Jody Atkins

All of these people, you look on LinkedIn and all of these people are going through so much, let's help the surrounding community, let's level the playing field for candidates. And so this week we launched our micro site. Called Taking the next Step. And it's geared to folks who have been part of the, all these layoffs and we're, we're offering webinars March 7th and March 21st for folks, anyone who is interested in learning everything I just described we're going to be presenting externally and we're also providing. The same kind of coaching and counseling to can to potential candidates. You know, people who are looking for jobs to help them because we know how it's, I mean, I was laid off, you know, before I got here, and it's, it can be so demoralizing and stressful. So we wanna be there to help people and keep their chins up and help them feel great about what they do. And when they walk into the interview, walk in with Confidence.

Nasser Oudjidane

‍ I'm excited to introduce our guest today. Jodi Atkins, the Vice President of Talent Acquisition at NextRoll. Jodi, a huge welcome and thank you for joining. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? 

Jody Atkins

Yeah. Well thank you so much for having me. As you said, I'm the Vice President of Talent Acquisition at NextRole. We're a marketing technology company and I've kind of grown up in the world of talent acquisition, both externally as an on the agency side, and then came internally and. Really helped companies really ramp up and hire and evaluate, you know, growth and organizational development and as well as helping companies in times where we have to make some tough decisions and figure out how to move forward. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And we're gonna get into that journey throughout this discussion. Perhaps could you expand a little bit more about NextRole? What is its mission an vision. 

Jody Atkins

And vision? Yeah, so NextRole is, as I mentioned, a marketing technology company. We have a machine learning platform that gathers data. Delivers reliable insights and provides tools to really help companies focus in on their target buyers. And our goal as a company is to really level the playing field for all marketers, all companies. And so as a company, and our mission as in talent acquisition and across the company, is really to level the playing field for everyone. And so to provide opportunity. And help companies and help individuals really on their path to success, whether it's through marketing on, in a digital platform, whether it's interviewing and really being prepared for the interview process. Whether it's growing internally within a company and developing a career path. So we, we really just wanna give people from all different backgrounds the same abilities to be successful in the paths that they choose to be in. 

Nasser Oudjidane

And that's a great segue into. Something that I know that you are passionate about when whilst you've overseen some phenomenal growth with NextRole, you've created equitable experiences for candidates. How have you done that? What, what does it mean to you to create those experiences? And do you have any tips for our listeners? 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah. You know, it doesn't happen overnight is what I'll say. You, you really need to have the buy-in at the leadership level at the top of the company to really. The company to look at the interviewing process in a different way than, Hey, I wanna have a beer with that person after work. But really looking at competency based interviewing, which is what we've done. So before we even look at a resume, we sit down with a hiring manager and determine, okay, what are the, what are the top competencies that this person needs to be successful in their position? And then from there we say, okay, well, , who in the company are the best people to suss that out with the candidate? So instead of saying, you know, I really want Joe and Abdul and Sabrina to be on the interview panel, we say, okay, I really want stakeholder management, conflict resolution, and program management to be what we focused in on. Okay, well Sabrina's great with program management. Abdul's great with stakeholder res, you know, conflict resolution and so forth. And then we even take it a step further. and we say, okay, well what is the most unbiased and even way that we can ask questions so that we are being, we're, we are really being welcoming to people from all different backgrounds. So instead of using, you know, like, Going to using something like, I'm gonna go to bat for this person. Or you, we really try to use straight language so that we're being as straightforward and equitable in how we're asking questions. And it's all in greenhouse in our applicant tracking system. So when Sabrina pulls up her interview prep sheet in Greenhouse It, it's has her questions there and she's able to take notes within Greenhouse in a way to really look at a rubric and say, okay, well a great answer looks like this, A good answer looks like this, and so on. And so we do that through the interview process for whether you're an EA or a CFO, so that everyone who is walking in the doors has a like same experience and has the same chance. Something else we do as recruiters is we prep our candidates. So before someone comes in to interview, a recruiter will get on the phone with that candidate and say, okay, well first you're gonna meet with Sabrina. She's gonna talk about X. She might say, she might ask you questions such as this. And so when you're answering, think about an example from your past that best relates to that question. You wanna think about what the situation was, what did you do, and what was the. So we do that for every candidate so that they know that when they're talking to this person, they're gonna focus on something. When they're fo focus, when they're talking to someone else, they're gonna focus on what their focus areas are so that people walk in feeling really confident and prepared for the interview. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, I really like that last one. I was just writing down something that, that made me think about what an interview process is, and it can be misconstrued as a way of trying to catch people out. 

