Wayfair’s Secrets to Cutting-Edge Talent Acquisition
Hannah Rebecchi, Head of Talent Technology Product Management at Wayfair, shares her journey from recruiter to tech leader. She discusses managing Wayfair's talent acquisition tech stack, transitioning to agile teams, and the importance of aligning technology with business needs. Hannah also offers practical advice for engaging stakeholders and ensuring successful tech transformations.
In today's episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we are joined by Hannah Rebecchi, Head of Talent Technology Product Management at Wayfair.
Hannah discusses the intricate process of managing Wayfair's talent acquisition tech stack and the importance of aligning technology with business needs. Drawing from her extensive experience, Hannah highlights the challenges and successes of transitioning from traditional HR structures to more agile, cross-functional teams.
🎓 In this episode, Hannah discusses:
The challenges and benefits of implementing a customizable tech stack
The journey from recruiter to Head of Talent Technology Product Management
Practical steps for engaging stakeholders and ensuring team buy-in during tech transformations
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● How AI can boost recruiting automation through predictions.
● Key considerations to keep in mind when selecting a recruiting system vendor.
Hannah Rebecchi 0:00
not understand the scope or like why that was a terrible idea. You'd be like, No, we need that my team needs it or like your team is like 1% of the broader population like no. And so you just realized, like implementing certain changes can have a huge, huge impact, a huge scope, a huge time investment. And a lot of times the recruiters or even like your hiring managers, or business managers asking for these changes don't understand how big of a change or a lift or effort that is, and nor should they like, that's not their job, but just like the value you place on your tech teams to actually explain why something should or shouldn't happen or why things are the way they are. Today was a really eye opening experience.
Chris Rainey 0:45
Hey, Hannah, welcome to the show. How are you?
Hannah Rebecchi 0:47
I'm good. Thank you for having me.
Chris Rainey 0:50
Yeah, I love it. It's like you'd be in like front into a soundproof booth. Very professional. It's nice. It's no echo is really quiet. You know, when I go into those kind of booths to soundproof booths are called, sometimes it's to silent. And then if you've ever had that, it's like, I can just you can hear my heartbeat in the room. I'm like, I know, I don't like all the noise of the floor, you know. But sometimes it's a bit strange when you know, soundproof, but
Hannah Rebecchi 1:15
I still put the noise cancelling on my headphones, like that just so you laugh so I can see.
Chris Rainey 1:24
Yeah, all that to say, your senses must be going crazy. It's like you're in a soundproof room. Then you got noise canceling on loose leash, you got a window into the world on the other side, and just Ultra focused all the time. Guys. That's a definition of focused. As a family, I know last time we spoke, like everyone like my kids, they're always sick. I'm feeling better now.
Hannah Rebecchi 1:48
Yeah, my son has recovered. It has been has recovered. I'm slowly recovering. So we're all hanging in there. Well,
Chris Rainey 1:55
like we're both thinking, what's next?
Hannah Rebecchi 1:59
Well, yeah, I just wait for the call from daycare. Yeah, well,
Chris Rainey 2:02
okay. What's the gift of daycares gonna give us next? as well. Glad to hear everyone's doing well. Before we jump into level a little bit more about you personally, and your journey to the role that you're, you're in now.
Hannah Rebecchi 2:16
Yeah, so I'm currently at Wayfair. I work our offices located in Boston, I live out in the suburbs right outside of Boston. But my journey to Wayfair. So before Wayfair, which I've been here for at least six years next month, which is wild to think about. But before Wayfair, I was with Keurig Green Mountain Coffee Company. I was there for just over a year, doing kind of like a blended care campus recruitment program and employer branding type role. And then before that, I was with Apple for about six and a half years through a variety type of roles. So really, my career started with Apple. And I joined as a part time sales associate while I was still in my undergrad. And after I graduated, got accepted into Apple has what's called the Apple Store Leader program. So it's a two year management development program, kind of cycle through all the different types of roles. After that I really fell in love with the people manager role. And so think of it as like, like an HR generalist role. After that time with Apple, I went to Kellogg, like I mentioned, I did a kind of TA slash Employer Branding type role, managing different social pages for them, and then was tapped by Wayfair to come and build out their PhD campus recruiting program for data science. And so came out and built out that global program, built out a team here, knew I didn't really want to stick in recruiting for the foreseeable future. So kind of thought about what's next, what are some transferable skills, but really love the talent and the people space. And so moved over to the team, which was called ta operations or Talent Acquisition Operations, ta tech, some companies call it to that team managing our talent acquisition tech stack. So the back end of all the tools that our talent acquisition teams use, and have been managing that team since and then just recently transitioned to a broader type role across all of talent, managing the product management scope across all of our talent tools inclusive of our tech stack. Nice. That's where I am today.
