Michelle Randall-Berry 

Yeah, so I think data's at the center of every strategy. I actually think you have to be able to sort of set the metrics in order to kind of measure excellence and then you kind of put the rest of, you know, and then that's how your strategy, you'll know if it's actually working or not. But it's really the analytics that kind of measure the excellence part and then everything else kind of falls into place .

Nasser Oudjidane

Hello and welcome to our series of Scaling Stories, a discussion with talent leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm thrilled to introduce our guest today, Michelle Randall Berry, the head of Global Talent Acquisition at Teradyne. Michelle, a huge welcome and thank you for joining can you tell us a little bit more about you and your background? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, absolutely. So thank you, first of all for inviting me to this conversation. So I wanna say thank you to you first. And then a little bit about me. So I have been in the world of talent acquisition now for, for over 20 years. Kind of started out. very early on working in a staffing agency, which is where I kind of found kind of found my, my, my joy, I guess in terms of what I love really love recruitment and I always consider myself a recruiter first and then have since gone on to kind of lead some other. You know pretty, pretty awesome, you know, teams at companies like Fidelity Iron Mountain Cabot IGT, and now with Teradyne. So it's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for for inviting me. 

Nasser Oudjidane 

You are most welcome and I love how you've coined or at least think of yourself as a recruiter first. Mm-hmm. , it's. something that you, you can't really get away from as you grow up into the the talent and a acquisition space. From what you've seen throughout your illustrious career, how would you describe the changing nature of talent, traction, and acquisition? 

Michelle Randall-Berry 

Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's a great question. So, I mean, I would say when I, you know, early, early in my. The market was much more forward facing from an employer power perspective. I feel like, you know, especially since you know, at least like within the past three years or so, I've seen that shift pretty considerably and squarely into the la you know, sort of the hands of our, of our. Candidates who are out, you know, the job seekers who are out there looking for, for employment opportunities. And even in the market where there's a lot of uncertainty, you know, if some folks are, you know, saying recession, other folks are not so sure what it is. But even during this time, you know, the job market has continued to stay pretty strong. I mean, I think there were 500,000 jobs from what I understand, the US that were sort of opened in January you know, looking at the talent market today, I think the biggest shift I've seen is that the need for very job seeker oriented kind of attraction sort of campaigns and content processes, you know, are sort of the differentiator between being super successful. Or sort of more of a, you know having to work a lot harder, I guess I'll say, to get the talent in the door. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and that's the weight of that is employer branding. It appears the attraction aspect to make sure that folks want to apply. Folks will reply to cold prospecting messages. Employees can be engaged in promoting the overall organization. Do you agree? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

I would agree. I mean, I'm, I'm going to, I'm gonna sort of go broader than just employer branding, cuz I think employer brand is super important. But I also feel like that's kind of the, the glossy finish, if you will. You know, sort of when you're, you know, like if you were painting a picture or something, you put the glossy finish is like the brand, sort of the wrapper. I think it's in this market. What I've come to, to appreciate is that it's so much more than just a great brand. You have to also have meaningful experiences for people when they're, you know, when they're considering your, your company, or they're considering joining you. You have to really be able to speak as a recruiter, as a manager, you know, as a, as an interviewer, right on the team in a very compelling and convincing way about the experience that this person will have to kind of differentiate you. So yes, you need the brand obviously to be able to sort of externally convey the story, but I think it's much. Compelling and and, and critical now than ever to really be able to kind of live it and experience it and provide those experiences as early in the process as you can. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. And you've mentioned a couple of things there and it you know, with regards to experience and it, it appears that it's a, a two-way three. As the balance of power has shifted, there's as much emphasis on the assessment. and the the onus is also on the company to also sell the brand so that you can keep the candidate engaged. Whilst you were at i g t, you were responsible for globally standardizing the process of hiring. What, what did that involve and, and how did you measure it?