Jody Atkins

Right

Nasser Oudjidane

And that's not really the point. You're not trying to catch someone out during the interview process. You're obviously, whether they're a fit for the role and it can be more collaborative if approach correctly. What are some of the achievements that you are proud of considering that you've implemented this? What, what, what are some of the results that you're able to share? 

Jody Atkins

Well, we've really seen our diversity, equity, and inclusion ratios really increase because we are, we really have tried to remove the bias of, oh, well this person went to Stanford, so they must be great. Or this person must have Martek experience. But really think because we are able to think of competency based and transferrable skills, we've been able to really diversify. Diversify our role or community and look more like the community around us to which we're selling to. One example that comes out a few years ago, we opened up a office in Salt Lake City and we were looking for sellers. And some of the questions that we were asking, we realized people were, women were dropping out of the interview process at, at a certain stage. And so what we did is we actually went into, , the interview panels, and we looked like, okay, well this person is, this person is actually dropping women out of the process more than anyone else. Okay, well, why is that? Well, the question that they're asking, they were asking a question in some way about what appeared to be. outside, like knocking door to door for interview like selling knives door to door. Like tell me about a time where you've had outside sales experience. Well, we realized that that was more of a male dominated industry, and so we were gonna eliminate women if they didn't have that experience. But what were we really looking for? We were looking for that tenacity and resilience. And so we were able to re-shift the question so that. More inclusive so that it, it still focused on this what was important, but asked a more welcoming, more equitable que asked a more equitable question so we could really bring more women into the pipeline, and we were able to hire more women. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, that's great. I've, I've also heard of examples where the questions can be coined in such a, that the dialect or the jargon that's used outside of states or in other countries just are not familiar with. So it's What the hell do you mean exactly? Rather than being able to actually answer the question. Something that I'd like to perhaps double click on when you mentioned leadership earlier and bringing them on board to ensure. That this can be something that can be executed properly. How, how are you able to actually align with the leadership so that you can be trusted? Something that stuck with me in our last conversation is that Tellum is considered the trusted advisor. Whether some, whether some pivotal moments which help develop that trust.

Jody Atkins‍

I think you really need to use data. in order to build trust. And we are able to do that. We are able to use tools like a talent insights when we're looking at a market and say, okay, well you wanna hire you know, these types of candidates. Well, there's, there's 200 of them in the whole country. You know, they're located, you know, here where it's just gonna be more expensive or there's, you're not, it's not a diverse plate of people. So by able to showing up with information is key. And also one thing that we did was going back to sales. We, we hired for a lot of sales folks in the past few years, is we were able to look at the successful sales people that we've hired over the years to the least successful sales people, and really look at the competencies. what do we interview for? And are those really the traits that make those people successful? And tie it back to who's successful today, are those are those traits, what we interviewed for, and then. and then go to the leadership and say, you're saying that software as a service is a must. You're saying that a college degree is a must, but when you look at the people that we hired and they're the most successful people, those things are not important. And by having the data to show them that we were able to restructure our interview process and hire people from different backgrounds. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. How did you conduct any internal competency based assessment once those people joined? Because there's something that you can look on in terms of profile. This person doesn't have B2B SAS sales experience, but perhaps there are others with regards to perhaps the so-called soft skills tenacity, for example.

Jody Atkins‍

Right. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

How, how did you bring that discussion 

Jody Atkins

‍ Yeah. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

To, to the leadership? 

