Tara Amaral, IACPR Interview Transcript

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Diversity after the storm. How have the diversity initiatives weathered the economic downturn and what are companies doing today to foster the creativity and innovation that a diverse workforce brings. In a global marketplace, a company that employs a diverse workforce is better able to understand the demographics of the marketplace it serves and is, thus, better equipped to thrive.

Welcome to a special Inside Recruiting Talent Acquisition channel podcast on TotalPicture Radio from the IACPR Global Conference in New York. Joining us is Tara Amaral, Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Staffing at ADP. Tara leads ADP's Diversity and Talent Acquisition Initiatives. She previously was with Hewitt Associates where she was general manager of the recruiting and outsourcing business. In that role, she managed 14 client teams with over 500 associates around the globe and her teams hired over 40,000 applicants annually. During her time at Hewitt, she revamped the RPO Service Delivery Model and cost structured, developed cross team operations and established a client metrics infrastructure. Tara has been with ADP now for about 3 years, and I'm delighted to have Tara with us on the show.

Tara, thanks for joining me.

Tara: Thank you, Peter.

Peter: We just got off a panel that was called Diversity After The Storm. The panel looked beyond the analytics to discuss how to address the challenges of recruiting, developing and retaining ethnic, culture and gender diversity at the executive level. Tell us about ADP and how you go about recruiting diversity at ADP.

Tara: I think there's a couple of things that we do that we focus on. We make sure that we have senior leadership endorsement of what we're doing, and we've got that sponsorship at all levels. I think we have a two pronged approach; we look for talent and assume diversity is going to be coming to the forefront. We also look for diversity and assume that talent for the specific role we're going to come is coming up as well. So we really have to have a multi-pronged approach and we also then rely on our business leaders to help us network in communities that they do or don't participate in and making sure that we're having a business focus on what we're doing as well.

Peter: When it comes to talent acquisition, are you using executive search firms or are you using staffing agencies, do you use LinkedIn? How do you go about recruiting especially at the executive level at ADP?

Tara: At the executive level, I do have a centralized executive recruiting team that handles global executive searches. Some of those we do our own in-house, some of those we partner with a firm that may have a particular expertise or expertise in their functional or geographical area. We do have a team of sourcers that leverages a variety of social media tools, as well as the old fashioned calling in, getting to know and networking with folks that you know.

Peter: I think of ADP as one of these enormous companies that no one really knows much about. Either you're called the alarm company or the payroll company, one of the two, right?

Tara: That's right, well we're much more than a payroll company these days.

Peter: Tell us a little bit about ADP and some of the different businesses that you are now in.

Tara: ADP is actually, what we really refer to ourselves as a professional services and business services firm. While we're best known for payroll, our product line is rapidly expanding. In fact we think of ourselves as HR payroll and benefits and that our fastest growth is coming beyond the payroll space. In addition to all the full service HR services we can provide which does include co-employment for certain firms where we become their HR department, we also have a suite of services that are geared for the chief financial officer or tax services which we're getting great accolades on, and then we're actually expanding into different business.

Some people may not know that about 50% of the time you walk into a dealership, a car dealership or any sort of automotive dealership, ADP provides all of the services, from the phone system down to ordering your license plate including the digital media arm that that dealership enables to have you come into the business, and the goal there is to have the sales people focus on selling cars.

We're also in a similar vertical; we recently acquired a company where we know do that same sort of end to end solutioning for physicians. Whether you're a small practice or a medium to large size practice, we will help you run your business so you can focus on meeting your patients.

Peter: One of the issues that was discussed at the conference today had to do with diversity initiatives in the economic downturn and as we all know Tara, a lot of times these great programs and training programs and those kinds of initiatives, when there is economic downturn those things are the first things to get cut. How has ADP weathered the downturn and how are you continuing with your diversity efforts?

Tara: I think there's a few things, we're a very roll up your sleeves kind of company to begin with, and so the associates that are part of ADP really are a lot of the spirit of our diversity inclusion agenda. In addition to the things that we do, we participate in the industry but what we've actually done in this time is we've asked for associates to have more involvement. So they are our ombudsman at job fairs at career fairs at professional organization, so it goes beyond the HR community. We've also significantly increased our summer internship which has a diversity focus in the last two years.