Chris Rainey 4:29
done pretty well there. That's pretty cool. Because I
Hannah Rebecchi 4:33
found that story a few times. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 4:35
I It's such an interesting journey because you've been on both sides. Now you are the recruiter, you're using some of these tools. So you've got the perspective of someone using it every day in your job and now you're on the other side of helping design the those those systems processes and obviously implement the tools to support those recruiters. So what What have you learned from being on one side? Versus now being on the other? And that you probably didn't understand as a recruiter? Maybe?
Hannah Rebecchi 5:09
Oh my gosh, I remember transitioning to that new team, the TA operations type role being more on the back end. And within my first few weeks onboarding, I was like, Oh, my God, I was that annoying recruiter? Who would just ask for everything under the sun and like, not understand the scope, or like, why it was a terrible idea. You'd be like, No, we need it, my team needs it or like, your team is like 1% of the broader population, like no. And so you just realized, like, implementing certain changes can have a huge, huge impact, a huge scope, a huge time investment. And a lot of times, the recruiters or even like your hiring managers, or business managers asking for these changes don't understand how big of a change or a lift or effort that is. And nor should they like, that's not their job, but just like the value placed on your tech teams to actually explain why something should or shouldn't happen, or why things are, the way they are today. Was was a really eye opening experience when I first joined and still is, to this day,
Chris Rainey 6:11
some interest is always interested in I in hindsight, when you get to see the other side, right? You're like, oh, okay, yeah. All right. It's not as easy as clicking a button and everything works and changes. So as part of this, your role as head of talent, technology, product management, this is part of an overall strategic transformation that your organization's going for, walk us through the why, you know, what was the decision making the business case of why you're going through this tech transformation, within TA. I think also overall, right within the business, you're going through quite a big transformation. So you could just talk about a bit about the why and the business challenge.
Hannah Rebecchi 6:50
Yeah, and it's actually started several years ago. So we used to sit within HR. So the TA operations or T tech team, whatever you want to call it, sat within HR. And what we found was for the managing our TA tech stack, we were working so closely with our internal engineering teams. So we had at the time of very much build versus buy mentality. So, you know, we had a handful of third party tools and a handful of homegrown tools that were talking to each other. And the argument was, you know, we could really sync up our roadmaps, we could work much more cohesively, and really do some transformational things for the business if we were really seated closer with our tech partners. And so we made the transition for our team to move from HR within the tech organization, which was a big shift. And that, that allowed us to really align our roadmaps to really be thoughtful about like, what should the holistic end user experience be, again, still within this world of just ta tech. And then more recently, over this last year, we've gone through this transition, again, of looking at our broader talent tech team. And so ta Tech was kind of one vertical within talent, tech. And we had several teams that we're really focused on just a small subset of tools. And what happened is like that span of tools grew, we were chasing a lot of point solutions to solve really like niche and user problems. And rightfully so like the team scope was really deep in that area. But what we lacked was this holistic view of like, what should the end to end candidate to employee experience be? And all of the solutions that touch that part of the experience. And so what we did was we completely blew up these teams, you know, we had a TA tech team, we had a workday team, we had an engineering team. And we move to atomic teams, which is just a fancy word for saying,
Chris Rainey 8:38
I want to be atomic team. I know
Hannah Rebecchi 8:41
it sounds like you're part of like, like a superhero or something. But really, it's just it's a fancy term for like a cross functional team. And so now within that talent, tech organization, we have several teams, which are made up of all the right people to get the right work done. And they're focused on aspects of the user experience. So you know, the team doesn't just have one type of role. You know, we have a product manager for that team. We have a tech lead for that team. We have engineers for that team software and data engineers, designers, things like that. So we can be much more agile in how we approach our roadmap or things we want to do, and also just more innovative and not be so focused on like, well, this team just owns this one tool, they own this experience, which encompasses several tools, and they need to understand how all of those tools work together and enhance that end user experience. Yeah, so that's kind of where we landed today. And I mean, very much still figuring it out and making sure that everything is working as as we'd like.