‍Jody Atkins‍

Yeah. Well, we. , you know, it, unfortunately we don't have, you know, like a whole ladder of library of competencies. But what we were able to do is find consistencies of those soft, you know, tenacity, resilience, ability to learn initiative. You know, those are all things that were important that, that aren't on a resume, but that new interview for that ended up being more important than some of those software as a service or marketing technology, hard skills.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

I see. Yeah. Okay. Got it. And in terms of what you mentioned regarding sales and, and revenue how did you develop capacity planning models? To work with the business? 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

To meet those revenue goals? 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah, it was really fascinating. Luckily we have a wonderful relationship with our finance organization. in the time of high growth, I was meeting with my CFO and my CEO, I think biweekly at at times. And what we were able to do with my team was able to do with the finance team was go back historically at, and look at time to hire for sales in this particular instance and say, okay, well we know it. X amount of time for us to, to ramp up and hire and we were doing, we were hiring in cohorts. So me working with finance to say, okay, well if you wanna achieve revenue goals by X and the ramp up, once we hire someone, ramp up, time is X. We were actually able to, to figure out that whole timeframe so that we could forecast revenue. by Q4 we are gonna be at X we're gonna have X more revenue because of all the behind the scenes that my team did with, we know it takes, you know, 62 days to hire someone. We know that our, my recruiter and focused in sales can hire four people a month and really work that backwards with finance in order to achieve the goals that the company needed to achieve.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, and something that I loved. when we had our last discussion was enabling the recruiting team to become more efficient to hit those goals, 

Jody Atkins‍

Right yeah. Yeah. So what we were able to do is look at the feedback that we were getting from cust, from candidates, and we were, we were putting candidates through way too many interviews or having them. do presentations that really didn't matter. And in the market that we were in, time was money. Right? And they, they're so competitive. So by listening to what our candidates were saying, we were able to go to the leadership and say, we need to make this quicker. We need to cut out people, you know, we don't need to have all these people interviewing. Going back, what are the basic competencies that we need to focus in on? Cut to the chase and just focus in on that. So we were actually able to shorten this, the interview cycle. We eliminated a presentation that was just gonna take candidates time to prepare for, and people would drop out because of it. And in the end, it didn't matter. When we looked, when we went and looked at the successful people, the presentation had nothing to do with their success. And so we were able to come to our leadership and, and show. , if we do this, we're gonna be able to hire more quickly. And in fact, we were able to

Nasser Oudjidane‍

And with regards to kind of like the, the organization as a whole When recruiting, so almost making the approach to talent company wide, how did you engage with employee voices to drive awareness and engagement with the overall candidate community?

‍Jody Atkins‍

Yeah. Our employers, we call them rollers are everything for us. They are our employer branding. We do a pulse survey on a yearly basis where we ask, you know, a series of questions to find out what's important to our rollers. And from there I developed our employer value propositions, our EVPs, and then we were able to ask our rollers to help us really evangelize what makes us a great company. So for instance we have a, a lot of our women in engineering came from non-traditional engineering backgrounds. We have school teachers, we have, you know, analysts, we, I think we even a graphic designer. . And so what they loved about what came out in the EVPs for Women in Engineering were, was that they were technical, not traditional, that they really loved, that they were welcomed in, and, and whether they came from a bootcamp or they needed a mentor, we provided that support for them. And so from there, I was able to use their stories in real time. And we created a tra technical, not traditional campaign. That we focused in on advertising using our, our products, our next role products. We targeted women who were in other industries or in boot camps to become part of our talent community and, and end up hiring them. Something else that we did for women was we really heard that that flexibility was important. That you know, a company, a culture that really cared about people was important, but women in sales were ambitious and they wanted to be, you know, they wanna be known that they were ambitious and successful and so forth. So we did another targeted campaign using women in sales called ambitious Women Wanted. . And then one other thing, I was just gonna say something that was another campaign we did that was wonderful is we have a lot of folks who have started off like as an SDR and became chief of staff, you know, have really grown their career. And we have, we had these little Campaigns where we showed people's paths through their years at the company. You know, they started sdr, went to account management, went over to operations, came over to product management, ended up as the chief of staff. So we were able to use their stories to show that as a company we really take care of people and, and we hired great people and helped them grow.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, some incredible stories there. I I, I love how. , the ambitious women wanted, and then technical, not traditional. I'm sure these were coined by the employees themselves, which you then taken and then applied in to the market. 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah, definitely. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Which is, which is just absolutely gold. What's your experience with employee referral programs? What, what's been the good, the bad, the other thing in regards to engaging,