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, it's, it's a great question and it was a lot of work with a lot of great people on my team to kind of get us where we needed to be. But it was really starting with kind of our, our, our how, you know, how do we actually recruit? And it started out with, with something as basic as identifying kind of roles and responsibilities in a very clear way. And it started out looking at it from across all of the various stages of recruit. and identifying what does a recruiter do, what does a manager do, you know, and sort of all the other touch points, you know, along the way. The next phase after we had that kind of nailed down and standardized was to really start looking at the experiences we were providing to our candidates, both externally, but most importantly internally. Really thinking about how do we kind of improve that internal job discovery, you know, period, you know, experience for our internal folks. How do we create more visibility into the hiring process so that people we're very clear on kind of paths and where, where opportunities existed without sort of, you know Without sort of, you know, making it appear like we're trying to, you know, recruit, you know, internal folks, but making it more of an intentional kind of talent shift, you know, from one group to another. So those were some of the things we were looking at. And then I would say that the last piece, when you were asking about the measurement we were using, you know, we had a weekly recruitment report that turned into our Our global talent acquisition dashboard, thanks to a phenomenal business process and data analyst on our team. And then we also had additional kind of report outs that we would do to sort of measure. The effectiveness of, you know, kind of our process and seeing how folks were doing across, you know, across the team. We had a standard process that allowed for individual recruiters to kind of still, cuz us recruiters tend to be a little extroverted and have big personalities and so we wanted to make sure that we, for folks. To be able to still sort of bring their own true selves, you know, to, to the process. But in a way that we could, you know, sort of manage our data in, in a very global standardized and consistent way. 

Nasser Oudjidane

And what did some of the high level KPIs or measurements within that dashboard that was created include?

Michelle Randall-Berry‍

Yeah, so within that dashboard, I mean a lot of it was around, you know, sort of the fundamentals I would say. So it was sort of the current open requisitions, the current, you know, filled requisitions. Our time to fill was a big, you know, sort of a big one, but we used it more from an efficiency perspective. We were also kind of managing a lot in terms of just sort of ensuring our system stayed, you know, kind of In a high integrity position from a I guess what I'm trying to say is from a when we're opening our requisitions it's kind of a two-step process and ensuring that, you know, the, the, the information that was in our system was, was up to date and accurate as well, and. Does that answer the question? . 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yes it does. Yeah. And then that's something that we're gonna get into later with regards to data and analytics. Mm-hmm. , one thing that you've said to me in the past, and I was, I was really thrilled to, to learn more about this, is the opportunities for being intentional with regards to skills-based hiring. Why do you think that's important? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Well, I really think it's important more than more so than ever, just in, in light of the demand on certain skills versus the supply, right, of those skills, and I think it's really important. Where I think the companies that are gonna be the most successful, sort of in this great war for talent that we're experiencing, the ones who are the more innovative, the ones who are the more, more creative, the ones who are open and receptive to kind of other paths to talent, whether it's through community based partnerships building, you know, sort of. Creating places for pools of talent. What I mean by that is, you know, maybe thinking about finding a a group that maybe does some re-skilling, for instance, of folks from one type of of a Of, of a skills background into something else, but then being able to kind of work to maybe put some processes in place to train managers on sort of, how do I bring these people in, skill them up and ke help them become successful. What I see now is a lot of folks having resistance, you know, to kind of that, because we're in a. , it's, you know, it's harder to hire people. Time to fill has increased, you know over the past year for a lot of companies in, in certain skill areas. And I think the tendency is to kind of, you know, sort of stay in your position of, you know, I have to have exactly the rights. You know, these skills and I don't wanna, you know, give up on that because of the time to make someone productive. But I truly believe that the most successful employers in the market are going to be the ones who are willing to make that investment and the talent. In order to kind of build or grow their own, I guess is what I would say. You know, in addition to kind of building paths internally. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And how would you advise our listeners who, who are interested in starting with skills-based hiring? What are some of the key ingredients? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

I mean, I think one of the, one of the main ingredients is to kind of look at the groups where you do the most hiring and maybe. you have the most rigor around the, the, the skills required. I actually think those are the easiest places to begin because you know exactly kind of what the skills are and it's easy, you know, and the, and what. , when you're having a conversation with a hiring team, you know, and you want to sort of start drilling down into what the skills actually are, you can start with, you know, what's the most important, you know, why is this so necessary? And then kind of scale back from there and sort of start getting into, well, to be, you know, to have x, y, Z skill. What are some adjacent skills? , what are some of the skills that you need to have in order to get to where you are and those sorts of things. And so I think that's kind of the, the dialogue and the analysis. But I always recommend you start small and controlled. And so I would start in one particular area with. Where you see, you know, a very specialized skillset because I think those are the ones that are the easier to unpack and then you can go into the next into the next level or the next, you know, critical set of positions that you have and skills. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, and one friction or area of that's potentially a blocker. Aligning with the business, particularly hiring managers on accepting mm-hmm , that we're gonna go broader than what is traditionally a talent pool and try to convince them. Have you ever come across any blockers like that in the past, or perhaps suggest ways to persuade, educate, hiring managers in that skills-based hiring is the correct way of hiring.

