Devyn Mikell [00:00:03]:

Hey, this is Devyn Mikell with the Hire Quality podcast. Super excited to be interviewing you. So could you introduce yourself, your role in the company that you work at?

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Shannon Zengler [00:00:13]:

Hi, I'm Shannon Zengler. I'm the director of human resources for Valeo Financial Advisors. We are one of the largest financial planning firms in Indianapolis and service clients in 48 states today.

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Devyn Mikell [00:00:25]:

What is top of mind for you as a talent leader at your organization?

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Shannon Zengler [00:00:29]:

Some of the shifts within the financial services industry. The average advisor age is currently 56 across the country, which means significant percentages of experienced advisors are going to be retiring and the industry needs to shift pretty dramatically in some areas in order to attract diverse talent to help fill those gaps in the future.

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Devyn Mikell [00:00:51]:

What is something you wish you knew about leading talent that you didn't know when you first started?

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Shannon Zengler [00:00:56]:

It was really challenging for me early in my career as a leader to recognize the power and the positivity that can come from attrition or turnover. In some cases, you can really interpret someone coming to you and saying that they have just identified a new passion or calling outside of your company or outside of your industry as a sign that you failed as a talent leader. You didn't coach them on the right path, but in quality, it actually is a sign of success because it means that you created a safe space where they could do that reflection and come to you and have that conversation and work with you to unlock those skills so that they can be successful in the next part of their journey.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:33]:

What's something unique about you as a talent leader at your organization that makes you a perfect fit for that job?

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Shannon Zengler [00:01:40]:

Understanding people's communication styles and interpersonal dynamics and so much of finance and even other corporate environments that I've been in throughout my career really are about the relationships between people. How do you receive a message? How do you make sure that you build a rapport with someone so that you can achieve your goals?

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:00]:

We made it to the last question, and this one's a fun one. What is the worst question you've ever been asked in an interview?

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Shannon Zengler [00:02:09]:

I was actually on a panel a couple of years ago at IU. All the panelists were asked, what's your favorite interview question to ask in an interview? And one of the gentlemen said, my favorite question I always ask is, what is your spirit animal? And inherently, within the phrase, there's some concern, but just the idea of asking students or anyone in an interview something so subjective, I just don't think is a really effective way to identify skill or culture fit or behavior. And I always think about it years later.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:43]:

What's up, everyone? I'm Devyn Mikell, host of the Hire Quality podcast and co-founder and COO of Qualify. I'm joined today by Shannon Zangler, who you just heard on a Qualifi pre-interview with me, but now she's here joining me for a Hire Quality conversation. Shannon, so happy to have you here. Thank you for joining me today.

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Shannon Zengler [00:03:04]:

Yeah, so happy to be here.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:06]:

Absolutely. So, Shannon, you're the director of HR for Vallejo Financial Advisors, and I'm familiar with Vallejo because I live in Indianapolis and they're a Indianapolis, well, Carmel based company, but close to Indianapolis. It's about 20 minutes, if that. So I always do this. I do this every podcast. I'm like, I'm not going to tell the full story of your life. Right. And the title that you wear, I bet, doesn't do the full justice of who you are within the company Valeo.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:35]:

So one thing I think people will notice is typically I have recruiting leaders on here, for example. But you're the director of HR, so what does that mean for you? I'm guessing I have some answers in my head, but I'm just going to let you do it. What does that mean for you?

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Shannon Zengler [00:03:49]:

Yeah. So I think first to give some background on Vallejo. So we are the second largest financial planning firm in Indiana. We're second behind Charles Schwab only. And we're one of the top firms in the midwest. In terms of size, we have 170 employees, roughly the majority of which are based here in the Indianapolis area. And we manage approximately over 7 billion in assets today in terms of the clients across the country. So we are truly a firm that is focused on the development of the next generation of financial advisors and moving the industry forward.

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Shannon Zengler [00:04:27]:

So the majority of our employees are financial advisors, which means that on the staff side, we run really lean. So unlike a lot of organizations that might have a dedicated talent acquisition team, which is separate from HR, I wear all the hats and drive all of those things forward. So. Absolutely, talent acquisition and succession planning and development of career progression is all under my purview today.

