UPS Recruitment Revolution with Matt Lavery

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[00:01:27] and checking out AI for Jobs where you can learn more about how to leverage AI for your recruiting instead of just writing poems and grocery lists. That is thiswayglobal.com. We out. Hide your kids, lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast.

[00:01:49] Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news. With a flash of opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheez Podcast. Oh yeah, what's up boys and girls?

[00:02:09] We are 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. And we are just giddy like schoolgirls to welcome Matt Lavery to the podcast.

[00:02:24] 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. And I see that you survived the jump.

[00:02:38] 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. Well I knew you would make it. You were going to make it no matter what. Yeah, army guy was going to make it.

[00:02:50] I was more worried for Chad and the people below Chad. I think accidents happen. Just in case. I'd like to take this moment to endorse Depends as my leak protector of choice as I jump off the stratosphere.

[00:03:03] As Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part of jumping off the stratosphere. And we knew months in advance I think so there was a lot of waiting. Although I think my wife had more sleepless nights. Kind of like the Proheel school thing that I went to.

[00:03:17] Just the threat of the ruler on the board before they grabbed it to you was enough Maybe I shouldn't say that. Just having the ruler out there in the visual. A lot of our listeners don't know who you are Matt, they know the company.

[00:03:29] But let's talk about you. You've got a fine taste in food and sports teams. What else do you like or would you like to tell us about yourself? Born and bred southwest side of Chicago. Went to Proheel school, went to Notre Dame. Been at UPS for 27 years.

[00:03:42] 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. We were workforce planning at one point. We were in employment and staffing at one point.

[00:03:56] 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? Want to get that right.

[00:04:09] 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? How do you get out of the house with that jersey on? I didn't go to Wrigley Field for the first time until 1984.

[00:04:22] My father wouldn't take me. He told me that it was like feeding a pig's steak by taking a southside Irishman to the rural side. So I had to take myself. There are plenty of tickets to White Sox games today. Well probably back then too.

[00:04:37] But there was a bet. Cup games too for that matter back then. I think there was equal futility on both sides of town. That's the quickest way to make your son not a White Sox fan. The funny part. Steak to a pig. That's a good Chicago reference.

[00:04:50] The grade school I went to, Bill Murray's sister who was a nun was one of my grade school teachers. Awesome. I still vivid memories of game one where we won 16-1 against the Padres in 84. We were the only Cub fans in the classroom

[00:05:04] and she wheeled the TV in. Everyone else booed. And we were the only few people chairing watching the results. Wow. 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.

[00:05:19] That's not a good sign. No, but it is not bad. That's an Aaron Rodgers ACL tear. When Eric Kramer holds your single season passing record as a team and then Sid Luckman is the barometer for a career, it's going to go better than that.

[00:05:34] It's hard to get lower than that. You mean Rex Grossman didn't break the record? No. I think Jay Cutler owns some of the records. For the best quarterback in our franchise history Sid Luckman is generally back in the 40s as perceived.

[00:05:47] Eric Kramer owns the single season record for passing yards. That's so Chicago. It's bad. Middle linebackers we can talk about. Oh, yes. But quarterback's not so much. For sure. So UPS, most people know the name, but give us the specifics. Some big numbers around employee count,

[00:06:04] where you guys do business and how many people you're hiring quite frankly is immense. A little over 500,000 globally. Hello. We're in... Hello. We have Brown employees, we call Brown employees in 73 countries. Uh-huh. You know, we hire a couple hundred thousand people of course of the year.

[00:06:19] 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.

[00:06:32] And you do that every year by the way. Do it for 27 years. 27 years. Okay, so let's talk about the scale though because back 27 years ago wasn't that big. A lot more people. Was it more? So a lot more people just to make the machine grind.