When I took over in 2009, we had nine summer interns as part of the diversity program. In the following summer we had 47; this past summer we had 69. And so we're really looking to increase the amount of diversity recruiting we do at the entry level and then look for a conversion of both interns and first time associates down the road as well.

Peter: How about on a global perspective, there was a question that Jeremy Eskenazi asked of the panel, diversity is certainly on the forefront here in the United States and it's something that the boards are even starting to think about now and paying attention to. But when you're recruiting in South America or in for EMIA or for the UK, there may not be that focus on diversity, so how do you approach that?

Tara: So I think there's two things. We do have a fair number of jobs that are virtual and can be done any place in the world. We do often look at the skill set, the cost of delivery and the ease of on-boarding and success for that role depending upon where it is in the world.

The other thing we do is, we're not just a global overlay, we definitely have a local component, and so in fact I'm traveling to India in the next couple of weeks where we're going to learn all about the things that they're doing locally to have us be represented as a multinational employer.

I was recently in Salt Lake City which has a vast language population because of the BYU population (Brigham Young University), and I met with a gentleman who was from New Zealand, who had worked in the Philippines and now lived in Salt Lake City, he wanted to help us network with our Manila operation in the Philippines. we're really taking a multi-pronged approach to it.

Peter: One of the interesting perspectives in the conversation today, again when you are recruiting at an executive level, there's a lot more than compensation that goes in to that effort and a lot of it has to do with location. So to your point, are you trying now to recruit the best candidate in the world no matter where they are and try to keep them in that particular location?

Tara: I think it depends on the job and I think it depends on the longer term opportunity. So we don't limit searches and often times, we recently had some openings in New York and we were considering candidates from any of the countries and sometimes it has to do with work ability and work permits and other things that connect to that as well. In the US and Canada we routinely move executives from one entity to the others and again, I think it has to do with the family situation as well. So we do try and it is a planned process as well.

Peter: I thought another very interesting observation from one of the panelist was that all of the retained executive search firms talk a good game about diversity, of yes, we have access to a very diverse workforce but in reality the quality of the diverse candidates just don't meet up to the 40-year-old white male candidates that they're presenting. Has that been your experience as well when you bring an executive search firm and you start talking about diversity, are they able to deliver on those promises?

Tara: I would say they're able to deliver, it often times takes a little bit longer but we also have a very upfront conversation that this is one of the major tenets. If we've done a good job educating our clients internally about why this is important, we expect our external partners to live up to that in fact as well.

Peter: How about at the senior executive level of your organization and at ADP's board, is diversity a topic of conversation?

Tara: It is a topic of conversation. Gary Butler, our CEO often talks about the fact that he's most proud of how much the board has been diversified under his leadership and it's been a focused effort for him in the last several years. Our executive committee, what we call the business unit presidents is also very diverse. Our COO that was recently promoted is Hispanic. We have a woman at a senior leadership level. We have a person of Indian origin at a senior leadership level, and we have an openly gay leader. So we probably have one of the most diverse executive leadership teams that's I've ever seen.

Peter: Another interesting comment today was it's one thing to go out and recruit diverse employees into your organization but then what happens with the on-boarding process, what happens when they actually get in to the organization and how does their diversity then play out within their role within an organization?

Tara: I think it's very important. ADP is not a company that you see in the papers often, in fact we prefer that we're not, particularly for the wrong reasons and so we want to make sure that people come in, they feel included, they feel welcome and they're set up for success. And so we do make sure that there's a lot of attention paid to the on-boarding process, in fact I brought on a new leader from my organization who is just focusing on on-boarding with a focus on diversity because we do recognize that when you look around you want to see people that look like you, that have similar thought processes, similar work experiences and we want to make sure that we're able to articulate the fact that we do that, we're a very busy, productive group of people and so we need to take the time out to make sure that we do that as well.

Peter: What attracted you to ADP?

Tara: I was really thrilled with the quality of the people that I met along the interview process. I think that they're a company that is really well positioned for that next whatever it is and I would say it's a fascinating company that is not what people think of. They think of one thing and it's something completely different, very complex, very interesting going in to a whole new products and services and innovation that I think is really going to surprise people.

Peter: Your company had a very large presence at the recent HR Technology Conference out in Las Vegas where you were announcing new products and so much of what is going on now within HR and within talent acquisition has to do with the processes, the technology, the software that you are using to help manage this very complex and for a company the size of ADP, a very challenging perspective on making sure that you understand who your talent is, where they are, what your succession process is, how you're going to engage and retain your A players, right?