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Devyn Mikell [00:04:53]:

See, that's why I asked the question, because I think I'm going to have talent leaders from who knows where on here. And I've had talent leaders from ascension. I've had talent leaders from biggest healthcare organizations in the country. Right. Or other companies. But you're the first multiple hat wearer that I've had on the podcast. So I'm excited to chat through this because I talk to a lot of people that do this that wear many, many hats. It's like, it must be just the world of HR recruiting.

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Devyn Mikell [00:05:25]:

It's just that's what comes with the nature. Tell me, what's your. Here's the challenge is I've always been told that there's the dark side and light side, which is dark side, HR light side recruiting. So what's your take on that? What is your take on that, Derek?

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Shannon Zengler [00:05:45]:

So I will say I have a slightly different take, although I can understand where that point of view comes from. I do think that there has been traditionally, especially in maybe larger, more siloed organizations, an idea that HR is meant to be kind of the reactive side of the house. It's policy enforcement, it's employee relations. It's when someone's in the door and you're just trying to keep things copacetic, whereas recruiting is the more exciting, kind of proactive, going out, finding the people, bringing them in, infusing culture with a new injection of talent. I actually think that's really kind of an outdated perspective, especially the industry in general for human resources, transitioning more towards strategic partnership.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:33]:

Right.

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Shannon Zengler [00:06:33]:

And the way that you do strategic partnership is that you touch all of those areas and you craft an employee journey from day one all the way through, hopefully retirement. If you build a succession planning and a career map that makes sense, where all of those connect. And so those groups should be intertwined, in my opinion. But I can understand why some people might really want to stay in two very separate sides of the sandbox.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:56]:

Yeah, I mean, it's tough because it's just talking with talent leaders. I see both talking with a big healthcare firm. I'm going to do the big healthcare firm. They are going through that right now. They're looking at taking everything that was separate and bringing it together. And I think it comes with this fair share of mess. Right. If you look at, like you said, a big organization moves slow by nature, and you have HR, who hasn't been in that world for the last ten years, let's say, now all of a sudden they're in charge of it.

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Devyn Mikell [00:07:29]:

Seems like a little weird for me. But then on the flip side, I think it is weird, too, if they just never speak to each other. So how do you do that? Well, I guess. What are the ways that you do this at your scale, that makes sense for your team?

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Shannon Zengler [00:07:42]:

Yeah. So I think the way that I structure it in my head is that the employee is the center. I am a people advocate. And so my job is to make sure that when they first learn about Vallejo and they're going through that hiring process, that we're setting clear expectations and creating an experience that we're actually going to be able to deliver when they come on board as an employee. And then once they're an employee, it's my job to make sure that we still meet all of our commitments that we made during that hiring process and continue to provide opportunity and continue to provide development so that they continue to advance and continue to want to stay. Retention is the same thing as new business acquisition. To drive goals, you need to bring people in the door and you need to want them to stay. And so that's the approach that I take to human resources is thinking about any policy change that we do, whether it's compensation or a benefit strategy or anything, not only how is it going to impact our current employee base, but how is it going to make me a more strategic recruiter on that front end to continue to infuse the talent that we need to grow and scale?

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Devyn Mikell [00:08:43]:

Yeah. So I always parallel sales and recruiting. I do that often, but I actually do it more for the idea of cold outbound is just like sourcing and the sales process needs to be good, just like the candidate journey needs to be great. And so the one I've never done though, but I love that you just did, which is retention. This idea of retention. I'm the revenue leader at qualify. Right? So anybody in startups knows new business is great, but retention is the thing that takes good companies to great companies. Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:09:19]:

And increasing that over time. And I've never thought about the fact that what you just said, the candidate staying, which is kind of in HR's realm, is just if not more important than just acquiring the new talent. So I now have another relationship there for sales, which is great. Thanks.

