Lance Abisror Interview Transcript Executive Talent Scout, Nike Global Talent Acquisition

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Welcome to a special Inside Recruiting channel podcast on TotalPicture Radio. This is Peter Clayton reporting from the IACPR 2010 Global Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Our guest today is Lance Abisror, Executive Talent Scout, Nike Global Talent Acquisition. In his position at Nike, Lance focuses on the top 200 jobs that make up Nike’s corporate leadership team. He and his Nike Strategic Workforce Acquisition Team (the S.W.A.T. team), operate as an internal search firm supporting Nike, Converse, Cole Haan, Hurley and Umbro worldwide.

He began his career teaching at the University of Florida while completing a Master’s Degree and Doctorate coursework in Sociology, Criminology & Law and then joined Omni Partners, a recruitments research firm, serving as both Research Team Lead and Account Executive. Subsequently, he founded Ad-Staff Executive Search, a boutique search firm with a focus on the retail, footwear and apparel and consumer goods sectors. Lance joined Nike two years ago full-time to help build out its first in-house executive search team.

Lance, welcome to TotalPicture Radio.

Lance: Happy to be here, Peter, thanks.

Peter: I understand that recruiting runs in the family is that correct?

Lance: That’s absolutely right. My mother started a temporary and permanent placement agency back in the 80s Ad-staff Temporary Placement and Personal Services in South Florida.

Peter: And you kind of got in to the recruiting field sort of as an afterthought, right? I mean, it wasn’t your primary focus because you were a teacher.

Lance: That’s exactly right. I was teaching as an adjunct at Santa Fe Community College and the University of Florida, teaching a few classes while finishing some doctorate coursework, and I started handing out my résumé to recruiters and recruiting agencies and one of those companies said, “Hey we have a job for you.”

Peter: You’ve done both third party and executive recruiting in-house, is there a different approach that you use as an employee now of Nike and doing recruiting internally than you would as a third party recruiter?

Lance: Certainly the Nike brand, a powerful well-known, well-respected brand name helps. It helps to get return phone calls as opposed to recruiting for Joe’s Auto down the street. But quite frankly, the methodology really is the same. For me, it’s always been about relationships, not transactions, focusing on individual nuance, individual relationships with folks that I speak to and that I’m courting for a particular company making them feel like this is a special experience, a unique experience just for them; that doesn’t change whether I’m recruiting for Nike in-house or when I was external for other clients.

Peter: So you recruit for the top 200 positions within your company, which I find fascinating, which means you recruit on a global basis.

Lance: That’s right.

Peter: And Jeremy Eskenazi today had a panel discussion on the challenges of global recruiting at the senior executive level. What’s your take on this? What are some of your unique challenges when you’re out recruiting for the top 1% of your organization?

Lance: Yeah there are some unique challenges. One is that we can’t be everywhere at once. And so we’ve had concurrent searches in China, Russia, and Brazil, not to mention our European headquarters in Hilversum outside of the Netherlands. You always want to have feet on the ground. You always want to have somebody there to look a candidate in the eye and to make that assessment up close and personal.

We can’t always be everywhere. We do fly globally and try to meet as many folks as possible. When we can’t, we try to leverage our internal assets, whether those are talent ambassadors at Nike, general managers and our own professionals who we think are engaged in the talent process, or other HR professionals on the ground, and sometimes it’s third party firms when need be.

Peter: Yeah, that was certainly one of the repeat statement today, especially in the avenue of the whole global search business was feet on the ground is important. Jeremy’s line is “all recruiting this local,” and you really need to have someone local there doing this because recruiting on a global basis, I mean, there’s a whole different way of going about recruiting in Asia versus South America.

Lance: That’s absolutely right and we make a point not to start a search without engaging teams on the ground before that search starts. So we want to really understand the complexities of the marketplace, how business is done and how recruiting specifically is done in those areas.

Peter: You are participating in a panel discussion here that’s all about social networking and of course, Nike has a huge social network in footprint and exposure, lots of stuff on YouTube, Facebook, you guys are everywhere. So how do you, in your particular role, in looking for that top 1%, do you use social networking at all?

Lance: We do and we use it in a variety of ways. I’ll differentiate between the Nike brand presence on YouTube and the Nike employment brand presence on LinkedIn or online. Certainly, our brands like Converse, the Nike brand, the Jordan brand have a great viral presence where they might create content that’s put out on a YouTube, for example.