Chris Rainey 9:41
Yeah. We're seeing a lot of companies now moving to the seminar model, right? It's in order to be agile, and bringing different expertise from different cost functions together to solve problems. It's incredible to see we know I think we've been talking about this for years to do this. But now finally, I think Kobe was actually a big part of it, that were companies started collaborating and bringing different parts of companies together, there's less work. And also this is this, they removed this sort of us and them mentality, sometimes that exists in companies, you're kind of you're all pulling in different directions. And it just causing a lot of conflict and a lot of red tape and just frustration, honestly, that happens as well. So that's really, what are some of the challenges we were facing in the previous model, that now are becoming much easier to resolve and also the benefits
Hannah Rebecchi 10:37
release solving for end users. And to go back on your your earlier point, like I think part of that happened was, I mean, when you think about company structure, like you're looking at the industry, and like, it's industry standard, like these are where certain teams sit within the organization. So to really break that mold and be like, sure, that's what the industry is doing good like for us, it actually makes sense to like, let's move this team over to the tech organization. And here's all the reasons that it's going to work. And so I think you're slowly starting to see companies break away from that mold and kind of do what's right for them. And see the benefits of like other companies who did something similar. But to your second question, the challenges we're facing is, again, because we had a mix of homegrown tools and third party tools is we would be spending time with our end users really understanding, you know, what are their pain points, what do they want, they would come back to us, and we would say, Okay, we hear you, this is what we think needs to be done. We actually need to work with engineering to do that. So then we go to engineering who has their own roadmap, they've done their own six month and 12 month plan, and they're like, sounds great. We can get to that, you know, maybe in the next six months or a year, and we're like, no, no, no, but our end users want it now. And we think it's really valuable. And so now kind of being part of this one larger team, we roadmap together. And so we're very strategic around like we do with our six month planning cycles. And we're planning all of our work together. And so we're going to our end users in the business and saying, okay, like, What's your wish list? What do you want to do? Here's what we think you should do. And we narrow down and prioritize that list with our stakeholders. And we make sure that all the teams involved, all are working together to say like, great, this is what we're going to commit to for the next six months. And so it's no longer like, okay, yeah, we're really excited about this idea. But it's going to take like another year until this team over here can do it. So it's just it's way more collaborative, and built a lot more trust and like, you're you're much more able to be a thought leader to your stakeholders than you were before where you're just trying to like herd cats of several different teams towards a common vision
Chris Rainey 12:35
for you in some way. It's also an audit just because you're not an order taker. Yes. As opposed to being everyone strategic partner.
Hannah Rebecchi 12:43
Yeah. So reactive versus proactive. 100%.
Chris Rainey 12:47
Love that. So now you've done that you kind of set the trends, you set the vision, you know, kind of what you're what you're solving for. Next stage is the verb build. What were what were the considerations that you had about, you know, when you went out there to look into the marketplace? Originally you built internally, it sounds like you made a decision, obviously, to go external. What were the list of requirements that you and the team when you sat down together and said, This is what we need this product to deliver a solution for us to achieve that? What was walk us through for some of those? The list that you said you created?
Hannah Rebecchi 13:23
Yeah. So even before we had like formal product managers as part of our broader team, and we followed a lot of the product management principles, and so like evaluating, you know, an ATS, we sat down with our end users to really understand to an extent what their pain points are, right? Like, we didn't want to just pick up what we had today and move it to the new system. But it's still important to understand like, what are their pain points that the current tools that we have? And then overlay that with? Like, what's your vision? Like? What's your ideal state? Pretend like sky's the limit? What do you want this to look like? And that was, you know, sitting in a room in a two day design session with one of our in house designers and like going through all these different types of exercises, and really challenging them to really think about like, okay, and, you know, five years from now, what would perfect look like for you. And then further,
Chris Rainey 14:13
this was a recruiting team, like whose end users just talking about a mix.
Hannah Rebecchi 14:17
So we had some of our talent partners, like our HR partners, our recruiters, our recruiting leaders, our head of talent acquisition, so really a broad range because we want so many different perspectives. And what was really cool about those sessions is we invited what we called like lightning talks, we invited different people from the business to provide their perspective and their vision to kind of tee up before we went into the actual design sessions. So everyone kind of had an idea of like, oh, this like, generally where we want to go like now let's help design it. And then we took all of that information. And then we overlaid that with all like, industry standards, industry best practices, like where's the industry going, right? Like we don't expect our internal end users to understand where the industry is going necessarily, especially when it comes to tech. And so overlaying a lot of that. And then really breaking out or we have like a RFP scorecard, which is basically a list of requirements. That's absolutely critical, nice to have need to have, you know, going out to the market, we market maps 30 Plus vendors, just like our own research, narrowed that down to, let's say, like, 10, further narrowed down after conversations and demos to
Chris Rainey 15:27
like four or five pulling up here at
Hannah Rebecchi 15:31
like a year, a year. Okay. Wow, it's the process. But it also I will say, it depends on the tool size, right? Like we've done this for much smaller tools, like candidate testing tools, or even assessment tools are much smaller scale that you can do it much quicker than a full blown ATS where you're like, you know, the switching costs, like we have to get this right. We don't want to happen in the next few years. So yeah, it is it's a journey. And it's a process but like, slowly, something you need to make sure you get pretty close to perfect.