[00:06:44] Yes, it was a grind. Let's talk 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 TA and tech, actually understanding the impact, a lot of listeners out there don't understand the impact

[00:06:58] because many of them were around since after the internet, right? Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about that machine. Well, let's go back to... There's a building off of 294 in Chicago called Chicago Area Consultation Hub. It was one of the first major buildings

[00:07:11] that was built in Chicago. It was built in 1995, that's where I started. Okay. We were hiring 400 people a week in that building at that time. So 100 people per shift. There was four shifts. And all manual. And then at Peek's Seat... Yeah, and Peek's... There were 23 pieces of paper

[00:07:25] that had to be completed on each hire Oh my God! that 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. Then we updated it, went to PeopleSoft in 99. But it was a whole procedure

[00:07:42] to get somebody hired. Wow! And we had a team of people in Chicago. This is just this one location. Data entry? We had over 30 admins, we had 25 interviewers, we had 40 recruiters just to make all that happen. So let's talk about this kids, because everybody's saying that

[00:07:58] AI is going to take jobs and so on and so forth. Well, the internet and process methodologies, but we did evolve and we still have shit tons of jobs that are out there today. So what do you say to those people when they say,

[00:08:11] well AI is going to take all those jobs? Because you've been there and done that before. I think jobs are going to evolve. Yes. And I think as a TA leader there's a couple of ways you can go with that. So if you're looking at a recruiter

[00:08:21] and say now they're handling 10 to 15 recs and if we take these pieces of work away that our time sucks and now they can handle 15 or 20. That's one way. You can do that methodology. You can reduce number of recruiters that way. Or I prefer to go down a road

[00:08:37] of actually calling them what they should have been called all along, talent advisors. Giving them more responsibility. Because we talk about in HR all the time getting the seat at the table. Yeah. But the leader of HR can't get the seat at the table unless people below him

[00:08:50] are also the seat at the table in those local areas. 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. Trickle down has never worked.

[00:09:01] We've known that through several presidents. Yes, don't get him started. The trickle down is a very important thing to get him started. I know. The trickle up does work. When other people are hearing that the TA space is being solving problems, solving issues in each of these areas

[00:09:16] that will trickle up but it does trickle up. Well for you though I mean when you take a look at if those positions aren't filled you're missing marks. Out of business. Yeah, revenue. Every job that we do that we can we put a dollar amount

[00:09:31] for every day it's open. Yes. And we go in front of the hiring manager and say every day you delay your selection. This is what you're doing. This is what you're costing. See that's genius. So do you know is that different? It's got to be different.

[00:09:45] Different by geography and job position. Oh my god. So you've got all that broken out. As best as we can. There's some jobs that are hard to do it but the sales jobs and some of the operational jobs those are a lot easier because there's number components

[00:09:57] that we can put to it. Some of the stuff like marketing it's kind of like here's the world part one where he goes in. Did you do BS today? Yes. Did I try and BS today? No. It's some of the jobs it's hard to put a quantified to

[00:10:09] but where you can we do. I love that you've had so much experience and we don't get a lot of people that have been at the same job Did you just call him old? for over 20 years. I'm as old as you guys are. We're all old man.

[00:10:19] Don't worry about that. I'm embracing it. I'm embracing old. 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. Some of the jobs that you've had

[00:10:31] that you've had that you've had that you've had that you've had that you've had that you've had that you've had for 20 years? Sunday newspaper 20, 25 years ago. That's a big change. It's a big change when the red circles send out mailers and it goes very early days of online

[00:10:49] very early days of online. Yeah. You know same things that you guys were at I remember but slowly evolving in 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.

[00:11:04] Yeah. And you had to feel lucky I got to a third interview is there a fourth? I don't know. And you had you had to really audition yourself. Yeah. Now it's okay come please work for us these are this is what we'll offer you these are the benefits

[00:11:20] 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 that that's the the benefit that's the benefit that's the benefit of that is they have more options or

[00:11:36] yeah you're shaking your head I mean 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

[00:11:50] or go to all these areas that are out there they 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?