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Shannon Zengler [00:09:37]:

Oh, no. 100%. They are all aligned. They are all strategically aligned in terms of revenue growth, in terms of how talent plays into that. The same approach that you do to sourcing customers and potential investors is the same thing that I do in terms of recruiting, leveraging LinkedIn, leveraging searches, leveraging networks to try and get in front of people. And you may have to drip on them for a few months at a time, especially depending upon the type of role that you're looking for. But the more that you build relationships, the more that you drive revenue, especially in a model of Valeo, where we limit the number of clients that each of our advisor services. So the only way that we can grow and scale is if we continue to have a pipeline of new advisors.

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Shannon Zengler [00:10:18]:

So got you. Every new advisor I bring in, that's 40 more clients that we can service as a firm. That's direct revenue growth, and so that's how I contribute to driving us forward.

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Devyn Mikell [00:10:27]:

Got you. Yeah. I know. Every financial services company in your space is a little bit different. Right. So some have w two, some don't. What's the structure of the employment for financial advisors with you all?

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Shannon Zengler [00:10:41]:

Yeah, we're 100% W-2.

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Devyn Mikell [00:10:42]:

Okay. Got you. And then again, sometimes they don't even recruit for these people. I actually don't know how it works in that regard. But is literally your whole rec load is always going to be financial advisors, or is there kind of some one off roles that pop up here and there?

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Shannon Zengler [00:10:56]:

Yeah. So it's not only financial advisors. That's certainly always a key part, but right now, we're hiring for our investment research team, some of our back office operations, an executive assistant from one of our advising teams. So we balance view. It's also intern recruiting season, which our intern program is a really large driver of our future advisor recruiting. We really lean on that early generation talent and leveraging that opportunity to experience our environment, experience how different our model is, and then hopefully convert them to full time hires, which we've been very successful with historically. I think we have about 35 former interns on staff today as full time advisors. So that's a pretty significant percentage of our population, and that's how we go through organic growth.

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Shannon Zengler [00:11:40]:

That's really different than the majority of the industry, which the majority of the industry, as I kind of alluded to in that pre conversation we had, is a lot of the other industry is looking at a talent crisis, and the fact that their talent is retiring or nearing retirement. And so they're having to either acquire someone new or bring someone in to sell that book of business to. And it's far more closer to, like, a merger and acquisition type of experience, instead of actually focusing on developing from the bottom up.

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Devyn Mikell [00:12:09]:

Got it. Okay. So you beat me to the punch. I was literally.

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Shannon Zengler [00:12:13]:

I'm sorry.

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Devyn Mikell [00:12:14]:

You're good. So, I do want to still ask. I'll double touch on that. So, aging population, many of which are financial advisors, will be retiring in the next ten years, let's say? Yeah, maybe earlier. So what is your current game plan? Is it all internship? Is there more to it? What is the current game plan of talent? The talent acquisition side of doing something about that?

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Shannon Zengler [00:12:38]:

Yeah. So, in some ways, Vallejo is a little insulated because our actual advisor age is 34 on average, as opposed to the industry average of 56. So in general, we're a much younger firm.

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Devyn Mikell [00:12:49]:

Got you.

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Shannon Zengler [00:12:50]:

Our CEO and co founder just celebrated his 50th birthday. Got you. So we've got a little time before we're hit with the same kind of succession planning crisis that the majority of the industry is facing. But it is a significant thing that we all have to be cognizant of, of the fact that people are going to age, people are going to want to move on to new things and how do you continue to keep operations running? And so what you have to do, not only as a recruiting partner, but as a talent partner, is making sure that you're creating career pathways and unlocking those opportunities for, again, that retention to drive. So that way those advisors are grooming that next generation to take their place and be able to continue to move forward because people are always going to need financial advice. So we have to be able to make that demand no matter what, right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:13:40]:

Absolutely. So let's take two steps back, maybe three.

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Shannon Zengler [00:13:44]:

Yeah.

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Devyn Mikell [00:13:44]:

You obviously didn't start your career as the director of HR for Vallejo.

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Shannon Zengler [00:13:47]:

I did not.