Chris Rainey 16:00
Yeah. So you've narrowed it down, what would give us the top line key top five, or key requirements that you mentioned you got? And what were the main ones that came out all those meetings, all those discussions you had, what were the sort of top five to say, requirements? Yeah, I know that we boiled
Hannah Rebecchi 16:18
it down. So our most recent big RFP we did was for applicant tracking system and CRM, a number of different solutions bundled in one for our high volume space. So that's our frontline warehouse call centers, physical retail. So a very specific population and the big requirements there were it had to be mobile first, because we knew we want to meet our end users where they are. And that's where they are, they want to be able to do everything on their phone, it needed to have the right level of automation. And so we didn't want to completely no touch process, like our culture is really important to us. And but we wanted the candidate to be able to drive the process forward. And so a level of automation that the candidate can control the process, and also a level of automation that allows our recruiters to not be stuck doing daily admin tasks, but to do what we hired them to do, which was the great recruiters to sell candidates to engage top talent to source candidates. So that those were like the big things that we anchored on. And it had to be customizable, right. Like, yes, we want to scale and we want things to be streamlined. But we also need to be able to customize things for us that makes sense to us, versus just trying to have this approach of like one size fits all. So those were the big the core things and then obviously within those have, like a subset of requirements to fulfill those big three. And
Chris Rainey 17:36
what that what those chromosomes show is connecting with the existing systems, the same place, as well. Alright, who pulled the final trigger?
Hannah Rebecchi 17:52
It was a joint effort. And we're, we're very, like, you have all those requirements are just gonna give you a picture of like, how we actually
Chris Rainey 18:01
playing by the way to
Hannah Rebecchi 18:02
like, it's like a wall, a whiteboard. And then there's just the it's a lot. But they're scoring and there's ranking. Yeah. Very, very thoughtful.
Chris Rainey 18:15
What's the muzzle ever revealed? A tool that you use? Because no one's probably listening right now. Okay, this is great. Using what is?
Hannah Rebecchi 18:24
Yeah, so we landed with Avature. For our high volume applicant tracking system, we also have their CRM, their CRM and ATS, their platform tool, as well as their event solution referrals. Internal we kind of did this big bang approach for our high volume population.
Chris Rainey 18:41
Can you give me an example of like, I think we talked about HSS all the time. And but can you give me example of how like you've designed the employee lifecycle and employee experience in the platform? Can you give me like a specific use case? Yeah.
Hannah Rebecchi 18:57
Yeah. So when we talk about like mobile first, and also the level of automation, through what we built with Avature, we automated from what we had today, around 70% of the workflow. So you think about like how much time back that is for the recruiter how much quicker the candidate is moving. And I forget the date offhand. But like, substantially quicker, days quicker, moving through the process. But basically, you know, just thinking about the applicant tracking system, the candidate applies. There's a series of, you know, certain pre qualifications that the system will run through, to really make sure that by the time they get to a recruiter that the recruiter is only engaging with a qualified engaged candidate. Another big problem, I think, we saw as well as probably every company out there is around ghosting candidates and making sure you're getting back to candidates in a timely way. And so how many times have you applied to a job or heard of someone applying to a job like I applied and two years later, I've never heard of anything? That doesn't happen? I'm with us and how we built avatar. And so we've built basically automation that at any candidate driven step, if they're not engaging back with us after the timeframes, like two weeks like, we will automatically move them into a talent pool and keep them warm in our CRM, if not like they will continue to move through the applicant tracking system. So obviously, we have, we have third party assessments that help further pre qualified candidates, the candidate drives the scheduling process for scheduling out their interview. And then we've automated the entire offer process, the background check process, and the hire process. So we think about like, someone actually gets hired and moves into our HCM. That's all automated to. So it's a much quicker process and a hands off process. That's still the right level of hands on to make sure we're maintaining our cultural values during that hiring process.
Chris Rainey 20:50
That really helps obviously, you on the back end, but also, how's that changed the candidates experience on there? And you mentioned one thing in terms of not ghosting them. But what other ways is it improved the candidate experience? Yeah.