Michelle Randall-Berry

Absolutely. I mean, I, I would say I've probably met with more resistance than I've met with a lot of great adoption, you know, out of the gate. And I think it's mostly because of the fear of not knowing kind of what's gonna be the. The ROI or you know, or the yield on, you know, kind of the investment in that talent pool. And so I think what's super important here too, and I know we've talked about this before, Nassar about, you know, sort of analytics, but I think this is where you have to be able to measure, you know, sort of the effectiveness of anything that you put into place to kind of see how it works. Where I find it works best is when you're able to demonstrate some recurring. and then it sort of becomes more, more more of a story for the, the hiring teams. And once the hiring teams start to champion and become ambassadors of kind of that process, it makes the story with other groups, you know, more powerful and more impactful. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. I really like how you you begin with data and then you use the data to tell a story, and Yeah. I've I recall our conversation where you mentioned that data isn't anecdotal. And how have you used it to inform strategy in a thoughtful and meaningful way? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, so I think data's at the center of every strategy. . I actually think you have to be able to sort of set the metrics in order to kind of measure excellence and then you kind of put the rest of, you know, and then that's how your strategy, you'll know if it's actually working or not. But it's really the analytics that kind of measure the excellence part and then everything else kind of falls into place . 

Nasser Oudjidane

And, and from that perspective how, and what KPIs are you currently setting with regards to hiring efficiency candidate experience and the like. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, I mean, I think a couple of different things. So we are, you know, actively in the process of kind of our employee engagement survey, you know, process at the moment. So I think surveys of from, and data from employees are, you know, certainly speaks volumes. I would also go on to say, you know, that we measure, you know, even when our employees are, you know, leaving our organization and we look at sort of the. Behind that. But I would get into sort of just even other fundamentals around, you know, things like quality of hire and where we get into sort of measuring some of that is when we start thinking about things like regrettable attrition or when we're looking at the number of folks who you know and sort of how long are they staying, you know, with us. And. . I would even go so far as to say, you know, between sort of the exit survey data, our performance metrics at, you know, our overall attrition, you know, kind of data and then. Sort of manager data around kind of, you know, their experiences and around quality of, you know, with respect to their hiring process and are they, you know, sort of feeling like the person we brought on board is a good match, you know, overall with their team. I think those are the kind of specifics around like, if you're getting into the measurements themselves, those are the things that you need in order to be able to successfully measure. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like there's like almost two ends of the spectrum here. You have the, the quality of hiring the feedback from the manager, but you also have the attrition statistics and reasons why people are leaving. And there's that old saying, which is, employees don't leave companies. They leave managers. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And then ultimately there's going to be something there where you're gonna need to educate the manager on. , well, what is the right fit? Do we have the right competency framework in place? Because ultimately you hired this person, which means if they leave, it's on you as well. It's not just on that bad hire and it's, and it's all the employees fault, for example. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, exactly. And I've been reading a lot around, you know, sort of how, how some employers are starting to look at attrition a little differently. I think a lot of times people have looked at it, A negative oras, you know, something we're doing wrong as opposed to thinking of it as like your launching pad. You know, so it can also be used to be, you know, depending on how your company chooses to look at it, it can also be viewed as somewhat positive and kind of creating your alumni network or looking at people that go out into the workforce and are viewed as like, wow, that person, you know, from X, Y, Z company is phenomenal because they came from. You know, this company and you know, we know that they have great alums. You know, so I think it's, I think it's, you know, I think the world itself, like when you're back to the attraction, you know, question you asked me in the beginning, it's all of these things that we have to be thinking about is sort of like, how do we sort of promote the talent that we have? But also how do we talk about it and how do we treat our talent, you know, especially when they're walking out the door, right? We should be sort of cel, you know, for the folks that we're really excited about or we feel like are are great talents, we should be sort of celebrating that and, and being, you know, being proud of them for, you know, kind of moving on to their next thing.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. And, and on that how do you optimize the recruiting process to get better fits for your company? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