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Devyn Mikell [00:13:49]:

And by looking at your LinkedIn, I think you started your career in a very interesting place compared to where you are right now. And maybe it wasn't the start of your career, but what I see. So let's jump back to the beginning. Where did this all begin? Like, maybe it's your first job out of college, or if it wasn't college, your first job, period, and then let's go from there.

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Shannon Zengler [00:14:09]:

So I graduated college in 2007. So right on the eve of the great Recession. So in general, opportunity was kind of a different mindset. But in college, I had studied more education and art history. I thought I was going to be like an art teacher. And then I quickly identified that to do that, you actually have to be good at art, which I was really good at appreciating art, but creating it is not my. So that was going to be a hard thing to teach others. So my first job out of college was actually in the early childhood development as an assistant director of a preschool.

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Shannon Zengler [00:14:42]:

And that taught me so much in terms of communication, so much in terms of patience and flexibility. But after a few years, I realized that I wanted to be around adults on a more significant scale. And that is when I kind of jumped to more of the corporate Fortune 500 space where I started with GEICO. I started in the call center and worked my way up the ranks into more training and recruiting. And overall was eight years. One of the highlights of my time is part of what brought me to Indianapolis, because I used to live in Florida for quite a long time, is GEICO opened the regional profit center in 2013. That's here in Indianapolis on the north side. And I was part of that team that was moved out here to help quickly hire staff and train those individuals so that that office could get up and running.

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Shannon Zengler [00:15:37]:

So that was a challenge of like, let's try to get hundreds of people in the door in the next few months. And how are we going to accomplish that? Well, being very agile and wearing all the hats.

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Devyn Mikell [00:15:48]:

Right? Yeah. At that point, were you by trade? Were you a recruiter or. No.

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Shannon Zengler [00:15:54]:

At that time, I was primarily more on the training side.

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Devyn Mikell [00:15:58]:

Got it.

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Shannon Zengler [00:15:58]:

So training and developing and a coach. And so they tapped me to help in with some interviews, and that was really my taste. I mean, I'd done some recruiting before in other areas, such as at the preschool, but that was my first high volume. We got to get people in the door as fast as possible.

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Devyn Mikell [00:16:16]:

Experience. So you have never worn the title.

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Shannon Zengler [00:16:21]:

Recruiter as my sole title. No, I've never. You're right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:16:24]:

However, you are recruiting actively and seemingly consistent for the past, whatever years. How'd you learn, and what are some of the mistakes that you made early on that you don't do anymore that you kind of have corrected?

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Shannon Zengler [00:16:37]:

Yeah. So I think some of it, in terms of how I learned, is a lot of the principles in terms of recruiting are the same thing. When you build relationships with customers, when you're conducting conversations or we're coaching peers or educating and transfer of knowledge, you have to understand people. You have to understand how to build rapport really quickly and how to ask questions that get to the root cause of something, whether it's a performance concern or why they want this job and whether they have the skills for it. So there were lots of translatable skills that applied to recruiting, and I think I just always knew in the back of my mind that no matter what I did in terms of talent management, recruiting was part of it. It's my job to recruit people to want to be on my team. It's my job to recruit people to want to be part of my company. I'm always a promoter, and so it just naturally kind of translated in that way.

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Shannon Zengler [00:17:27]:

So even though I never officially was solely a recruiter, I feel like it's always been part of my function.

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Devyn Mikell [00:17:31]:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of similar to what a lot of great companies are, kind of putting this onus on. Like, we're all recruiters almost that feeling of, like, we all do this because hiring managers are part of the process. Like, everyone's a part of the process in some sort of way. And so it's super important to have that kind of mentality of the person is putting the candidate at the center and everything else kind of falls around. Right. Or in your case, it's the candidate then becomes the employee at the center, right?

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Shannon Zengler [00:18:02]:

Yep. Absolutely.

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Devyn Mikell [00:18:03]:

What was the jump like from going from Geico, which is huge, to going to Valeo, which is not small but not, you know.

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Shannon Zengler [00:18:14]:

Yeah.

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Devyn Mikell [00:18:14]:

What were some of the adjustments that you saw?