Hannah Rebecchi 21:07
In with this population, what we found through all of our user research upfront, before even signing on with avatar is that it is highly highly competitive, these frontline type warehouse roles, really what this population values is a paycheck, and how quickly they can actually get a job. And so through automating this entire process, candidates can, you know, apply and get hired and start the next day with GE and within a much shorter timeframe than they were previously. And so when you think about like that perception to that population of Wayfarer, and how do I get a job at Wayfair? It's much quicker, and they're in control. They're not, you know, throwing their resume in this black hole and saying, like, Well, I hope someone gets back to me, like they hear instantly, whether they're moving forward or not, and then can determine how quickly they want to move forward. So put the power back in their hands. And also it meets them where they are. We talked about also offering like a mobile first experience percent,
Chris Rainey 22:01
you know, because a lot of frontline workers, some of them don't even have an email. Right? Yeah. Right. So that's the only way you're going to be able to interact with them and communicate with them. And you are right is very competitive, especially for frontline workers, is the difference between who gets back to them first. That's like that. A lot of cases like that solution now, like it's overall about the best cuts I do. Of course, they care about the company they work for etc. But in many frontline worker jobs, it's really like, I need a job. And if you if Wayfair doesn't come back to me before this company, I'm gonna go work there. So for you is it massive competitive advantage, to have a system in place that enables that right. And then again, like you said, if it if it doesn't happen, then you build your talent pool, they move into your talent pool, which you can continue to nurture, engage with, and build that anyway, as well, which was which, in the past, we've never been able to do that at scale. Yeah, it was. And we
Hannah Rebecchi 22:58
struggled with it. Because I think with this population, how our recruiters are using our CRM is so different than the corporate population, like they're not really going out and sourcing candidates off of third party sites. They're using it as like a rehire engine tool. And so, you know, in this frontline space, you're hiring so many seasonal and temp hires to make it through your peak seasons of hiring. And so to be able to have that population of like, folks, you hire even folks that you came close to hiring, but maybe, you know, we didn't need the additional headcount for that season, like they're automatically being kind of flowed back into your CRM. And then it's easy for recruiters to go back and say, like, oh, shoot, you know, what, we actually just had an increase in headcount demand for this upcoming season. Let me just go back to the school candidates that we already have. And a lot of them being rehired or like, I you know, I loved working at Wayfarer had a great experience, I would love to come back. So it's really enabled the team to to just like, move a lot quicker and respond to the businesses, you know, fluctuating demands a lot easier than in the past. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 24:00
I noticed really varies, but how long did it take you to implement?
Hannah Rebecchi 24:04
So for us was just over 12 months? Which I know to a lot of people sounds like, oh my gosh, that seems like such a long time. But when you think about like, Oh, if you were to you know, implement a CRM separately and ATS separately and events platform separately, like we did it all at one time, when you say that
Chris Rainey 24:23
you mean not just this does our job as in you did all of the different the all of the tech stack overflow bumps or just Avature just
Hannah Rebecchi 24:31
Avature. But Avature has multiple we have multiple solutions with them. So they're, you know, more of like a platform than sorry, different ones. So yeah, implementing all of those solutions are oftentimes
Chris Rainey 24:42
used what other parts of the did you implement and as part of this process, yeah,
Hannah Rebecchi 24:47
so you have your ATS. You have your CRM, we have an events platform with them. We have our scheduling portal with them. Our external career site, our internal career site, our referrals portal Um, there's probably a few others, and then you think of all the third party integrations.
Chris Rainey 25:09
That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Okay, that sounds quite long. But now based on what you just said, that makes sense. Yeah, as well. How did the one of the big challenges is how did this land with your team? You know, because it's really fundamentally changing the way that they work, like you said, doing what? They're good at having meaningful conversations, removing some of that admin, but what was the best strategy? What do you think work best in terms of bringing introducing it to the team?