Jody Atkins‍

We have been fortunate, we've probably had about 20, 25 to 26% of our hires year over year be from employ employee referrals. We have done things, we did employee referral, the referral Olympics one year where we actually, that was last year where we. had a first place, second place, third place, and trophies. You know, it's so important to get your employees engaged in helping grow the company and to that end, the more diverse your, your community is, your employee community is the more diverse that talent pool is gonna be. So it's really feeds upon itself. And so we have done different campaigns where we've. Really focusing on employee referrals and seeing lots of successes with it.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

That's awesome. Can I ask with regards to the Olympics, was that a yearly competition? Yeah, we, as in someone won at the end. 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah, no. Well, we did it quarter by quarter to keep it more interesting. We did the Winter Olympics. Last, last winter when the Olympics were actually going on. And yeah, we, it was great. People who got really early into it, we, you know, posted their faces on, on skiers or, you know, just be being silly. And we had like a supermarket challenge one year where I can't even remember what it was. It was so silly. But it's, it's things that are like people, people engaged and then, The way it worked is that if your can, if your referral got a got to a hiring manager interview, they got a point. If they got to a face-to-face interview, they got another point. If they got an offer, they got another point. If we hired them, they got another point. So it was a cumulative amount of points within the quarter, 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Which rewards the behaviors that you're trying to drive, which are qualified. 

Jody Atkins‍

Exactly. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

High quality referrals. 

Jody Atkins‍

Exactly. Because otherwise you get a lot of my sister's cousin who's a babysitter, you know, which is probably a great person. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. 

Jody Atkins‍

But you, when you're looking for a certain competency, it's probably not the right one, but yes. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. And more work for the recruiters. 

Jody Atkins‍

More work for the recruiters, 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Which, which we don't want. Can we talk a little bit more about the, the competency based strategy and, you know, the. The ability for it to actually mitigate bias. What I find really interesting is that when folks talk about interview assessments and also the tools and technology around this, folks usually think that it's about assessing the candidate more often than not, and although to a certain degree it is ultimately. Some of the controls and measures which you've discussed is actually making sure that the hiring manager and the people who are actually conducting the interview follow what the company wants. And I find that fascinating because outside looking in, it's not seen that way. 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah. Yeah. We, we really try to be as equitable and inclusive as we can be. We have behavioral interview training for anyone who's an interviewer at NextRole needs to go through our behavioral interview training, where it's hands on, we come up with questions. We have you, we role play, so you as an interviewer, really comfortable with, you know, asking, well, what happened then? And tell me more so that you're giving accounted an opportunity to really share their story. The other thing that we do is when we. , we tell each interviewer, I'm not asking you whether or not to hire this person. I'm asking you did they pass your competencies? And that's all I wanna know about. I don't wanna know if you once again, wanna go out to dinner with the person or go bowling, that's not relevant. Then what happens is the hiring manager takes everyone's. of the different competencies and has a 365 degree view of this candidate. And then the hiring manager can say, well, maybe the person didn't do as well in stakeholder management, but that's something I can train them on, I can coach them on, but I really needed them to be a great program manager. And that's where they really shine. So the hiring manager can then decide what's most important and the, cuz no one's perfect. So you know what's, what's a learnable skill versus what's a must have. And from there, the hiring manager can make a decision based on facts and not on gut.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Can you share a little bit more about this initiative that you are working on? It sounds fascinating taking the next step. 