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Shannon Zengler [00:18:16]:

Yeah. So the biggest thing was obviously the difference of scale and scope. So Geico, at the time when I departed in 2018, was right over, I think, 30,000 employees across the country. Now I'm moving to Valeo, which I was, I think, employee in 50 or 51. Right. So the difference was the fact that everybody I was working with for the majority of time, I could see in the hallways and I could build a personal connection with. But I was like the second non advisor leader hired for Valeo. So we had our COO who was wearing all of the know on the operations side, and so he was able to take off anything that involved people and kind of hand it over to me.

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Shannon Zengler [00:19:00]:

And so I got to jump right away in recruiting and doing fun things like writing the employee handbook and creating a compensation and benefit strategy and all those things that you kind of need to actually do this. But as, you know, in a startup environment, as you're experiencing some of it, you kind of go on the fly and just hope everything works out.

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Devyn Mikell [00:19:21]:

Absolutely. That sounds like something I would not want to do. The employee handbook part specifically. Yeah. So what's the split like? Right. So how much time do you spend recruiting, if that makes sense? I guess it's very straightforward, our question.

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Shannon Zengler [00:19:43]:

It's a great question. So there's some seasonality to it. So right now it's fall semester. This is core college recruiting season. This is kind of our season. So it's probably about 55% of my time. It's spent either on college campuses or building relationships or helping my team conduct interviews and review. I mean, I do now have a little bit of a team.

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Shannon Zengler [00:20:08]:

So it's not solely me. I do have help, but there's a lot in terms of continuing to calibrate with them on ideal candidates, getting feedback, helping with all those offer negotiation conversations and things of that nature. So this is a busy season. In the spring, it slows down a little bit. Summer is a little different as well. But typically I would say it's probably on average, probably a 50 50 split between the rest of HR and talent acquisition side.

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Devyn Mikell [00:20:36]:

Got you. And then is your help like HR coordinators or is it recruiter? What are those folks?

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Shannon Zengler [00:20:43]:

Yeah. So I do have an HR generalist underneath me that's helping with some of the blocking and tackling, especially on the benefits and payroll side. I have a training manager that helps the onboarding experience now and then. I do have kind of some business partners who do a lot of the performance management and coaching directly with the younger advisors.

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Devyn Mikell [00:21:04]:

Got you. Nice. Okay. So you got good help. Good help. I was like, you have a lot on your plate. I'm honestly just like, jumping into curious mode. I'm like, how do you do it?

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Shannon Zengler [00:21:17]:

Yeah. Happy. It's about being highly organized.

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Devyn Mikell [00:21:20]:

Yeah. That's not a strong suit for me. And I am a multiple hat wearer. But you should see my notion or my slack or my desktop. I'm not, however, a tabs person. I do not like having a bunch of tabs open.

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Shannon Zengler [00:21:34]:

Oh, see, I love tabs. But how many unread emails do you have? That's the real test.

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Devyn Mikell [00:21:38]:

So it depends on the email. My company email I try to keep below, like 40. I have 29.

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Shannon Zengler [00:21:46]:

Okay, that's pretty good.

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Devyn Mikell [00:21:48]:

My other email, I have 9999 unread emails. And, like, legitimately that number, I was like, how do I not have 10,000?

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Shannon Zengler [00:21:58]:

It just won't let you get there. Maybe just auto delete right below.

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:01]:

You get to a certain point and I'm just like, there's no need in me even putting effort here. I'm too far gone. So I just say, like, this is my non work half and my work self is a little bit more organized than my non work self.

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Shannon Zengler [00:22:15]:

There you go.

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:18]:

So talk to me about this internship process. Right. So you have what's arguably, like, the most important part of your pipeline for talent coming through internship. How do you make that special for them in the sense of the hiring experience? I could imagine many ways to make it special for the employee experience, but for the candidate piece you're competing. Know, when I come out of college, I might not be thinking about Vallejo. Like, I might be thinking about Charles Schwab. I might be thinking all the names know. I know off top.

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:50]:

So how do you stand out from the crowd? And I know that a lot of people are going to resonate with trying to figure that out.