Hannah Rebecchi 25:39
Yeah, I, in, I think, for this type of team, or any companies like ta tech team, or just being in this space, like, to go through that size of an implementation is really like, a once or twice in a career type opportunity. It's not often that a company is really completely redoing, or re implementing part of their tech stack. And so getting them on board with just like, how exciting is that for your own career development. But then the other part of that what what really just got us excited about this tool, in general, is how customizable it was, you know, we were coming up from some of our tech stack, which was kind of off the shelf, or, you know, it's hard to be able to solve for your end users when they're coming and saying, Hey, we want to do XY and Z, and we're like, but the tech doesn't allow that. And you know, it's a third party tool. So we're kind of our hands are tied, were with the tech stack we've built today, you know, being highly customizable was something we were was a critical need of ours. And so now there's so much more empowered to actually work with our end users spend time understanding, like, what do they want? Why do they want it? What's the problem they're solving, and then they get to go back, or my team gets to go back and say, like, Okay, how do we want to design this? Like, what are all the things we should think about? And so they kind of, you know, geek out in that way of like really getting to flex their tech skills and understanding how the system works, but also being able to like, say, Yes, more to our end users than what felt like we were just always saying no, or maybe or kind of. So those are the big things that really got them on board and excited. That's
Chris Rainey 27:14
a really good point, right? You'd like it's very rare. It's a once in a cup. Yeah, it'd be a once in a career moment that you get an opportunity to completely reshape it. And be part of that journey is very rare. A lot of times when a company just like this is what we do, this is how we do it. This is what I got a well, I've got to work within the confines of what we have. But you've been on this journey. And I love the fact that and that's why we started I had a question earlier of how did you bring them on the journey. So when it comes to actually rolling it out, they've they've already been part of the design, they were already engaged. Now they felt like they know what it means for them and their role, right? A lot of companies, they end up embedding a software, and then they try and bring people on. I didn't realize Larry's really for that now, right. So you almost don't have to do any selling on the other end. Because they've been part of it the whole way.
Hannah Rebecchi 28:08
The tech team for sure. The other thing that we did that worked really well. And this is kudos to we have a partner team what's called ta enablement. So a lot of companies will have like a process enablement team, we have one dedicated in the TA space. And so you know, they were helping with a lot of their requirements discovery, and things like that, but they were our partner through and through, and something that they helped stand up was what we called our TA champions. And so through this year long implementation, we had designated point people across like every vertical FTA varying levels, and they were engaged in the decision making process from the very beginning all the way until we rolled out, and then they were our champions to then get their teams further bought in. And so, you know, we had, we have hundreds of recruiters globally. And so that's a big feat for, you know, a smaller team to be like, here's this new tool you should really like. And here's all the reasons like these ta champion, know what their recruiters care about, and can really help sell them and get them engaged. And also hold them accountable when you think about like system compliance, and just making sure that they're using the tool the way that they want. You know, they're the ones looking at their data every day and talking to their hiring managers and business managers. So they want to make sure they're using the system in the correct way to make sure that the data matches the work that they're doing. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 29:28
Yeah. When no one's living and breathing everyday, right? You want them to be it doesn't want to, they don't want to feel like it's something being done to them. Yeah. Part of the journey, right. And it's talking to people like them that live and breathe the same, the same role and, and do the same work as well right. So how do you identify those people?
Hannah Rebecchi 29:51
Yeah, so part of it was by level right. So you know, you obviously have like a lead by every vertical and then through not nomination. So working with those levels and say like, Hey, like who's a really strong and user who's like your go to subject matter expert, who's maybe helping train up other people on the team, who has really good rapport with your team? And so part of it was nomination and recommendations from the senior leadership at that point.
Chris Rainey 30:19
Were you around the question? Are you using any of the like, video interviewing?
Hannah Rebecchi 30:25
Not video, not today? No. No, I think there's been some express interest. And there always is like, how do you get? I mean, how do recruiters get more time back in interviewing is such a big time investment for them? So we haven't at least in the high volume space, we haven't. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 30:45
Would it make sense in high volume movie? Kind of crazy? Yeah, to do to do that? What about from just thinking through the lens of the AI? How has this changed the approach of making sure that you're making a fair and equal playing field for everyone? As Yes, it's had an impact there. I know, it's a bit of a random question. But
Hannah Rebecchi 31:07
just know, I, I think the more you remove that human element, in a way helps. And so, you know, we have our application pre screened questions, which are all skill based, we have assessments. And so you know, it's measuring you on the assessment of your role and the role and your skill set. And so by the time they actually get to a recruiter, were saying, like, this person is qualified on paper, and by skill for the role that they're interviewing for. And so most, the time for that, for this population, that recruiter interview call is really a sell call and to make sure like, Hey, is the shift you're interested in the one we're offering still? Like, does the does that match up? Are you interested? Still, now that you've gone through the process now that you've had a chance to ask me questions, and it's more of like a cell call, in a way than an actual interview than you think of like in the corporate space where you might need they're doing like a case interview, or a panel interview or anything like that,
Chris Rainey 32:07
again, if you're gonna have a call, you want to get all of those other things out the way you can do that through the onboarding process, all of those things, you don't have to spend time valuable time talking about some of those, like, Do you have a driving license? Because exactly what you're going to be driving trucks, like you can do the city example. But you know, also it doesn't waste their time, either, right? Going through the entire process. So if that makes sense. What would you say is like, how many years now it will joining you to be on this journey for?