So I'll, I'll tell you for right now, where we're kind of starting is just with an analysis of our, of our funnel. Honestly. I mean, we're just kind of starting with the candidate pipeline and really looking at where are we. You know, measuring sort of, you know, the steps along the way. You know how many folks are obviously moving from like applied to screened from screen to interview, interview to offer, and I'm sure anyone listening to this call is gonna go well. Yeah, we all do that. But I think the next piece of that is also then sort of looking at how do we make. how do we make decisions so that we can move some of that talent further along the pipeline? You know, some folks kind of get stuck in a particular phase or we find that, you know, we're just not moving people along and there's some really valid reasons that that may not be happening. But kind of really analyzing. what those reasons are, and then thinking about ways to sort of improve upon that and ensure that we're bringing our our talent, you know, through and driving them through that funnel so that they have more exposure and more opportunity. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. So you mentioned not, so there's a, there's there's some reasons why talent isn't moving from the pipeline and C could you share a little bit more about why that is? Is it to do with source. Or function. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, sure. I mean, so, so let me share a couple of thoughts. So when I said that like, you know, so there may be some real reasons why people may not move through the funnel. The number one reason is they may simply not have the qualifications or the skills that we're looking for for that particular position. And sometimes that can sort of rule somebody out. The other the other places where I find people sometimes get stuck is kind of when. , I'll call them the on the fence candidates, right? The folks who have sort of 75%. and we're trying to move 'em through the process, but we just can't get the management team or the, you know, the team that's interviewing to sort of go for somebody who's at 75% because they're looking for a hundred percent. And so this is where we're trying to create opportunities to have more conversations and really working on the influencing skills with our recruiting team to ensure that we're giving folks you. Sort of more opportunity instead of just sort of the easy, well, I'll just move on to the next person then, you know, kind of, kind of opportunity.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. And just something that came from my mind was hire for character and then kind of developed skills. . So in, especially in such a tight labor market, you may not be able to get a hundred percent, but if you're able to actually find people that are the right fit for your company, then perhaps the rest can be taught, developed, trained, for instance. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

That's right. You hire for skills and potential as opposed to for all the, you know, nuts and bolts. Absolutely. I agree. 

Nasser Oudjidane

And when thinking about some of the challenges that we've, we've been discussing regarding the landscape, do you put more of a sales orientated lens to, on recruiting, like you described yourself as a recruiter, is, do you find that a kin aligned to sales more or it's cousins in marketing or, or do you have another mental module.

Michelle Randall-Berry

So, it's funny you say that cuz I absolutely think that that recruiting is a lot like sales. It's a lot like a sales team. And I've worked in companies that kind of organized their in-house teams sort of in a more traditional, you know, like had account managers and then had sort of candidate developers or sourcers that were sort of behind the scenes. Building the candidate pool, having the account manager sort of managing the relationships with the business units. But I've also seen, you know, organizations where we have recruit, you know, recruiters or talent acquisition partners, trying to do a little bit of, of both sides, right. Sort of managing the account, so to speak, or the The customer, you know, of our, of our hiring teams, but also having to manage kind of the candidates at the same time. I think either model works pretty well. You know, honestly, I think it just depends on what you know, what your business kind of wants. You know, a lot of folks want sort of a single. , you know, a single person, you know, one, one person to speak to as opposed to having, you know, a team of two or three. They like to know, this is my recruiter. Mm-hmm. . But but I do find that You know, I do find that, that that kind of works well. And I would say this, going back to sort of the sales versus marketing, I think it's both sides. So I actually have a visual that I use that has to do with sort of the candidate journey altogether. And really talking back to the experience piece. And if you think about the difference between recruiting and talent acquisition, one of the biggest differences is that talent acquisition starts from the moment the person becomes. Just so it has a general awareness of your company or that you may be hiring or anything along those lines. And the next step in that is they sort of like, you know, then this is where the marketing piece and the branding and all that comes into play. As you know, there's the awareness to sort of the, Hey, you know, maybe I will apply for that job. I think I might wanna apply. So awareness to application. and then you start getting into more of the the recruiter side of things. Because once we start getting into that, it's sort of that sourcing point. Well, now I've applied, am I gonna be considered right? And so now it's the consideration phase, which is kind of the recruitment marketing. Into kind of the sourcing piece. So it all sort of comes together until you sort of get into that point of, you know, sort of the offer and into the onboarding. And when you look at all of these pieces together, it all ultimately kind of becomes sort of that talent acquisition process as opposed to just thinking about the recruitment part of it. So those are sort of the ways I think, So I think it's very much integrated between sort of the sales piece, which is sort of the candidate development side of things. I see very much. And the relationship management skills that you need with your hiring teams. But the marketing piece is super important because that's kind of how you get their awareness and sort of build that interest enough to kind of convert people into applying for your roles. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, really loved how you've described that candidate lifecycle. And the yeah, the perhaps comments regarding a candidate wanting to perhaps have one person to speak to, which you can also offset against things done times that I hear, which is that recruiters don't have enough time to, to recruit anymore or at least source. And in some instances that could be bad for the business. because having perhaps too much specialization leads to rigidity or at least inflexibility when the market conditions change. And recruiters perhaps don't know if they've been focused on account management. Maybe they're going to need to have a broader skillset if the business requires to have some sort of change. And I also really liked how you've, you, you've been discussing discovery and engagement as well, and it, and it appears that some of the challenges of talent acquisition today imply both you're trying to also find the, the talent. There's not enough skills against the demand of the market. Plus we have to engage and make sure that the company is has a compelling offer to try and bring in the right talent to to the interview and assessment.