[00:12:02] Why do you do it this way? 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

[00:12:15] 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

[00:12:29] what have you done yeah 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 and this is the second system that we went to Fountain

[00:12:42] that we're utilizing today we tried to we did it on our old system but it was hard okay do you care to name names? We're the only customer of it so they built it just for us way back when okay they didn't sell it to anyone else

[00:12:55] we're the only customer of it we co-branded it we gave them the direction how to build everything almost 20 years of use great job they did a great job for us but the problem was it was Burger King they could build it any way we wanted it

[00:13:09] but it could take 6-8 months on changes so and now as we got into the pandemic and other things we needed things to change faster so what we needed to do was a simple flow process of the happy path you can get someone to do a job offer

[00:13:21] 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 we're getting most of our candidates to our entry level package handler jobs our seasonal jobs driver helper and SSDs inside 6-7 minutes

[00:13:35] they're getting to a job offer inside 22 minutes they're onboarded they're writing nines done wow all their documents are done they have a start date and the only thing they're waiting on is their criminal background so it doesn't come that clear in every inside 22 minutes 22 minutes

[00:13:50] for our most common jobs our driver jobs and jobs that are airports with a couple extra steps you don't get a fingerprint at the airport you get a badge from there you need a road test to be a driver but for our standard jobs 22 minutes everything side sealed

[00:14:03] and delivered out the door and you're a guy that's seen everything and I'm sure that you RPO'd multiple services what was it about Fountain that sort of cut above the rest the reason we went to that other service for an ATF 20 some odd years ago

[00:14:18] we looked at all the ATFs as I did there wasn't anything for mass hiring I think Unilever a company out of Portland was something that did hourly hiring but they still were rec based I looked at it I looked at it and said

[00:14:29] that's not going to work for us so we went to this company was doing our IVR at the time all the people were scheduling interviews for their service they said oh we can build this other part of it for you too that has an application and for us

[00:14:43] when we went to Fountain it was they were the first ATFs 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 they didn't come back just with a prototype

[00:14:56] that workable prototype I didn't have to ask anybody in my company to go do a job apply they had the videos that we used the language the questions that we asked and the happy path you can get through to a job offer inside 5 minutes 6 minutes and that was

[00:15:10] working on it for two days so was that was that the intent from you or did they over kill on it they over kill I didn't expect them I talked to everybody I talked to these they said well we're flexible we're this we're this here's my process flow

[00:15:27] and they came back and I was expecting a phone call a couple weeks maybe a month on the line the person I'm talking to man you ready to look at it yeah like who's this really what was that time frame two days two days yeah

[00:15:41] so when they came back and they alright I want my two days what kind of stuff are you doing like they put a power point together or something they put some macro together is it figma yeah so it was like let me play with it

[00:15:56] and then what we had to do is build the business case to make the switch 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

[00:16:07] you're paying for that old solution for a period of time so you got to account for that in the business case there's transition costs and you got to make sure to make it all work and what was the reaction from the recruiting team we've talked to companies

[00:16:18] that are big make a change no one wants to change how was it what was it like at UPS you get some of that and no matter whatever change even if it makes their jobs easier it's new so but we got full adoption pretty quick

[00:16:33] but we also did a Cortez approach we kind of burned the old ship so they couldn't use it so they had a switch scorched earth that shit which we heard that story before right like we killed it so they had no choice they had no choice

[00:16:44] and they learned pretty quick it's intuitive product 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

[00:16:57] and we love that 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

[00:17:10] think of it this way we were on a cycle with our old ATS yeah they were replacing jobs on our UPS jobs board every four hours okay so we're up and down any changes sure we had to flip it to an hour because jobs are getting

[00:17:23] filled that quick 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 yeah we're moving towards real time we want good candidate experiences right so we don't I don't want someone to see

[00:17:36] a job on our board come to it and they say there's no more openings yes I want to get better at it because well I want to meet their expectations right because it's the human element you can't lose in all of this automation discussion yeah

[00:17:48] you have to account for it and still be human with people and you have to be straight with them speed and transparency are what they want we're trying to give that to them okay listener how can you help your employees become more productive I have answers

[00:18:03] how about automating manual and repetitive tasks giving meaning to data then allowing that data to actually drive decisions and how about matching people to your jobs quicker well wait the chat and cheese has a new LLM no cheeseman we're talking about text kernel

[00:18:22] ah okay that makes more sense what I'm hearing is the groundbreaking concept of wait for it yeah simplicity seriously though seriously text kernel cuts through the complexities like a tortilla chip through some hot nacho cheese really? nacho references already anyways text kernel brings efficiency and productivity

