Jeremy Eskenazi, Riviera Advisors – Interview Transcript

Peter: Jeremy, welcome back to Total Picture Radio.

Jeremy: Thank you, Peter. I'm glad to be here.

Peter: The last time we got together was at the SHRM National Conference in New Orleans last July, and I think everyone in HR and recruiting would consider 2009 pretty much of a train wreck. What has changed, if anything, in talent management and talent acquisition since last summer from your perspective?

Jeremy: Well, I guess we only think that we all can say that 2009 was a year that we would not like to remember, and I would say that there has been a change, and I would characterize it as very, very cautious optimism.

Now, I say that it's very cautious optimism as it relates to the economic situation, but really not in jobs growth. But for talent acquisition, jobs growth doesn't always have to be the only thing that we look to be optimistic for. So what I think is happening in talent acquisition and what I'm seeing is that they're optimistic for things like innovation, optimization, and making the talent acquisition process lean, and this is actually a good thing because without the extraordinary job growth that we've experienced over the last 10 years or so, this gives us time to take a pause and get it right.

So, for a lot of the talent acquisition leaders that I talk to and I work with, they are not optimistic about significant job growth, which used to be the measure of what was good about talent acquisition. Yeah, we've got a lot of jobs, we're filling a lot of jobs, we've had hire lots of people to do that. Now I think they are cautiously optimistic, but not our jobs growth, about innovation, optimization, and making the talent acquisition process more lean and effective.

Peter: With your clients, Jeremy, are you seeing mainly recruiting are going on, replacing people in existing positions or perhaps upgrading people in those positions since there are so many great people out on the street looking for work?

Jeremy: I think it's a combination of all of those things, Peter. With our clients and the people who we work with, we see a combination of both job growth. I mean, we work with some pretty fast-growing companies still to this day. Most of those companies are involved in technology and new product innovation, but we also work with companies that are in more of a stable environment. We even have some clients that we're working with now that is working with issues relating to the retirement bubble. We're working with a very large public utility company which is trying to optimize their talent acquisition function, and they see significant retirements coming out because in that industry, the whole deal was all about retention and longevity, and what's happening is that a good amount of the knowledge that was in that organization is starting to leave.

We're seeing both job growth companies that are going through organic growth in terms of hiring lots of new people for new products, and growth globally, and most of that growth, by the way, is outside of the US and North America, but we still see some clients that are adding for growth and again, those are technology-oriented companies. But we're also seeing clients that are doing as you said, they are replacing staff, they're seeing the opportunity to upgrade, and that's something that we'll start here a lot about during our panel discussion as well, the whole idea of upgrading talent. So, it's a combination of both.

Peter: One of the many challenges faced by recruiters we discussed in New Orleans last year was the fact that it was almost impossible to get anyone with a job to consider a new opportunity. Is that changing Jeremy as we enter the second quarter of 2010?

Jeremy: I think it's a little bit better, Peter, but it's still hard, and there is no question that in North America, we are still in a serious real estate problem, and that real estate problem drives a lot of these challenges. It may be a little easier to attract somebody to be open to considering a new job, but when it comes down to having to sell a house and acquire a new house, depending on what the market is, it's still a big challenge, and I think this whole idea of relocation is causing a lot of recruiters nowadays to try to think about new strategies and ways to attract people to make the change. But it is getting a little bit better. I think that the attitude amongst job seekers, especially those who are successful people at the higher levels, I think they're more open to considering a change because the mood is slightly lifted, is the way I would describe it.

Peter: Let's spend some time talking about your general panel session here at ERE this year, which is titled Beyond The Downturn: A Panel of Survivors Surviving the Year & Planning for the Decade, which is a real mouthful. What are some of your expectations and what are some of the bullet points that you guys are going to be discussing in this conversation?

Jeremy: My panelists all come from companies that have significant consumer products and services, and they were amongst the hardest hit during the downturn over the last two years or so. These were companies that were involved in selling products and services to consumers who didn't have as much money to spend or didn't have a job. So obviously their business was significantly impacted and so was the talent acquisition function in these companies. So, we wanted to talk about what are some of the things that these businesses and these leaders had to deal with in terms of the impacts from the business changes that they encountered and what those things had to do with their talent acquisition function. So when the business went down, and they started not to have as many jobs to fill or any jobs to fill at some point, what did they do inside of their own organization to try to deal with that issue. That means, that yes, all three of my panelists had to reduce their staff, they had to reduce their budget because they weren't hiring as many, or any, people at certain periods of time during the last year and a half or so, and they also had to maintain some kind of semblance of reality around replacement staff when, in fact, they did need to hire somebody in a really difficult environment.

We want to talk about what did they have to deal with, what were some of the challenges that they were up against, how did they address those challenges, how did they keep their teams motivated during a really tough time, and how did they use that time to innovate, and that's the real bulk of what we want to talk about during our session, is what are some of the things that came out of this downturn that perhaps are going to stick because they were forced to deal with so many issues and so many challenges that maybe they had to kind of improvise with using some new innovations, and to optimize their recruiting function, what are they going to be doing now for 2010 and the rest of the decade that they perhaps learned during the tough times.