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, totally. I mean, I think, I think what you just said about discovery is, is, is sort of back even to the whole creativity part too. Cuz there's discovery in very traditional paths. You know, and I keep hearing, you know, a lot of the traditional sort of, you know, thoughts around, oh we need a new tool, you know, we need to, we need more, we need more technology, we need another job board. And I. And I love my colleagues who wanna post their jobs on all these different job boards, but I'm very much a recruiter at heart, like I said, recruiter first. And I truly believe that it's the role of the recruiter to kind of go out and find the people. Right. You know, so it's all about the discovery part and it's sort of knowing how. To sort of use your network and how to connect people you know to you use your network to connect to people who can fill your jobs. You use your community relationships through your organization to find paths to talent that you might be able to tap and hire. You know, you use like your college and university relationships to sort of figure out how you're gonna build pools of talent, whether it's early career or if you wanna get off into the master's doctor. Alumni sort of sides of things, and so there's a lot that you can do, but I always think of it as very active work and, and stuff that requires kind of you know, kind of to your point, bandwidth, right? So you also have to be very careful about the bandwidth of the people on your teams. And I do agree. I mean, as a leader it becomes very difficult when you feel like you need more resources, but you aren't able to get more resources to sort of, you know, you know, take on the, the, the challenge maybe to the, to. to the level of detail that you wanna accomplish, but you can become pretty nimble too, you know, by just synergizing your team around the various, you know, commonalities, you know, whether it's a talent segment or a geography. There are lots of ways that you can kind of look at, you know, trying to build some efficiency and some bandwidth within your. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

When you have to. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, and I mean, it absolutely comes down to being proactive. This is off, this is off track, but I'd love to learn. If, if you're prepared to share, have you seen in your career, or encourage your team members in the talent team to actively network within the company as well. I e source for referrals. Ask for hiring managers input about who they know in their network to try and fill requirements. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

‍ Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's the most necessary and yet informal sort of process that I've, that I would say I've ever had in place. But I think recruiters do become somewhat exposed and somewhat Conduits, right? For, for the employees who get involved in various job searches or they meet people through processes, they might even meet someone who's their hiring manager one minute and the next minute they're a candidate for another job internally and things like that. But I think what you're talking about about ways to build your own internal network, I would say that's actually always very much top of mind. And so for me, one of the ways I've sort of always approached is by getting involved with our employee resource. . So like when I was at IGT, I was one of the co-chairs for our women. Women in networking groups, chapters in our Rhode Island, you know, office, you know, and so that was, that was one place, you know, here at, you know, Teradyne. I've become very involved with our women's our women's erg, along with you know, kind of our new to, to Tara e r g, which we're getting ready to relaunch. And that's kind of not just geared, you know, particular sort of group of people other than folks that are new, you know, to Teradyne. And then we bring in sort of allyship, you know, from our more tenured ex experienced folks to kind of just help with, you know, you know, Hey, where do I go for this? Or how do I find that? Or what does it mean when someone says this? You know, where's the calf? I mean, just sort of like the basics. You know, those kinds of. . So anyway, but I find that that plugging into as much as you possibly can, you know, internally helps you build your network. And it's something that I've been extremely passionate about. And I've always felt like, I think part of the reason why I opted for corporate recruiting over kind of the agency sort of recruiting model or path, career path for myself is because I loved the fact that I didn't just, you know, find someone maybe their first job at a company, but I might be helping them find their second and sometimes even their third jobs within that company. And that's when you really feel like you've, you know, sort of, you know, found your groove is when you kind of get into that. . I do think internal mobility is, is becoming more and more important, you know, for organizations sort of thinking about how do we move our, our, our folks around, how do we create sort of project or kind of gig based opportunities, you know, from a career development perspective. And I also think really making some meaningful experiences, whether it's a connection for mentorship. Some other way to kind of use our internal networks to kind of build paths for our employees is really important too. So I'll just sort of mention that as well. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, I, I was reading actually the Korn Ferry Talent acquisition Trends report only this morning. And they were speaking about how internal mobility, number one and then number two, talent development. And you can see how they, they interlink because. Yeah, it's a recession or, or something that's strange that's going on, but your top performers are still top performers, and if you don't find a ways to actually go and hold onto them, train and develop them, then they're going to leave. So it is absolutely necessary as we stop perhaps being so externally focused with acquisition that we yeah, we, we cr we make paths for, for people to, to. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah and, and I guess here's where, you know, I, you know, picking up on that, on that sort of comment, here's where I would throw at you. You know, so what is our cost per hire and what is the cost per employee in terms of what we're spending for career development? and I think you're gonna find that it's probably less. And then the cost for per vacancy, right? And if we start adding up all the cost for a lost productivity and times when we don't have the skills we need versus sort of the cost of the investment for our own employees, I think it becomes a fairly compelling conversation to have, you know, once you sort of have all your data together.