When we think about the Nike employment brand, if we were to create a Nike jobs link on LinkedIn or Facebook, I think we would so inundated with replies or hits or friend requests that we would dilute that employment brand. We would dilute the experience that the candidate is looking for because quite frankly, we wouldn’t have the time to address everyone in a unique one-on-one way like we’d like.

So what we’ve done is we’ve created a closed social network. We’ve created a portal online and we would start off by identifying someone that maybe we’ve had a relationship with for a year or two or perhaps you’re a vice president for a large tier 1 global brand, and we want to take our relationship to the next level. Maybe we’ve met a few times, maybe we’ve talked about some Nike jobs. We’ll send you a customized shoe. We know you are a graduate of Ohio State University, for example, and you’re a runner, we’ll send you a Pegasus shoe with the Ohio State colors. We’ll laser sketch your name on it and an access code and a website.

So you go to the website, you’ll type in your personalized code, you’re one of less than 100 people on the planet that are getting access to this portal, so it’s a closed social network. You’ll go in to the portal, you’ll type in your code, it takes into a very Nike-ize type of setting. It’s a locker room, you’ve got Steve Prefontaine’s jersey hanging in the locker next to Phil Knight’s jersey, next to your jersey with your name on it and maybe Ohio State’s colors of the University of Florida’s colors. And we’ve created this very unique experience now where we’re differentiating we think from our competitors. It’s special. We think that you’re getting this type of attention from us on your terms. You can access the site when you want it. You can have a dialogue with us on the site when you want it.

We’ve actually just gone mobile, so we’ve created a mobile app for the iPhone where you can also, if you’re already part of this closed network, download the Nike app so that you can access your locker, see what jobs we have available at the executive level, read the blog from our chief talent scout, learn about Portland and the surrounding area, learn about Nike culture in our history and like I said, on your terms, have a dialogue with the company as opposed to a company coming after you when we want something from you.

We’ve got an open job that we want you for. We want a referral for this position and we’ve already hit you up three or four times. You come to us when you’re ready and you continue that dialogue in a very unique way.

Peter: That’s awesome. I’m impressed. That is very cool.

Lance: Cool. Thank you.

Peter: And a lot of the discussion today had been about creating talent pipelines and it seems to me, what you guys are doing, especially with this closed network, sending people these customized shoes, I mean you are creating an awesome talent pipeline out there.

Lance: Right. We don’t want to just be reactive and fill positions when they become available; we want to proactively create a ready now external talent pipeline. We want to be able to have that talent pipeline become self-sustaining over time.

So on this portal, you can refer a friend or a colleague that you say, ‘Wow, I know these guys from Nike, I’ve been talking to them for three or four years now. I know that this woman or this guy that I used to work with in tier A company would be a great fit for them. So I’m going to refer them. I’m going to plug in their name with their permission into this portal and that way, our executive talent scouts or our chief talent scout can reach out to those individuals, now this pipeline is becoming self-sustaining.

Peter: What’s the next step, Lance? You’ve created this very cool website and where you really give them an experience of Nike and your culture and the locker room, and there’s their jersey hanging in there, and of course you now know that they have access to this content. What’s next? What’s the next touch point. What’s the next thing that you’re going to do to try to engage this person into your talent network?

Lance: We would hope that if this individual is thinking about making a move to another company, maybe they’re being relocated because a spouse is moving companies that they’re going to contact Nike first. They’re not going to wait for another company to reach out to them. We’re not going to be fifth, sixth, or seventh on the list. They have this relationship. They know that we’ve treated them in a very respectful way where we’re respecting the security of their information online, the relationship itself. We would hope that they reach us to us first.

There will also be times that we have a particular position that we know is right for someone we’ve been in a dialogue with for two or three years.

So at that point, technology can only take you so far, right? We want to get on the plane and we want to fly out and chat with that person. We want to take him out to dinner. We want to bring them to our world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, which is one of our great assets which differentiates us I think from other companies and let them see that Nike experience with a tour of campus.

We want to bring them in to the same basketball court that Michael Jordan plays when he comes to campus. We want to bring them to the cycling center that Lance Armstrong is working out at when he comes to campus and show them these amazing assets that we think and we know actually that no other company has.

Peter: What you really have are some assets that are very similar to what a movie studio has with the A player, the Tom Cruises of the world out there.

Lance: Absolutely. So imagine if you’re a candidate and you’re a top designer and you’ve been a “sneaker head” a sneaker collector for 20 years and you grew up idolizing the Jordan shoe. How cool would it be if you log in to your private locker on the portal and you get a message from Tinker Hatfield, the original designer of the first Michael Jordan shoe. He’s a legend in your world. He’s probably someone who’s influenced you throughout your design career and you get a personalized message from Tinker saying, “Hey, we hear you’re interested in Nike, we’re glad you came along, let me tell you more.” That could be pretty cool. Or maybe it’s from a Tim Tebow or a Michael Jordan or LeBron James.