Hannah Rebecchi 32:38
Oh, so we just went live with Avature last June. But we like kicked off this process, I would say back in 2021 was really when we we kind of got to this inflection point where we said, the tech stack we have today is, you know, it's not meeting our needs. And again, it was initially focus really in the high volume space. Because, you know, that's where we're seeing the largest growth that's, you know, our footprint footprint is growing. And so he said, like, how do we keep up with that scale without just continuing to hire more recruiters to hire against that. And so we got to this inflection point where he said, like, you know, we think we need to kind of split our tech stack off and like, let's really hyper focus in high volume space, that's where it seems to need the most attention or corporate space, like, say, like, if it's not broken, don't try to fix it in a way. But it was not the most broken. So you know, focusing on the high volume space, and yeah, then going through that like design session, RFP industry mapping process, and then a 12 month implementation, we quickly get to where we are today. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 33:39
What looking back, what do you wish you knew then that you know now
Hannah Rebecchi 33:47
this move now for like the industry, consolidating tech stack? Hindsight is 2020. Like, should we just have done everything at one? Yeah, we, you know, we were like, over, you know, we're really ahead of our time, and we're splitting our tech stack because we're, you know, we're really solving for the candidates and the end users and being really hyper focused in that space, which like, we still are now moving towards like, Okay, do we now do we think about consolidating SEC sec. But it's just a complete opposite shift from where we were thought was back in 2021. So yeah, doing some of that work now.
Chris Rainey 34:22
Yeah. What What advice would you give to yourself looking back, if you could, there's going to be people listening, right? There's gonna be people listening right now that are at the beginning of that journey, or even in the exploratory stage. What advice would you give to them? Yeah,
Hannah Rebecchi 34:37
I think just engaging as many people from the business as possible early on. Like I think we did a pretty decent job at that. And I think that definitely helped with our adoption and our buy in but like, it is always better to over communicate and in thoughtfully over involve certain end users and stakeholders and We've started doing that in a recent RFP we're doing and like you can already see, it's going to make things that much easier going forward. And so even like, when we think back to the design sessions, like it was a smaller subset of people, which had to be right, you can't have like 500 people in the room. But are you more thoughtful about like, how you actually share out those results are the purpose of it or the journey that you're on and not make it seem like it's like this behind closed doors decision that's being made? Even if they have no say in the decision, at least, like keeping them informed of the process will absolutely help more with adoption and buy in and just like, more transparent feedback from your end users who feel like they can reach out and be like, hey, like, I know, you worked on this, I have some thoughts like, Are you open to hearing them?
Chris Rainey 35:47
Yeah. What would you say is what this has done for your personal growth?
Hannah Rebecchi 35:52
It has definitely stretched me doing an implementation of that size was my first and the amount of internal teams that are involved. Plus, you're managing so many third party vendors, or at least for us, so many third party vendors that had to plug into these tools. you're flexing your project management skill, your people development skills. And then you know, you spend from 2021, to this past June, when we rolled out, you spent all that time living and breathing this implementation to that and be like, Okay, we crossed the finish line, we got it over and you're like, your job isn't even done. Like now, that's our job.
Chris Rainey 36:31
So people don't realize right, like to show you that the moment you go like that, that's like, it starts after that. And then it's an ongoing journey. Yeah,
Hannah Rebecchi 36:39
yeah. And so you kind of delayed this, like, how does your team successfully operate in the business of like, maintaining tools after the fact like you're in an implementation like, you know, every day what you're doing, you have a project plan day to day for 12 months? And you get to the end of that, and you're like, okay, like, how do we actually want to manage our team to be able to do that. So we actually, we sprinted to the agile methodology, we work off for two weeks sprints. We train the team up in that and so like, we had to completely rethink how do we sustain what we just built for the foreseeable future and make sure like, one, we don't burn out our team, but also, we can handle all the further change that's gonna come once you roll out a brand new tool to the business?
Chris Rainey 37:18
Yeah. Have you had to hire any specific skill sets? So within your own team to help support this? If so? What?
Hannah Rebecchi 37:26
Yeah, completely different. Like, if I was hiring someone, you know, 2021 or earlier? I would say a completely different skill set than I look for today. Where before and it's not to say like, we we aren't open to like non tech people in a way. But I would say before, like, even me, I came from recruiting someone else on the team came from another operations type role, like no, like ta tech stack, or even talent experience, where I'd say now, with how customizable and how we have built the tech stack, and also moving into the tech space, like, are definitely looking for folks with more of a tech background. Again, maybe not necessarily in the TA tech space, but like, have a verbal skills. Yeah, yeah, managed a tool at that level, where that wasn't necessarily always the focus in the past. But with the type of tool that we have today, that's absolutely a required skill set that we'll
Chris Rainey 38:25
bring back, would you have hired some of those people earlier?