Nasser Oudjidane

‍Yeah. Well that, that's a great point. What you, you, you need to have your data together and you, you are obviously very passionate about this subject and it seems that it's so difficult to actually capture accurate data about this, such as cost per hire. How are folks actually I, I've spoken to several businesses. They calculate it in different ways. Mm-hmm. and it's not just, you know, the re recruiting staff number and resources divided by requirements in some instances are you counting, you know, the wasted time with hiring managers that are, you know, putting their time in and not selling or building products or other things like that. So it's, it's interesting that some businesses can get ahead of the curve. Analyzing the data and then acting and then other businesses won't and then perhaps will suffer for it. 

Michelle Randall-Berry‍

Well, I think it's the difference, you know, and I'm still trying to sort of figure, figure it all out. So I'm certainly not gonna sit here and say like, oh yeah, we've got it all figured out. Cuz I don't think anyone really has it totally figured out. But I do think an opportunity is to sort of shift away from sort of the data. where we're always looking in the rear view and starting to look at more of the predictive analytics. And that's where sort of to your point around, you know, everybody kind of calculates costs per higher differently. I think that's okay because it's really a trend line. I don't know that it has to be, I mean, it would be nice if it was always precise and it would be nice if it was a hundred percent consistent because I can share, you know, based. , the companies I've been in it. It also has to do with your availability to access some of the data too, right? So some of it may be spent, you know, especially in large global companies, there may be. Dollars that are spent on recruitment that you may not even realize, you know, from a recruiting perspective, because there's an event or something that's locally held, you know, and so you may just miss some stuff just because it's not, you know, necessarily, you know, top of mind or at the top of your list. But I don't know that that's. , and I may be challenged by some of my, my colleagues or my peers, but I don't know that that has to be perfect. I think it has to be, at least at a trend, Ana, you know, like a trend analysis so that you can start to get a handle on it. And I think it becomes really important when we're making decisions about investments in our recruiting team, in our tool set, in our You know, talent acquisition strategies, just in general, sort of thinking about how we're gonna build or boost, you know, sort of our efficiency and, you know, and other things. But but I do think it's okay. I, I think sometimes we have to sort of, be okay with a trend, you know, sort of level that it's not a, we know it's not a hundred percent perfect, but we're gonna kind of go with it because we think it's about 80% accurate and that usually can give you enough. I would even say workforce planning is another place where I, I see companies, you know, very consistently sort of struggling. To have great workforce planning, you know, and so I think workforce planning also becomes a big con, you know, a big topic of conversation. But maybe it's not having a perfect process for workforce planning, but at least getting to that point where you can establish a good solid trend line and you at least have. You know, maybe six to to nine months, 12 months of, of sort of data. But again, it's kind of that shift from sort of always looking behind at what we've done and starting to get yourself pivoting so that we're looking forward. And that's where those trend lyses, you know, become really important because you can use a trend line to look forward. Precision means you're always looking back. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, I really like how you are, you're talking about being directionally accurate and something that is quite contemporary and important, prescient in fact is workforce planning, considering the. So many CEOs are holding their hands up saying, we made a mistake. Sorry, we hide too many people. And then unfortunately, you're letting people go today. Which speaks directly to the heart of what you said. And, yeah. La last thing I'll say on that is it's great that you've like, kind of busted a myth of, well at least put forward an opinion with regards to not looking behind. Can I ask you what advice you've heard in the past or something that you've seen? Which is total BS that you think belongs in the trash. Are there any myths that needs to be busted in your opinion? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, I mean, so I'm gonna share my my humble opinion with you on this , but you had touched on sort of employer brand and so especially, you know, within this past year, you know, one of the things that I kept hearing about when we were experiencing, you know, significant, you know, challenges, real pain with our recruiting process. was sort of the jump to, we gotta go do more, you know, sharing of our jobs on LinkedIn. We have to be, you know, putting more content out on the internet. We have to be doing all of these things. when the truth of the matter was we needed to become more savvy with how we were recruiting, sort of driving more manager behavior and recruiting team behavior around, you know, maybe speeding the process along. You know, I, I, I feel like gaining efficiency is so, so important, but you don't wanna sacrifice quality doing it. So I've heard about some companies