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Shannon Zengler [00:22:57]:

That's a great question because it is hard to build name recognition when you're a smaller company and a smaller employer, so some of it is starting even before the candidate experience. I spend a lot of time being really thoughtful about the relationships in terms of professors and department chairs and career services in universities. As often as I can get in front of them or my team can get in front of them. For example, I was on Butler's campus yesterday doing a presentation on building a growth mindset. They asked, hey, would you talk to a bunch of students about how to set goals? Sure. We really didn't necessarily. It wasn't all finance majors. It may not have anything come from that in terms of a direct application, but if that student had a really great time and tells their peers, like, hey, we heard this really cool company, then it spreads.

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Shannon Zengler [00:23:44]:

So some of it is just, how can you strategically for something that does not require any money? That was just a volunteer effort of my time, so I was able to advance the ball without using funds, because a lot of times you probably have a limited recruiting budget if you're in this kind of tier. The other thing we do is that when we do go for things that are more formal events, like a career fair, I try to make sure that we're including alumni, especially individuals who maybe graduated from the last couple of years, or former interns, because it's a very different experience when you're kind of walking the rows of tables and it's like, oh, that person kind of looks like me. So they automatically feel a little bit more approachable, potentially, and they might ask them questions or just spend more time chatting with them, because there's that recognition and comfort there. And that person, as a former intern, can talk directly about what the experience is. And we really stress with our intern recruiting that every intern has the opportunity automatically to interview for a full time position during their summer with us. So they automatically know that that opportunity exists. It's automatically something that helps set us apart from maybe some other firms where it's really more about getting resume experience or more kind of having fun for the summer.

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Devyn Mikell [00:24:59]:

Right. Like, this is actually a career opportunity. Yeah, got it. Okay, that's legit. What are some of the things that you haven't been able to crack the code on? I know that this is, like, one of the things that can be hard. I'll preface with, it can be hard to talk about openly, like things that you maybe just haven't figured out. But I think it's helpful for anyone that's listening.

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Shannon Zengler [00:25:23]:

Yeah, no, 100%. I think the area that we haven't cracked the code on that I wish we were better at is how do we continue to increase the diversity of candidates to come through our pipeline? There are some societal and demographic pieces that make it challenging. Certainly the fact that we're in Indiana, based on census, know the fact that finance as a major in a lot of business schools is declining in favor of some more broader business majors or digital technologies. So just the number of students who naturally would look at us and go, oh, financial, well, I'm not a finance major, and automatically opt themselves out is high. So it requires us to be a lot more thoughtful and strategic in terms of clubs and universities and other systems, and how do we get in front of individuals that otherwise wouldn't naturally be exposed to us? But this is not just a Vallejo issue. It's an industry issue. We're far from gender parity and some of those other things that we should be at. So it's just continuing to build the message, continuing to demonstrate the value of this career path and avoid some of the stigmas that exist about Wall street and some other things that we don't have any control over.

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Devyn Mikell [00:26:41]:

It's such a tough topic and also tough to talk about and then tough to actually execute on and change, because at the end of the day, I understand. And I said this before, I was literally just on a podcast talking about this, too, which is, I am a black founder in Indiana, and I was telling the. I think it was the IBJ podcast. And I was like, I pretty much know every black founder in Indiana or in wouldn't be.

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Shannon Zengler [00:27:09]:

I wouldn't be surprised.

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Devyn Mikell [00:27:12]:

I get it. And I definitely see both sides. It's like, on one hand, it's hard to find diverse talent in this space, especially. And I know that. I know about finance and all that stuff. But on the other hand, the other side is like, they're like, I can't find them. They might be looking for a job, and they're like, I can't find them. So what are some suggestions that you would have? And I know you admitted we haven't cracked the code, but what are some things that give you hope on this strategy is kind of working.

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Devyn Mikell [00:27:41]:

This is seeming to work a little bit for those who are trying to do this whole thing about trying to drive change.