Tara: And as I said on the panel we do have a comprehensive talent management suite that we're deploying globally around the company. We also are making sure that product innovation is one of the things that we as a company are proud of and we're making necessary steps to make sure that we're doing that and able to keep pace in the market. In fact there's been quite a few stories about we've been ahead of the market and some of the people in the industry have been pleasantly surprised with the things that we're coming out with that they may not have expected, like many of our mobile applications.

Peter: Mobile has become just so huge. I was at the Salesforce.com Conference and I couldn't believe the number of people who had iPads, I mean everyone on stage had an iPad, and they were using them for sales presentations, they were using them for very business purposes, they weren't playing Angry Birds.

Tara: Right.

Peter: That's the kind of technology that you are starting to employ within your organization.

Tara: That is, and for the dealer services we have mobile applications so that when your salesperson is walking around the dealership, it is all digitized at this point. We're migrating many of our payroll tools to a mobile application for both the small business, as well as the large clients, as well.

Peter: You're a payroll company, you do payroll for a number of Fortune 500 organizations, and that's one piece of publicity that normally comes out once a month is ADP's payroll report, the number of employees, their gains or losses. How does that factor in to your employment branding and are you at this point trying to encompass all of these new technologies and new services that you are now starting to offer within your employment branding, how are you going about that?

Tara: I would tell you that we are, we recently launched a new mission, vision and values and a lot of it has to do with being a strategic partner, being a thought leader and being the go to or the world's authority for our clients regardless of the discipline that we're offering the client. So I would tell you that you're going to see a new ADP, you're going to see us show up and do things that perhaps we haven't done in the past so it's all very exciting. The employment report is obviously something that gets us a lot of activity in the media but you'll see us embarking on research. You'll see us embarking on new product development. You'll see us really be out in front and talking about the things that we do to make sure that we can help clients advance their business as well.

Peter: Is that all getting coordinated within, say, your college recruiting process and your general recruiting process, are you talking to marketing and advertising?

Tara: We actually have a close partnership with marketing. We're cascading all of our messaging. We actually just completed what we call a voice of the brand for how we talk to associates, how we talk to strategic partners and how we talk to potential candidates and we've just taken the entire HR community, including the staffing organization through that as well. That's been done in conjunction with corporate marketing's voice of the brand when we're talking to customers about our products and services. So there is very much a tie between the two efforts.

Peter: How is ADP using social media?

Tara: We're using it both from a corporate standpoint and we're using it very heavily on our recruiting front. As a company, we are starting to incorporate social media into our product suite. We also use LinkedIn, Twitter, and a variety of other social media tools for our business development purposes, and then we use a full suite for recruiting purposes. In fact, we've created a certification process to make sure that we understand what we're doing. We're able to track it and monitor it, and as a company, we do have a social media policy as well.

Peter: I would imagine metrics are pretty big within your organization.

Tara: Yes they are.

Peter: You like to measure and see exactly what kind of results you're getting from these various platforms. How does Twitter fit into this? Are you getting reach from Twitter? Are you finding candidates through Twitter or through Facebook or LinkedIn?

Tara: I would tell you social media, aside from employee referrals, is probably our most growing piece; LinkedIn having a much bigger impact for certain types of job functions.

Facebook, we have a huge following from a campus recruiting but the numbers are getting older, I think, as far as the Facebook community. We do have an active college season going on right now, so we have a lot of activity there.

We have a small number of folks on the recruiting team who are responsible for tweeting, particularly if they're out in the marketplace. Our vision there - and we're not quite there yet - is to migrate from the recruiting tweeting to the hiring manager tweeting.

As you think about candidates that we might want to keep in touch with over time, really getting the managers involved in that process. We actually have recently launched what we call a talent community where I have three individuals that are solely responsible for keeping in touch with potential people who might have an interest in ADP employment and we're able to dissect that based on functional interest, geographical interest, career interest and other types of constituents that we're able to divide them into. We have an ability to communicate them in a one to many and then alter what they want to see as we go forward and we're seeing some traction. In fact, we've seen some hires out of that in the last couple of months.

Peter: That's really interesting because I keep seeing at these types of conferences that organizations such as yourself are really trying to create an ongoing conversation with candidates who may not appropriate today for a position that's open but really fit in to your culture and you could see some time in the future bringing into the organization.