Peter: One of the things that I find fascinating about this conversation – and this is something that was talked about a lot today is integration. Marketing and working with the recruiting department, working with your ad agency, and working with designers and working with the IT department and it seems to me, to create this very specialized, very custom portal that you’ve been discussing, you need to buy-in and active participation from all of these people, right?

Lance: Absolutely. The planning stages included collaboration, consensus building buy-in from a number of internal stakeholders, including but not limited to folks on the marketing team, in sports marketing, employment branding, communications and PR, IT, our e-commerce team, our HR stake holders all the way up through our CEO Mark Parker. We did this in collaboration with a greater party vendor FCV, which is a company out at Vancouver which helps run this portal force.

Peter: One of the questions I wanted to ask today, again, because we’re talking about recruiting, really top, top talent globally, where there maybe only be four, five people who really fit the profile…

Lance: That’s right.

Peter: So, have you ever seen a situation where it is wherever that talent lives, if that talent doesn’t want to move, we’re global, they can stay there and we’ll hire them wherever they are rather than trying to go find people in a country or in a specific geographic region, go find the talent and just hire them where they are.

Lance: Right. Well more and more these days you have to be flexible to those sorts of issues around mobility and location. Folks enjoy working virtually more and more these days…

Peter: Especially Gen-Yers and they expect to, right?

Lance: Especially, I work virtually. I have a desk in Portland and I do go to campus every month or so but I’m out in the field interviewing talent and I’m based on the East Coast away from our corporate headquarters.

Now for our executive level positions, typically our corporate leadership team, we really do want to see those individuals move to Beaverton really internalized the Nike culture and internalize that Nike family have interaction with the other leaders for our organization. We have a pretty lean executive management team, some of them have been there really since the beginning from one Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman started the company. So ideally, at the very executive level we would want those folks in Beaverton or wherever their desk is located but you need to be flexible these days.

Peter: Do you feel at some point in your career that you’re going to have to relocate to Beaverton to really have the kind of profile and exposure that you want to the senior management team?

Lance: Sure. All roads lead to the mothership, right? I’m in a very particular role which for me is the job of a lifetime, Peter, to be honest with you. My role requires me to go where the talent is located. Most of our HR and our talent management leadership, in all honesty, almost all of them are based in Beaverton outside of Portland. I’m in a unique position where the company wants me going out and meeting talent face to face. If I go to New York City, I can meet with 15 to 20 executives over a three-day period, and then I can then say these are the two that I want to put in front of our CEO, in front of our vice presidents, in front of our leadership team. That way I’m not wasting their time. I’m not wasting the candidate’s time. So it’s good for me to be out in the field. Almost any other position in the organization they’re going to want me in Beaverton.

Peter: So you must rack up some pretty hefty frequent flyer miles?

Lance: That’s right. That’s a fringe benefit of the organization.

Peter: A couple of overarching themes today were diversity and transparency. How do those two things play into Nike and looking forward in a lot of what we’ve been talking about today is it’s not the transactional kind of business where I need a body here today. It’s really looking out and looking at succession planning and figuring what are you going to need in a couple of years. I think to this special portal that you’ve built you’re really starting to do that, but do you guys talk about diversity at Nike? Do you talk about transparency?

Lance: Absolutely. So on the topic of diversity first, we have an on office of diversity and inclusion and that is a global office that offers reports directly to our CEO Mark Parker and I think that’s a testament to how committed the organization is to a diverse and inclusive workplace. In many organizations that group would report in through HR and our global head of office of diversity reports into our CEO directly and is one of the most senior VPs in our company.

Diversity for us, in terms of recruiting, starts at the very onset of the recruiting process and it’s interwoven in terms of everything that we do. So we have a diversity principles platform that we’ve created for executive recruitment at Nike and think of them as guardrails, as guidelines, guiding principles that weave their way throughout a search and they really help us focus on diversity and not just as one checkpoint in the process, ‘Hey we just checked off diversity’, but really in terms of the entire process, everything we do.

Then we also look at diversity statistics internally we have a workforce insights team. We have a great talent planning team at Nike that does succession planning and they’re looking at areas where we can improve in diversity and we’re talking global diversity.