That's really the idea behind this panel. It's really about people who really did survive, and what are they now doing to prepare for the new decade.

Peter: Who are the companies and representatives that are going to be on your panel?

Jeremy: I have a great group of people. We have Paul Martin who is the vice president of Global Staffing and Diversity for Sony Pictures Entertainment based in Culver City, California. We have Jenny Eagle, formerly the director of talent acquisition for T-Mobile USA, and we also have Brad Warga who is the Vice President of Talent and Employee Engagement for Harrah's Entertainment based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Peter: That really is an interesting mix of companies and situations where… I mean, everyone knows what's been going on in Las Vegas, for instance, but as you said earlier, these are all pretty much consumer-related companies that have really been hit by the recession over the last couple of years. Are these panelists all clients of Riviera Advisors?

Jeremy: Yes, some have been clients in the past and some have been clients more recently but yes, they all are people that we know and we have worked with.

Peter: I think that's cool because having those considerable insights regarding their specific needs and challenges really is going to make this an interesting panel.

Is there anything they share, in other words, are there any commonalities in the areas of talent acquisition?

Jeremy: All of the panelists are with obviously companies that are highly focused on the consumer as we've discussed, and understand how their employer brand ties to the consumer brand – so how they deal with their candidates and treat their candidates all ties back to these people being potentially a current or future customer. This makes the staffing function and the talent acquisition function inside of these organizations much more visible and prone to focusing on candidate experience and things like that. It also makes these leaders and their staffing functions inside of these companies much more visible and prone to cuts, because when the consumer stops buying, then we stop hiring and staffing becomes very visible to the financial teams as a place we can cut that. So they've all had to deal with these kinds of challenges I've just described, but being in a consumer-oriented company, and all three of these people have a keen understanding of the connection between candidates and customers, etc.

Peter: That really is a unique challenge because when you are recruiting and you are such a consumer-oriented company, I mean you really have to take your brand into consideration and make sure that what you're presenting out there to candidates is going to help support the company and the brand.

Jeremy: Absolutely, and I can tell you that people like, for example, Brad Warga, has developed one of the most award-winning types of branding ideas possible. He's got a university recruiting function that is tied to the world series of poker which ties into their world series of poker brand that Harrah's, and he has been able to keenly work not only within the staffing organization, but within the marketing and the consumer insights organization within Harrah's to build a joint product that is tied to the same brand.

Peter: I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier and that was the fact that so many recruiters and HR professionals are being cautiously optimistic and that certainly is a pervasive thing that I've heard leading into ERE this year. What do you think some of the takeaways will be from your ERE session and ERE in general?

Jeremy: From our session, our team has been spending a lot of time talking about what are the things that we want people to sort of walk away from, and what our panel is going to do is they're going to provide some very direct, realistic, and authentic conversations about the real difficult time and the choices they had to make during the downturn. Specifically, they will address the fact that yes, they all had to lay off recruiters and recruiting team members, and how did they address the people who had the stay behind and actually continue to do the work, because even though recruiting slowed significantly, we still had to hire people. People quit, people leave, and we have to replace people, and there are critical jobs that need to be filled, and that's really difficult for the people who are staying around.

They're going to talk a lot about in a tough time, when you have to downsize how do you keep the people motivated, and especially with recruiters who are very social butterflies; they want to have the kind of interaction that is all based on positive energy around hiring, about hiring managers, liking their work, about candidates liking them, etc., how do we deal with that during the dark ages of 2009. They'll be talking a lot about that, and what they did to motivate their teams.

They'll also talk a lot about how they used the downturn to upgrade their talent. Obviously in 2009, companies had to lay off people, not just in recruiting, but outside of recruiting in the business itself, and when they made those decisions, they made some strategic hiring decisions that allow them to lay off people, that then opened up an opportunity for a new person to come in, perhaps in the future that would change the way the business operated, or change the thinking, or what have you. Basically, they were using the opportunity of the downturn to clean their talent house by perhaps terminating under performing employees and then that allowed them to clear some space to upgrade talent and make some strategic hiring decisions. So, some of the people who you'll listen to on our panel will talk about how they used the downturn to go after candidates from industries that were especially hard hit by the downturn.

For example, you'll hear from Brad Warga at Harrah's talk about how they really went after top candidates from the automotive and the financial services sector that were really hard hit in the downturn to potentially bring some new blood to the casino gaming industry.

Those are some of the things that you'll hear about. You'll also hear about the opportunity for us during the downturn to increase our brand and our talent market share during the downturn, to talk about as I said the talent acquisition team morale, we'll hear about some of the things in 2010 that they're working on now, so streamlining their processes, innovating with new ideas.

One of the things that's going to be kind of a really interesting discussion is this whole idea of upgrading the skills of HR generalists. Now, we've learned that obviously over the last several years that, you know, generally speaking HR generalists, not people in recruiting, has a love-hate relationship with the recruiting team and vice versa, and what we found is that during the downturn when many organizations have either significantly downsized or completely eliminated the recruiting function, HR generalists have been left to hold the bag of recruiting. When there was a need to fill a job, HR generalists now are having to do it, and what we're finding is that some of these organizations has had to upgrade the skills of HR generalists in order to continue to keep the train moving as we speak. We really have to look at the idea of HR generalists now more as our partners, and so we'll be talking a little bit about this and it's very controversial.