Tara: Yeah, and I think one of the biggest things we've learned -particularly last year - we took our stab at redefining our career site, we started to use our own associates. So a big part of our marketing plan is to be authentic because we don't want to show something on the outside that then is not going to resemble what happens when somebody joins us. The people that are our talent community managers are real associates, they've grown up there, they've come to us through acquisitions, so we want to make sure that we have a good mix of what people understand is a real ADP experience.

Peter: I think that's great because to your point, I think, being authentic and being transparent, especially when you're talking about recruiting college kids is very important to them and they can sniff it out in a heartbeat if it's something that some PR company put together, right?

Tara: Absolutely.

Peter: One of the sessions yesterday that was very interesting was on the candidate experience and of course, as you know very well, oftentimes candidates really feel at a loss that they're trying to submit a resume or even had an interview with the company and they never hear back, so how are you in your role and through your diversity experience trying to create a better candidate experience out there for people who are interested in ADP.

Tara: I think there are a few things that we've done. About a year and a half ago, we did an extensive market study of anyone who had applied for a job in a particular functional group and we got a lot of very honest feedback, put it that way. From that feedback, we actually developed a plan to help us both manage our brand and improve the candidate experience. We have a cross-functional team that's working on chunking and conquering what we need to do. Some of it has to do with timely response, understanding qualifications, making sure that people have realistic understandings of the jobs that they're applying for, so we're in the process of revamping how we talk about our jobs so that people know what they're applying to and that they don't get into the process and apply for things that just don't make sense. We monitor what people are saying about us socially, and so we have a system where we're going out and checking vault and other things to understand what's being said and then we play that back to our line leaders, so that they understand what a bad interview process could mean and the viral impact that that has.

And then lastly, we've just decided to formally interview everyone who has at least made the interview process. We'll be starting a monthly basis. We routinely survey people that have been hired but now we're ready for that next steps - the people that have not been hired and we really do take a philosophy many people that apply for us, we pay them through their employer, so we're conscious of every one as a customer, but we also believe that we have a lot of people that might be a good fits for other jobs and so we want to keep them involved in the process as well.

Peter: How important is cultural fit to a ADP?

Tara: It's really important. We have a culture that is very much everyone works and so there's not a lot of extra and so we really want to make sure everyone works hard. We've got an entrepreneurial spirit. We have a high loyalty rating and we have a great story to tell about internal opportunities, but that is a big part of what we stand for and so that and the fact that everybody counts as one of our core value becomes a big part of the hiring decision as well.

Peter: A lot of your employees really work offsite most of time. Back to the automobile business, I mean those folks are usually are at a car dealership, right?

Tara: We do have a fairly large mobile workforce. We use a term called home-shored. We know that over 5,000 US-based associates out of 30,000 fit into that category. We have a growing number of those as well. We then also have people who come into the office part time and might work at home part time or are traveling.

Peter: Right, so you're really trying to be more flexible with work arrangements today, right?

Tara: Absolutely. We actually have branded it called workplace solutions, and we're in the education process now about the different types of works - what we call work styles are available as well.

Peter: Tara, what keeps you awake at night?

Tara: I think a little bit of it is we're always reinventing ourselves and how do we keep current what people think about us and demonstrating our capabilities, because I'm not sure if people think about, "Oh I want to work for a payroll company in a marketplace," and so how do we get what we really are about out there, is what keeps me up at night.

Peter: Is there anything I haven't asked you that you would like to share with our audience?

Tara: I think that keeping recruiting and talent development top of mind is a keen priority for ADP, and so I'm hoping people see us showing up more.

Peter: Great. Thanks so much for speaking with us today on TotalPicture Radio.

Tara: Thank you, Peter.

We've been speaking with Tara Amaral, Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Staffing at ADP.

Please make a point to visit RivieraAdvisors.com/podcasts for the monthly podcast series, Insights Amplified. You'll find a complete library of thought-provoking interviews on each HR and recruiting, including the complete transcripts from these in-depth discussions with leaders in HR and recruiting at the IACPR Conference. While there, please join the conversation with recruiting and staffing professionals on the insights from the Riviera Blog. To learn more about Riviera Advisors' real world experience in leading and managing corporate internal recruiting and staffing functions, please call toll-free 800-635-9063.

This is Peter Clayton reporting. Thank you for tuning into the TotalPicture Radio, the voice of career and leadership acceleration.