Jody Atkins‍

Yes. So it goes back to actually three years ago when the pandemic started. And you know, we were all, all companies were hit hard by the having to lay people off. And at that time my team said, well, how can we help all our rulers? I think we laid off 30% of the company at that point. How can we help all these people who now don't have jobs? Help them find jobs. And so we utilized our skills as recruiters and came up with a program called Rolling On. And what that was is we created webinars where we taught can our former rollers, how, how to network like you, there's LinkedIn, how do you even get started? Networking or people that you know in your community. How do you prepare a resume? How do you present your profile on LinkedIn so that it's professional and engaging and attractive? How do you give enough information without too much information? What job boards to look at? How do you look at a job board? How do you apply to a job? And all the way to how do you interview? What's behavioral interviewing? What's hypothetical interviewing? What is, you know, actually drawing on a board? What's that look like? How to be prepared. when you finished interviewing, how do you follow up? So we put together this rolling on program with webinars, and we provided also coaching and counseling sessions for our former rollers. And so it was very well received and unfortunately we just went through that same process, not to the same numbers, but we had to let go of a few rollers. Given the economic turndown now, and I, I thought, you know, we have this great program, we should take it externally. All of these people, you look on LinkedIn and all of these people are going through so much. Let's help the Community. Let's level the playing field for candidates. And so this week we launched our microsite called Taking the Next Step, and it's geared to folks who have been part of the, all these layoffs and we're, we're offering webinars March 7th and March 21st for folks, anyone who is interested in learning everything, I justdescribed , we're going to be presenting externally and we're also providing the same kind of coaching and counseling to can, to potential candidates. You know, people who are looking for jobs to help them because we know how it's, I mean, I was laid off, you know, before I got here, and it's, it can be so demoralizing and stressful. So we wanna be there to help people and keep their chins up and help them feel great about what they do. And when they walk into the interview, walk in with Confidence. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. What a, what a great initiative. And we'll be promoting this as well not only putting this in the show notes, but working with your marketing team to, to get the word out.

Jody Atkins

Oh, thank you. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Such a great initiative. Just with, with regards to what's going on at a macro level and what you see, what you hear when you speak to talent leaders in your community. The recruiting market has almost certainly changed. Do you find it to be more in terms of the challenges of recruiting discovery or engagement? How, how, how do you kind of think about that in terms of hiring the high, high quality candidates? Well, I can tell you what we are doing now is we are still. focused in on building talent communities, so we know that we're in a, in a moment in time and we're gonna be hiring again. And so one thing we're doing is really targeting we have a beautiful database of candidates that we've collected over the years. And so we're, we're now tagging, you know, candidates and building these internal communities. And on our website we're gonna have, you know, hey, if you wanna join our talent community, Join in and we'll be sending out information to folks on a quarterly basis that's relevant to, you know, if you're in engineering, you know, talking about something interesting in engineering or, you know, in sales or in revenue operations, wherever it might be. So we are continuing to nurture those communities because, , they're important to us. And one thing also that I love that we do is even if someone might not be a fit today, we know that in a couple years they're gonna have the experience that we, that they didn't have yesterday. So we do keep engaged, keep engaging with those folks because we, we are looking for a long-term relationship with candidates and not just a moment in time.Yeah. Well, you, you've spoke to engaging those candidates over time with the interest of building a relationship as like one of the things that you're doing now. What are the other focus areas for you leading talent acquisition in in 2023?