We'll also talk a little bit about recruitment process, outsourcing, the whole idea of RPO, and how that has come into play even more so during the downturn because obviously, we've had to look at RPO as an option when we don't have enough recruiters to do the work.

Those are some of the things that we'll be talking about. It's a lot to talk about in an hour, but that's what we'll be talking about.

Peter: That should be a really interesting panel conversation and there's so many similarities between what's going on in HR and recruiting and for instance in the publishing industry – one of my friends who works for the New York Times tells me that reporters today have to be Swiss Army knives. They have to be able to not only be good journalists but understand Ruby On Rails, understand how to record an interview, understand how to run a video recorder, or take pictures. It seems like a lot of these things are happening across a lot of different industries as far as becoming generalists and becoming more adapt at doing more things.

Jeremy: Absolutely, and I've been saying this for many years. The idea of recruiting professionals as project managers, is really what we're looking at here is recruiting professionals have got to be project management focused. The same thing goes with our brothers and sisters that are HR generalists; these people that don't typically just do recruiting but to employ relations and training, and organization development, they too have to be project managers because we all are having to do a lot more with less.

Peter: Jeremy, what are you looking to accomplish at ERE this year?

Jeremy: I'm really excited about ERE this year because this is the 10th year for ERE, and I was at the very first ERE, actually on a panel and when I was still as a practicing recruiting professional on a panel that was facilitated by my friend Gerry Crispin 10 years ago, it's hard to believe but it was 10 years ago that ERE first had its expo.

Myself and my team at Riviera Advisors, as well as my partners in the Asher Talent Alliance, we will be wandering around the halls of ERE, we'll be spending a lot of time talking to vendors in the expo, talking to them a little bit about what's new, what's changing, what are some new technologies and tools that are out there, and I'm anxious to see several of the sessions. I'm excited to see John Sumser's presentation on recruitment disruption, I'm really excited about that, and I'm really excited that ERE has decided to add a track this year for small and midsize employers.

For the last 10 years, they've really focused on getting the headliner companies, these brand name companies coming in that have a really cool brand name, you know honestly like some of my panelists. Everybody knows the companies that these people work for, they all have a great brand. But what happens if you don't have a great brand or people don't know your company, or you're not a consumer-oriented company, or you're small, and you don't have the resources to put in a full-pledged talent acquisition program or system and things like that. So ERE has finally gotten the message (which I'm excited about) to have a small and mid-size employers track. So I'm looking forward to hearing Ben Gotkin from RSM McGladrey talk about recruiting without a big name or a big budget, and several of those types of topics. Finally obviously I'm looking forward to seeing many of our close friends and colleagues and many of our clients.

It should be a great annual reunion of lots of people.

Peter: At your booth, you have some pretty outrageous chocolates, is that right?

Jeremy: Well yeah, we will have a booth – actually the Asher Talent Alliance, which Riviera Advisors is part of, will be having a booth where you'll be able to come by and sample some of the artisan chocolates made by Sweet Bliss Chocolates, and I think a lot of people who have been to our booth before remember the chocolate muse, and in order to learn what those are, they'll have to stop by.

Peter: Jeremy, it's been great to have an opportunity to catch up with you again. One last question, is there anything I didn't ask or we haven't discussed that you think is important for our listeners to know about recruiting and HR in 2010?

Jeremy: Thank you again Peter for the opportunity to talk to you and yes, the only thing I would say is that I think that this whole idea of cautious optimism, we need to maintain that cautious optimism. One thing I do want to sort of set the level straight on is that I think that a lot of recruiters who are affected by the downturn in 2008-2009, who were laid off, may find it very difficult to find a job back inside of corporate recruiting in 2010. That being said, that doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities for recruiters. That means though that those recruiters need to be more focused on being more flexible on the type of work environments that they might pursue. So that means that contingent work like contract recruiting, working in or for a recruitment process outsourcer or other kinds of alternative recruiting organizations may be a place where displaced corporate recruiters might look, but I am not optimistic that every single corporate recruiter who was laid off in 2008 or 2009 is going to find their job to be available again in 2010. It may take some time, but I think that there are opportunities, and I'm just trying to be cautiously optimistic about that.

Peter: Well again Jeremy, thanks so much for joining us today in Total Picture Radio.

Jeremy: Thank you, Peter.

Peter: Thank you Jeremy.

Riviera Advisors is a sponsor of Total Picture Radio's coverage of ERE Expo 2010 Spring here in San Diego, California. Stay tuned for in-depth interviews with all of the panelist participating in Jeremy's general session including Paul Martin, VP of Global Staffing and Diversity from Sony Pictures Entertainment, Jenny Eagle, the former director of talent acquisition for T-Mobile USA, and Corporate Vice President of Talent and Employee Engagement at Harrah's Entertainment, Brad Warga.

This is Peter Clayton reporting. Thank you for tuning in to Total Picture Radio, the voice of career and leadership acceleration.

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