We’re also talking about gender and ethnic diversity. We’re looking at those issues where can we get better. We’re succession planning. Out of those succession plans would come a talent demand that would then drive the talent acquisition agenda for the next year and that could be diversity around ethnicity, people of color, gender, mobility, diversity of thought and age.

Peter: Okay, so transparency, again back to the whole thing with social networking, you’re transparent whether you like it or not. So how do you go about when you start reaching out to these very, very specific candidates that you’re looking for, where does transparency fit in to that in your profile?

Lance: I think if you hold yourself to the highest standard, you absolutely have to be transparent with individuals that you contact in the workplace and vendors that you utilize to help throughout this process. So we are absolutely transparent upfront. If there is a job at Nike, and I’m calling to talk to you about that job, I’m going to let you know how I found you, maybe someone referred me to you, maybe I found you on LinkedIn or through another social network or maybe we’ve talked in the past and I remembered you from a database – there’s a number of different ways that we find individuals.

I’m going to be honest with you and let you know that the reason why I’m talking to you is because we have an opportunity at Nike. We’ve heard that you do great work in your company, and we’d like to see if it’s right for you. If it’s not, that’s great. Again, it’s a relationship and it should be long term. It’s not a transaction. If it was a transaction, then it’s a one-time thing, you’re going to turn us down once, or you’re not going to be ready for us once, or we’re going to move on… this is a sustainable relationship where when the timing is right, we’ll talk again.

Peter: Referrals. Talk to me about how important referrals are within your organization and how you use your employees to mine candidates?

Lance: We want to do a good job of engaging our internal assets, our current employees because we feel we have great employees and great internal assets and those folks know great folks. That’s one tool in the toolbox, I’d say. We use external referrals as well. We have networks that we’ve developed over 15+ years in recruiting that we could talk to openly, transparently and let them know, ‘Hey we’ve got this opportunity, I know maybe it’s not right for you at this time, you might know a friend or a colleague who may be interested.’ So we want to work both internally and externally.

Across the globe, there are different programs. For example in Europe, there is an internal employee referral program which incentivizes referrals and hires that we get through our internal population. In the United States currently, at the executive level, we know who the managers who are absolutely excited about talent are and most of them at the company are; they want to build great teams underneath them.

So we know who we can go to and say, ‘We’ve got this really cool position, maybe it’s in a different business unit, is there somebody that you know we should be talking to?’

I’ll even take it a step further to be quite honest, we want to know is there someone in the marketplace as a competitor of ours or as of different brand that’s doing a great job? We think we want to be #1 in every category but the reality is there are other companies who also do great jobs in other functional areas, of course. So we’ll ask our hiring managers, our executives who do you see in the marketplace, whether it’s direct competition or whether it’s just indirect competition for dollars, who’s doing a great job out there and we want to go focus on those companies.

Peter: Lance, what are you going to take back to your colleagues from this conference here at IACPR in Philadelphia? What are your some of your takeaways from what you’ve been talking to your colleagues with here today?

Lance: I think one of the great ‘aha’ moments that I had was today is the first day of the conference and I hear many of my peers and folks that are in organizations that I respect, other global multinational tier 1 organizations, talking about the same challenges and difficulties that we face as an organization at Nike, whether that’s retention of great talent, whether it’s recruiting in emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India, and China. And sometimes we pull our hair out internally thinking how are we going to do this or why haven’t we thought of this yet? You know what, there is no finish line. We’re on a path and we keep trying to get better, we keep trying to bring in great talent. We’re growing as an organization. All companies are facing the same challenges.

So I think that is one great takeaway is, you know what, I talked to great folks from Pepsi, from the Hershey Company, from American Express, and I heard them speak on panels and they have the same challenges that we have.

Peter: Yeah, that’s really cool. For the people listening to this show that would be interested in careers at Nike, what’s the best way to engage with your organization?

Lance: A great way is to go to Nikebiz.com where you can learn about the organization. You can learn about our values and our mission statement. I think you really want to start there. Is Nike the right company for you? Do you believe that Nike is the right fit for you? If you’re interested, and you want to learn more, you are able to post a résumé and submit your experience online and then we have an applicant tracking system that will track jobs that are appropriate for you and a recruiter would be in touch if there’s a match.

Peter: Great. Lance, thank you very much for taking time to speak with us today on TotalPicture Radio.

Lance: Thanks very much, Peter.

Lance Abisror is the Executive Talent scout at Nike Global Talent Acquisition.

This is Peter Clayton thanks for tuning in to TotalPicture Radio, the voice of career and leadership acceleration.

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