[00:18:46] to your operations text kernel seamlessly unifies your tools and data to drive efficiencies and success text kernel is creating new opportunities for your recruitment journey kinda like adding guac to my barbacoa burrito oh my god how about extracting meaningful insights from data I mean that's something

[00:19:10] swiftly matching people with jobs automating repetitive tasks who knew such advanced concepts were even possible in the land of human resources we did Chad we did dude wrap it up I'm a little hungry imagine that okay listener get ready to use today's tech to drive efficiencies and productivity

[00:19:33] visit textkernel.com that's t-e-x-t k-e-r-n-e-l dot com nachos so what are you guys doing on this show? 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

[00:19:55] 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 pool we have drip campaigns on every location that comes available

[00:20:06] we're going back into our old candidates first perfect we're marketing to them right now we're still experimenting how often because we don't want to spam them I love Matt I love Matt he's very lovable we're trying to figure out all the logarithms okay they applied six months ago

[00:20:21] is it good for two messages? because we don't want to over you don't want to become a pain to it but you still want to reach out and touch those folks and then what we do is we go back to the advertising wall

[00:20:30] so we are saving money on both sides because we're able to re-utilize our database of our candidates that we paid for and put them into hires I just don't want it to be a bad touch not bad touch Matt there's no doll here to touch

[00:20:42] and figure out where it is no only good touches shoulder and above I lost my train of thought thanks Chad 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?

[00:20:57] because applying to these jobs are tough sometimes it's kind of a mixed bag there to be fair our surveys were 95% plus almost in positivity on the experience is that like an NPS score? is that going up? it's gone up but we were in the 50-60 range

[00:21:14] oh very nice because those people will use UPS or a competitor 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

[00:21:27] the part that really we're still trying to figure out is the ghosting it's probably equal to what it was before and again in the pre-fountain days? yeah a little bit what do you make of that? I think it's the competition but we also cut out steps

[00:21:42] 22 minutes though Matt I know 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 that also had drop off rates

[00:21:52] so we only have one drop off rate not three anymore so when we're saying we're about the same we're the same from the same start of the process but if I go back and look at the whole process

[00:22:02] our drop out rates are about a third of what they were but the last step we're about the same so within 22 minutes I get the job do I automatically start the onboarding process? yes right then you get messages depends on the job you're in

[00:22:16] some of our jobs they have an on-person piece we call it cornerstone not the company that's what we called it before the company was there it's the training in person other seasonal jobs it's a virtual so you get links to our LMS and to go inside

[00:22:32] and to start doing things so you can see the engagement and if they're not being engaged then we're reaching out to them you can nudge them yes that's awesome and I would think that would help from the anti-ghosting aspect as opposed to just sending out an email

[00:22:49] and then stepping back I firmly believe I think there's always going to be a percentage of people that will ghost now and it's because of the competition and it's nothing that we can we're going to keep looking at it because UPS were constructively dissatisfied

[00:23:02] what we want to improve but at the same point you can't be a man of all seasons every candidate 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

[00:23:14] but there's only so much better that you can do in some cases you talked about job seekers being smarter 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

[00:23:31] and a lot of heavy packages can be lifted by machines are job seekers coming in talking about these issues of why would I work for someone where I read the news today that all the trucks are going to be self-driving

[00:23:44] are those issues and how do you tackle them? we're a union based company 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 in our union agreement

[00:23:56] that we have to go talk to the union before we institute things and even consider some things so a lot of people say it's a union company and it's scary a little bit to some people our founder brought the union in on a handshake

[00:24:07] back in the 20s and 30s it wasn't Pinkertons there wasn't fights he was a founder of the company he wanted his employees to be the best represented and also be the highest paid in the industry our drivers for years have been the highest paid in the industry

[00:24:22] they get a pension still today how many jobs have a pension today? our drivers who deliver your packages they have a defined pension plan I mean their total compensation all in over about $150,000 salary benefits and a pension plan

[00:24:36] there's not many jobs that you can do without a high school diploma to go out and make that well and you guys started putting AC in your Florida trucks I mean you have that collective voice which is telling you that

