident Bears fan. Connor balance. That is another one in the can. Chad, we are.

[00:33:14] Thank you for listening to what's called the podcast, the Chad, the cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible.

[00:33:34] And not one word about cheese, but one cheddar, blue, not show pepper Jack Swiss. There's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, we should have subscribed today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode.

[00:33:59] And while you're at it, visit www dot Chad cheese dot com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.