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Shannon Zengler [00:27:48]:

Yeah. So I think there's two pieces. So one was we had to do a lot of soul searching about what realistically could be our reach, because there's a world where an organization could knee jerk react, and then you could compound the problem by specifically hiring to check certain demographic boxes. And that's not effective in any way, shape or form. It's a terrible strategy, but you could do it. But we do have the ability to increase awareness of our industry in general, in groups that maybe would not have had naturally any exposure to it. Maybe they didn't have a family member in the industry or things of that nature. And we can also educate them about other companies like ours that may not have the same barriers to entry that other sectors in finance will have.

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Shannon Zengler [00:28:32]:

We don't require that you cold call your network all day. We don't require that you already have access to wealth. We're going to teach you how to do all that by being a really good servicer and providing really great advice to clients. And naturally your business will develop. But if you don't know that this type of model exists, then how would you ever be able to find it and feel like you could have a place in it? So we've actually started to target kind of the high school level. So we've partnered with a couple of tools. For example, we're a corporate work study partner for Providence Christa Ray High School, which primarily takes students, as you may be aware, who would not typically pursue a four year college degree after high school. And so they get to work one day in our office, they get to get exposure not only to the advisors, but all the different career paths.

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Shannon Zengler [00:29:17]:

And so our hope is that, if nothing else, even if we inspire them to obtain a four year degree, whether it's in finance or not, at least they have a reference, a positive reference of what financial services can be. And maybe they'll share that with their friends and family as they grow, and maybe we'll continue to build our knowledge in that way. But that's a long term play, and it's going to take a while for actions like that, literacy training and other things that we do in the community to play out into tangible recruits. But we're committed to that because that feels like the most sustainable way that we can enact real change.

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:50]:

Yeah, absolutely. It's like the 1% better everyday mentality. I forget the number, but it's like if you get 1% better every day for a year, the compound on that is insane. And so I've taken that to heart myself. I think a lot of companies want to do the knee jerk thing where they jump in and like, hey, we're making a huge. And like, I'll give you my personal example. I can only speak for my own. You know, when the George Floyd event happened, for example.

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Devyn Mikell [00:30:22]:

Sure, every venture capital firm in America seemingly came out and was like, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do this. Right. And for a year there were some things that happened and maybe there was a slight uptick, but data shows that it actually got worse after like a year or two. And so those sorts of things, like you said, they don't do anything. So focusing on the thing that you can actually do and do consistently, I think is way more important and way better. So commend it, basically. And I saw a Providence Crystal Ray school bus pulling up to our, we work in a cowork space, so I now know what. That's cool.

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Shannon Zengler [00:31:02]:

No, it's a great program. We're huge supporters.

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Devyn Mikell [00:31:04]:

Absolutely cool. Well, let's jump into the next segment of the show, which is the question of the week. And this is all about you getting involved, but also the audience getting involved. So those who are listening can actually answer this question as well.

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Shannon Zengler [00:31:19]:

Sure.

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Devyn Mikell [00:31:19]:

So if you're listening to this and you want to jump in, you could win a gift card if you give the best response and voted by yours truly. But anyways, it's worth at least know. So Shannon, you're going to get the first pass. Everyone else, the link will be in the description below. Wherever you're listening to this, it'll be below more than likely. And so just click it super easy. You'll take an interview just like Shannon did in the beginning of the show. So Shannon, your question is how do you see remote work and hybrid models impacting the future of recruiting and what strategies are you employing to adapt to these changes?

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Shannon Zengler [00:32:00]:

Yeah, it's a great question. And how it impacts, I think will depend a lot in terms of the industry and the specific job. Like for example on financial advisors, those roles have pretty much been hybrid even before the pandemic because you obviously would go to where your clients are or some days would make more sense to get on a Zoom call versus coming into the office. So there was always some implied level of flexibility. What we have observed or noticed is what you have to teach with that, if you create flexibility, is how you still communicate and build connection. And for models that require an intense amount of collaboration and partnership with your peers, there's just a formality that comes to sending someone a slack or a teams message like, hey, are you busy? Can I talk to you? Versus just walking down a hallway and poking your head and being like, oh, you're in your office and I don't see you're on the phone or anything. So I'm just going to talk to you. So I do understand why there is some friction between some employers and their employees about that return to work and that desire for that.