who are trying to sort of interview and. , you know, within like a super short period of time of, you know, a couple of days or you know, or two weeks or, you know, something along those lines. I think if you have your process really sewn up well you could probably, you know, you can probably do those things, but I do think there's a certain amount of, you know, we wanna ensure an equitable process as well, and we wanna ensure that we're assessing all. , we wanna make sure that we're calibrating based on competencies. We wanna make sure that, you know, we're, we're assessing the talent based off of, you know, sort of some core you know, core capabilities, core skills like we've been talking about and those sorts of things. And so you may need a little bit more time, but I do think the whole. You know, perspective that the solution is to immediately go out, and this comes up all the time, oh, we need a stronger brand, we need more branding. Again, it it, it really doesn't help you with finding the talent. Like I said, the way you find talent is you have to go after the talent. So, you know, yes, sharing a post on LinkedIn might help, you know, drive some awareness, which can be very helpful. , but I really think it's that connection, you know, really connecting the, you know great talent to opportunity. I mean, that's, that's kind of what it's all about. And that requires more than just back to my intentional sort of comment, you know, it's, it's an intentional thing where you're really working to, you know, and this is something I've talked about with my own team here at DY and my short tenure. Is about, you know, opportunity hires, you know, sort of thinking about how do we get skills in front of teams to try to connect you know, maybe somebody who's got great skills for your team, but you don't have a job opening right now. Is that something we can consider? Can you talk to this person and assess them? And figure out if maybe we could make an opportunity. And so I think these are some of the things we're gonna, you know, sort of that creating a culture of continuous recruitment is sort of what I like to say. And I think that's something that also helps us drive, you know, everything forward too. Doesn't always work. Absolutely. You know what I mean? Budgets, or budgets. But sometimes a great talent walks, walks in, walks in front of you and you just know you have to talk to them and at least make the connections. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. I I really like how you've, you've phrased it continuous recruiting. It goes back to what we were saying about being proactive. And, and that ultimately gives you the edge in speaking to a candidate and making sure that they see teradyne and not your competitor at the end of the day. Mm-hmm. How do you think about technology implementation when helping talent acquisition and the company overall achieve its goals? You've, you've mentioned that, you know, the solution isn't, you know, let's post it. The solution isn't more job boards. What do you you know, instill in your team? It seems that there's, there's obviously a sense of discipline and proactiveness. How does that link. Tools and, and, and technology that we are all undated with today. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Yeah, no, I think it's a fair question. I mean, I think, like I said, sort of thinking about building pools of talent as opposed to requisition driven sort of recruitment is really important. Think, you know, sort of back to fostering a culture of continuous recruitment means we identify kind of our core, you know, skills that we're always looking to acquire when we start building pools of. . That doesn't mean that we have to necessarily have jobs for every single person that we're hire looking to talk to in that moment, but it's like getting to know everybody in that particular, you know, sort of pool that we're, that we're, we're trying to attract. So I think that's one, one way I think about it, the, you know, and that's where sort of the opportunity hires come from too, is they may not always be, you know, for a specific job posting. So I would say any sort of tool that helps us with kind of, you know, targeted campaigns for those talent pools is, is certainly interesting along with ways for us to be, you know, sort of GDPR or data privacy compliant, you know, with respect to how we manage, you know, sort of those ongoing relationships with folks. You know, especially working in a global company, we have to be very mindful of those things. I think. . You know, something else I would share is that yeah, I, I think there's a lot of sort of the the work that needs to be done to sort of align your team. Because I think the tendency for a lot of companies, especially when you get busy, is to kind of just align them by the business unit. Whereas I, you know, within a, especially companies that manage multiple kind of brands or multiple the sort of solutions that they offer and the, the, the perspective that the best opportunity for recruiters is to sort of be aligned. Product segment or by business unit segment isn't always necessarily true. It's really being aligned by the talent segment and then by the geography because that's how you gain more efficiency. And I think that's how you kind of win, you know, with respect to structuring your team for long-term success. So those are a couple of those things I would say. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. How, how, how is that what, what's the difference between business or functional segment and then the talent segment?