[00:24:50] which is why I would say that the founder did that in the first place because you've got to hear from the people and we listen in some cases like any negotiation everyone comes in with a pile of things that they want and you can't get everything

[00:25:02] so you negotiate that's what it is they do that for a reason that's what it is so it wasn't they've asked for AC before they had their priorities they wanted more benefits they wanted a better pension plan so that's where money went

[00:25:13] 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 it's part of the training ever start your car

[00:25:24] and try to put the AC on in a hot day right after it's not after I peel my leg on your seat so what we're trying to do with our package cars now there's a lot more fans more white roofs

[00:25:37] we're trying to decrease the heat in the package cars but AC in some of these areas are essential we know that and we're responding to what our employees want want and need I love the union and in many ways you guys were mavericks

[00:25:50] 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 the rise of unions in the last 2, 3, 4 years just curious about your take on labor unions and maybe the benefit in recruiting and retention

[00:26:06] well obviously we had some disagreements but it's more of a brother sister kind of situation in the family our union has been part of our company for almost 100 years so it's hard for me to gauge what it wouldn't be like because I've always dealt with them

[00:26:22] in some cases you have to look at it from their point of view 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 I'm the management person

[00:26:34] then you have to come back and sit alright that does make sense why do we do it this way or why should we do it that way it's kind of like hiring recruiting and retention where does it play in that aspect I think we get more questions about

[00:26:48] depends on whether or not your friend or right to work state or not so the biggest question is do I have to join the union in a right to work state in non right to work states they ask about what are the union dues

[00:27:00] those kind of things, what are the benefits 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

[00:27:12] but again it's not as adversarial as one would think 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 and we want to be profitable for obvious reasons

[00:27:26] and they're also the face of our company our drivers are beloved in their communities you can go scan and put an article about UPS driver about every month someone retiring after 35, 40 years of service and they held parties for them in these little neighborhood communities

[00:27:42] so that's something that we like obviously and we want to foster and we want to make sure that it still remains there our drivers get access to buildings that our competitors don't get let the person round behind the counter we trust that person

[00:27:58] I see that person every day that's my driver on my route so there's a lot of brand to that the brand plays that most companies are fighting tooth and nail with unions and you guys are embracing it having an old style let's jump back into tech real quick

[00:28:14] where do you see, because obviously we're talking about from back in the 23 pages days oh my god that's hurtful to today and we got audited on each page if there was a cross off we had a file folder audit how did you ever hire anybody

[00:28:30] anyway, okay, I digress that's why you have 30 admins working for you I digress 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 you're living it right now

[00:29:26] but it's not stopping no, I think for us it's how we want to embrace AI is going to be the question do we want to become better informed and better predictability I think that's where it's going to go I think that's where it's going to go

[00:29:40] I think that's where it's going to go I think that's where it's going to go I think that's where it's going to go for us where we can predict things better how much money we have to spend on advertising

[00:29:50] how many people can I get from my internal database more metrics on that better reliability if I get an opening in Boseman Montana maybe I don't have to advertise at all I only go through my internal candidates and we get better metrics on that

[00:30:04] the other side of it is we need to make sure our recruiters the time we take away what are we filling their day with to make them better talent advisors and masters in their area of when there's a problem maybe it's not even tier related, it's employee related

[00:30:18] 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 and they'd be counted on as a resource within our organization have you checked out

[00:30:34] just the math on how much money you're saving now that you're going into your internal database first instead of just going direct I'm not going to give you numbers but we are saving a fair amount of money so you're seeing the savings enough to be able to

[00:30:48] and so much so that the reps of some of these companies what are you doing why aren't you spending money with us they're noticing it on their end so they're coming and asking us questions about those kind of things building an ecosystem within itself as opposed to

[00:31:04] we say this a lot on the show if a CMO bought a bunch of leads and then just let them atrophy that CMO would get fired and we realized that we're buying those amazing people slash leads and we need to go back to them that's awesome

[00:31:22] on that note, talk about upskilling 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 about 80% of our positions

[00:31:38] we're all filled from within and all of our driving jobs for the most part are filled from within you start as a package handler in some cases you might work as little as 6 months other cases a couple of years then you're in line to become a driver