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Shannon Zengler [00:33:13]:

Because there is some really cool things that can happen when you overhear a conversation in a hallway, for sure. In terms of recruiting, I think the biggest thing is that recruiters, we all just have to be really honest about what our environment is and what our environment isn't. So if someone is looking for 100% remote, we have to be honest. If that role can't sustain that and vice versa. If someone really wants to be in person and we're remote first companies, that's just never going to make them satisfied. So we need to be honest about who we are today and who we likely would be two to three years down the road. Because again, we're trying to find long term partners for our growth. To be fair to all sides.

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Devyn Mikell [00:33:54]:

Yes, honesty. That's an answer I didn't expect for one, and then two. I think it's really simply great. Essentially, the reason I'm so kind of happy about that answer is because I feel like the whole idea is to sell people on something. Yeah, we're not remote, but XYZ and all this stuff. But at the end of the day, if that's the question, then you have the answer, and that's really all there is to it, because there's always going to be a candidate out there somewhere. I think it's more important to be honest and authentic, like you said. And I think companies should also just stand on their what they believe.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:34]:

I personally like being in the office. For example, our company is a remote company, but I wouldn't mind if we were in office all the time, but everyone else would. And so I'm just here by myself. That's how it goes.

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Shannon Zengler [00:34:51]:

But it's good that you create an environment that can support either option. Right? Right. Some of it's that. But I think in general, transparency is probably the biggest opportunity that the recruiting side of the house has. Probably because there is that sales and aspect, especially for companies where the talent acquisition has goals based on time to fill or number of applicants or numbers of interviews that they're evaluated on. That can sometimes be conflicting priorities, not due to ill intention, but just the reality of trying to make your numbers and trying to demonstrate your success in your role as it's been defined. But because I have to look at it again as I'm bringing you in the door, because I want you to stay here. I have to be honest with you.

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Shannon Zengler [00:35:35]:

I have to tell you exactly who we are and who we're not. And I have to tell you up front what our compensation is and how it's structured. I really don't love the dance that I hear other people go through when they have interviews. You know what your compensation is. We should just be transparent about how our models work and be fair to those candidates because that converts them to better advocates when they become employees. Because you were up front and you told them the truth and now you're going to prove that it was true.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:06]:

I love that. Well, this has been great. I'm sure we could go forever. But I know you have work to do and I have some to do as well. But I think this is awesome and I think other people will think so as well. And so how would you prefer those that are listening, that want to connect with you, want to continue to learn from you? How would you want them to follow you? For lack of better term?

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Shannon Zengler [00:36:29]:

Yeah. So LinkedIn is probably the easiest, obviously, connect with me on there. Happy to. If you're local, always grow coffee or things of that nature to share advice. I'm sure I can learn from all of your listeners, too, from their sectors of the industry or those who are virtual. Virtual coffee makes fun is fun too.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:48]:

Absolutely. There you go, folks. It's always LinkedIn. I think that makes sense.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:53]:

I've had like one digital business card these days.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:55]:

I've had one Twitter, one Twitter, one Instagram.

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Shannon Zengler [00:37:01]:

The rest of social media is not really my bag.

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Devyn Mikell [00:37:05]:

I get it. Well, cool. Well, if everyone listening, two things do the question of the week. It's almost like free money if you give a good enough answer.

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Shannon Zengler [00:37:14]:

Yeah.

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Devyn Mikell [00:37:15]:

But more importantly, if you liked what you heard, make sure to like and subscribe to this podcast. Maybe it's on YouTube, maybe you're on Spotify or Apple or on all of them. Like and subscribe. And even if you want to give us a review, that'd be awesome. But just keep in touch with this podcast because we're going to continue putting out great content like this one. So Shannon, thank you so much for being here, for taking time to chat with me. It's been awesome. I've learned a ton in this short amount of time and I will leave you to your mini hats and hope that you have a good rest of your week.

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Shannon Zengler [00:37:47]:

Thank you, my friend. It was so much fun. Thanks for having me.

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Devyn Mikell [00:37:51]:

Thank you. See ya.

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