Hannah Rebecchi 38:29
Um, maybe, but like, I don't think we were lacking anything, our team rocks. It's the same team. And what I love with our team is there, it's all internal moves. So like, I was a product of internal mobility, you know, move from TA to the operations role. And, you know, two of the other people, our team are also products of internal mobility. And so I think there is value of having one internal folks who like know, the business know the teams, yeah. But then also like, learning as you go, and learning together as a team as you go, really helps with morale. And they built that tool from the ground up. So like, no one knows better than they do. That's
Chris Rainey 39:11
amazing, like credit to you and the team for having the growth mindset. And for the company, for creating that psychological safety for you to go out there and do that. That says a lot that says a lot about the culture of the business, as well, because, yeah, that's what are you most excited about as you think about the future, and the roadmap that you have in front of you?
Hannah Rebecchi 39:35
Yeah, so now we have kind of this renewed focus. We've gotten our high volume, population in steady state with avatar, which is really exciting. And kind of starting to think through like, alright, like, what's, what's next for high volume? Like, where would we like to go? But also this renewed focus on our corporate space? And so, like we said, there's this appetite to consolidate tech stacks. And so we're in this evaluation phase, like what does that actually mean for us and Understanding all their requirements, and you know, what does their future look like. And then kind of mapping out the next one, two years. And so feels like a little bit like doing this all again. Again, yeah, but at least this time, like, we're not starting from scratch,
Chris Rainey 40:18
you've built Yeah, you've you've kind of built up that muscle you've done, they've done the reps, a lot of reps, you've put it, you've trained the team on agile, you've kind of you've put all of that the frameworks in place, you've built a trust and credibility with the business, which takes time and it's easy to lose, as hard to hard to gain. So a lot of that so much hard work you've done upfront that will make this next stage, you've already got a clear vision of how you're going to execute on it, it's not going to be easy, of course, to do that, you're certainly not going to be having a lack of work. So firstly, what are you most excited about when you think about work in the rollway? For what what makes you smile, like what you're most excited about?
Hannah Rebecchi 41:07
Now, with this new, we expanded role, like I have always been so hyper focused in the TA space, which I love. You know, that's where I started my career, but really kind of stepping out of my comfort zone in a way and you know, standing over to being like, what do we do for compensation? What do we do for benefits? What do you do for performance, all the different areas of talent now having to consider that, and how our tech stack really is cohesive or should be cohesive, really going back and questioning of like, I think we build things like, you know, we look at, we look at certain things that we've done, we're like, why don't we build that? And like, well, you know, I think it was like so and so's decision who was here five years ago, they're not here anymore, but like, no one's ever question it. So just really taking the time to understand like, what we're doing and why we're doing it. And then seeing like, where do we go from there? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 41:57
another benefit of the atomic teams, right? You're being exposed to those different functions. They're being exposed to you and all of those things of like reassessing, reimagining how these gets done and how that impacts the employee experience the candidate experience. Super exciting.
Hannah Rebecchi 42:17
Yeah, when you think about like the TA tech space, you know, we had our TA tech team, and we had our HCM team. And, again, when you think about the candidate lifecycle, like those two tools are so tightly integrated, yet those two teams couldn't have been more separated. And so now, the atomic, now through that atomic team, they're actually a blended team, and they're getting cross trained. And so our exam folks will start configuring avatar avatar, folks, we'll start configuring our HCM. Amazing.
Chris Rainey 42:45
Well, we'll leave it there. We'll have to do part two for when our messaging in 12 months. Yeah, give you Yeah. And then you could give us the you know, you're gonna you're gonna come back to me and we're like, yeah, we're separately now. Now. We're not constantly the industry has switched industry has switched once again. But honestly, congratulations, students saying thank you for sharing your journey and experience of everyone and pie because otherwise, what would you give and then we'll say goodbye.
Hannah Rebecchi 43:15
Oh, parting advice. Trust your team. I, I couldn't do my job without them. They are just the smartest, brightest people and so trust them, ask their advice, ask their feedback constantly. And let them run with things they know your tools better probably than you do.
Chris Rainey 43:39
That's why I hired him right in the first place. Listen, thanks so much for coming on the show and I wish you all the best. I'll check in with you in 12 months. Sounds good.
Hannah Rebecchi 43:49
Bye.
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