Jody Atkins‍

So I have started to really focus in, in this past six months or so on internal movement. So a program that I'm gonna be rolling out is, role shadowing. So we're going to be focused in on helping internal folks with internal mobility. So if, if I'm a people ops person and I'm interested in product management, We're putting together, putting together a shadowing program so that I can learn what, what, what is even product management, what are the skillsets, what's a, what's a day in the life like, and really have that shadow. And then from there, we're putting together a whole. learning series for that person. So if, if you end up wanting to be a product manager, well here's some, here's some classes that you could take along the way to help you to educate yourself and to help yourself understand what it means and what skills do you need to possess, what competencies are important to get you on that path. So that's something I've been. Finessing and fine tuning over this last six months or so to make it appropriate for the market that we're in right now. And it's been really, really well received and I'm hoping to roll it out in Q2. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Awesome. Yeah, I've, I've also noticed that folks within businesses that are trying their best to reduce the number of layoff. Within tech companies are reorganizing some of the talent acquisition team into sales. 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

And, and I think that's a great way of, of, of doing what you've done on what you're suggesting of doing, but perhaps with similar competencies, it could be, it could be said. 

‍Jody Atkins

Exactly. Exactly. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Can I ask you one piece of advice that you've heard throughout your career or perhaps only once in your career that you think is total BS what do you think is a myth that needs to be put in the trash?

Jody Atkins‍

Well, I'm going, I'm gonna date myself, but what, when I was trying to, in my, in my twenties, I was really trying to get into software sales. I was, as I had started off in sales, my career, and I was told that women don't belong in sales and software sales. So , that is a myth and it has been busted, but unfortunately there are some long-term impacts. But yeah, that definitely was something that was not, not welcomed and not true.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. And are there any in recruiting that you see in terms of perhaps not things that are like as demetry as that, but perhaps practices which you think 

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Do not belong in the 21st century.

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah, I mean, I think the whole idea of not interviewing. based on competencies and facts, but interviewing based on feelings is something that is not relevant, doesn't work. You know, I got, I have a feeling this, you know, they said this, but what I really think they meant was that, or one, that one that I love is that, you know, someone is, has, you know, maybe been a higher level in their career and is interviewing for step down and. and having an interviewer say, well, why would they want this job? Like, they've already been up high. Why would they want this job? Well, it's not our place to decide why this person would want the job or not. We don't know what's happening in their lives or what's important to them. So leave your judgment at the door and interview based on competencies and whether this person can do the job or not.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Love how straightforward that advice is. this is the last one for the closing. It's What tech do you use to do your job? Feel free to shout out any products that have and continue to do deliver value.

Jody Atkins‍

Yeah, so we use Greenhouse and we've really partnered with them through the years to get to, so that we have really clean data. So that's great. And then we, we just initiated a relationship with Gem and so we're really excited about that. We're building these talent communities with them. And then we also on a monthly basis, do. Diversity reporting for the health of our pipelines. So we can really look and see you know, underrepresented groups, underrepresented minorities and women, and how they pass through from stage to stage, stage in the interview process. And GEM is helping us with that as well. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Awesome, moving on to the closing questions. What's one piece of advice you wish you had when you. 

Jody Atkins‍

I think that when I started, I had a bit of imposter syndrome and as most of us do, and I wish someone would have just said to me, look me in the eye saying, Jodi, you, you got this, you can do this and you're capable of anything. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. It kind of speaks to mentorship and, and coaching. And some, some of us are fortunate to have, have that some of us aren't and had to kind of figure it out ourselves.

Jody Atkins‍

Exactly. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Is there anything that you've listened to, watched or read that you found inspirational and help you be better?

Jody Atkins‍

Oh, geez. I think I feel very fortunate that I have a great community around me that lifts me up. I work with some really wonderful people and we are all in it together. And I work in an organization where I know that. , I can be myself and I can be humble and if I don't know something, I'm not gonna be judged because I don't know something, but I'm gonna be lifted up and helped out. And so I think that's really what keeps me motivated and what's keeps me at next role year after year is because I really feel like I can do anything because I've got the support. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. That's enough. Last question. , what is one thought valuable phrase, if any, that you like to live by? 

Jody Atkins‍

So when people ask me about next role and, and why I like working here. I always say, cuz I wake up every morning being comfortable, being uncomfortable. I never know what's gonna come my way and I take it on and I live life that way. I just love learning and trying new things and experimenting and just being comfortably uncomfortable. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

That's a good one. Jody, thank you for your time. This has been incredible. 

Jody Atkins‍

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.