[00:31:52] but there's other jobs that you can put a bid in on so on the union hourly side everything is promotion from within get hired at the entry level and then bid on jobs as they become available but there's another track though as a part time package handler

[00:32:04] we have part time supervisors that manage 6 to 8 part time package handlers so we're going to promote those people from within too and then those part time soups become full time soups, managers and operations and so on what we've done over the last few years

[00:32:18] 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 so we brought in the first time Carol's the first time we brought in a CEO

[00:32:30] from outside the organization, Daryl Ford we brought in from outside the organization, my boss Dan Hawksworth, Taiyo, we brought in from the organization and other areas to help give us some different perspectives I embraced it because I kind of always was outside

[00:32:42] 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 and say, yeah we've met yeah you're right because often it was, well we're going to go

[00:32:54] hire a consultant, they're going to tell us what to do I'm like no that's why I'm here I want to do that but again it's the easy button in some cases but now when you're getting outside thought into our organization it's helping us grow faster

[00:33:10] when you're talking about the outside, pulling people in from the outside UPS has an amazing veteran hiring organization not to mention you have the business resource groups inside talk a little bit about that why was that so important to UPS to build such a robust

[00:33:26] veteran hiring and also BRG system? we're very much a militaristic culture 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 diversity was inside of our nature

[00:33:42] we've won awards for many years on many different areas 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 I think any company that wasn't good before George

[00:33:56] Floyd they used George Floyd to do some things they're probably not good now he had to be good before that to be good now and for the veteran space we attract veterans just the nature of our company because you can get promoted by doing a good job

[00:34:10] and doing the right things and 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 about service to the company instead of the country I think that's the value in that

[00:34:26] I'd encourage you, I'm going to make one plug here from someone that works for me Lloyd Knight who runs our talent acquisition for veterans he just started a podcast over the last couple of months he's got about 15 in the can already he's called The Landing Zone

[00:34:38] how am I not on this already? What is going on around here? what the hell? this is The Landing Zone not The Bone Zone that's a different podcast we're trying to connect to veterans in many different ways and we see I'm not a veteran myself

[00:34:54] 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 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

[00:35:10] there's an election year the border has been highly politicized immigration has been politicized 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?

[00:35:26] I'd really like it as they brought people in if they would give them eligibility to work easier and faster because we're an e-verify company everything gets tracked I can't hire a lot of the folks that I want to we wanted to get involved

[00:35:40] in the Afghan piece 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 so I think when we do these things as a country

[00:35:50] we should be able to get these people jobs that 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 because the amount of talent that we need again, I'm an ex

[00:36:06] you guys are exes I think too we don't have enough baby boomers for these jobs I wish they would all retire and make more opportunity for some other folks but we're not like Europe yet where we have negative growth but we're slowing down

[00:36:20] so we need to bring in people who want to take quite honestly some of the lower end jobs but build themselves up and again, we have a country that can do that for them let it work that way give them the opportunity to work, earn a living

[00:36:32] create a family you know what, everything you talk about whether you're red, blue, blue, whatever there's commonalities between everybody everyone wants to have a family treat their kids better than they did no matter what part of the political spectrum you're in

[00:36:48] these people that come in, that's all they want they want to provide a life for their kids make it better for them than it was for them is it too late to start our Matt for president I don't think so I think we should throw it out there

[00:37:00] live from the Daxter booth Unleash that was Matt Lavery Matt, for our listeners who want to know more about UPS maybe even apply to a job apply to a job, go to UPSjobs.com if you want to hit me up my profile has been updated a while

[00:37:18] but I do respond you can go look me up on LinkedIn excellent, and we're here in Vegas I think the over under on the Bears this year is 7.5 I already bet the over I'm going to double down and I feel as I leave this podcast

[00:37:32] I'm feeling dizzy right now I'm going to go bet the under on a confident Bears fan that is another one in the can Chad we out so many cheeses and not one word so weird Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify Google Play, wherever you listen

[00:38:22] to your podcasts that way you won't miss an episode and while you're at it visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese weird, we out we out