Michelle Randall-Berry

Oh, yeah, that's a good question. So if you're in a, in a company, you know, that's largely technology based. You might have groups that are building different technology products in different business units, but you could still have a team, right? That sort of focuses on, say, cloud-based skills, for instance, and they just focus on sort of cloud-based, you know, technologists. You know, if I'm gonna just sort of pick something. . You don't have to necessarily have, you know, one recruiter who sort of sits in a particular business unit and is recruiting for every job in that business unit. What happens when you have recruiters who are assigned jobs that are vastly different? every single search is a brand new talent pool, right? It's a brand new slate of candidates. It's a new approach. You're, you're going back to square one every single time. Every intake meeting is a new intake meeting. You're not optimizing kind of those conversations and things you've learned from before. And so I think those are some of the things that you can. Parse out and take with you. When you start to look across and you start to organize sort of by where are the common, where are, where are the common skills and the common talent profiles that we're looking to invite into our company, and how do we kind of organize ourselves to be able to bring those folks then?

Nasser Oudjidane

Got it. Last one before the closing questions. What tech do you use? Feel free to shut out any products that, oh, delivering value. 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Sure. So when I got to Teradyne, we're using SAP Success Factors. So we call it, you know, thrive. And we use that for our global, you know, as our global r i s system and in kind of our system of record for hr. We're also, you know, using LinkedIn. We have relationships with Glassdoor. And I'm absolutely blanking. Unlike everything else at this moment, and I don't know why, but , those are the top ones for the moment. 

Nasser Oudjidane

What's one piece of advice you wish you had when you started your career? If you think back to working in the agency and then moving in house, if someone could have told you something, what, what would you wish it would've been?

Michelle Randall-Berry

It's a really good question. That's the one thing I really wish someone would've told me. I feel like I got a lot of really great advice. I think maybe one of the things I wish somebody had told me was how, maybe how much of a rollercoaster talent acquisition is. Right? So when I first got into it, I, I. I think I was getting a lot of enjoyment cuz I had a lot of early success. You know, sort of with just the recruiting piece and finding people and filling some roles and those are the high moments, you know, it's like preparing for those moments when things don't go go well and you're sort of, you have that great candidate and you're all the way up to the finish line and then you find out, ugh, they just took an offer somewhere else. You know? I mean it's like those moments where it's like you are having either, and I tell people this, all the. , I think I stayed in recruiting because I love being on this crazy rollercoaster, but for other people it can be absolutely devastating. So I think you have to kind of manage it. You know, you have to be able to, to live through the highs and the lows. And anybody who stayed in recruiting after this past year has to love it because you could never have gone through last year without loving being a recruiter and being in talent acquisition. Cuz it was definitely, you know, . It was definitely a, a long de, you know, year with a lot of demand. But I've also always said I'd rather be busy than bored especially in recruiting. So it's always good to feel wanted and needed. So we'll take that. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Absolutely. Yeah. It definitely isn't rollercoaster. Is there anything that you've listened, watched, or read that you find inspirational? 

Michelle Randall-Berry‍

There are lots of things. I mean, I'm a, I'm a huge fan of, you know, there's sort of a few people. So Brene Brown, you know, is someone who gives me a lot of inspiration just because I, I feel like she has a lot of, of great sort of practicality and sort of how she the research that she's done and sort of how it, how it relates to. I also find Josh Burson to be particularly interesting and I actually bought his book Irresistible which I'm still getting through. But you know, just the whole, I just love the whole idea of being an irresistible employer. It just, there's something about it that just feels like that's, that's spot on. And I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn for their talent blog and their workforce. economics reporting. I feel like they have great data and insights to share. I mean, I read McKenzie and Korn Ferry and, and a lot of the other folks too, but just off the top of my head, Lean in also just in partnership with McKenzie just published not that long ago, kind of there Women in the Workforce report for 2022. That's a really good read and an excellent study and it definitely shows kind of the impact on women, you know, post covid you know, so those are some of the, some of the things I've been reading at least recently. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Thank you for sharing. We'll put those in the show notes and in the newsletter. Last question. what is one thought value or phrase, if any, that you live by? 

Michelle Randall-Berry

So it's actually a Mindy Kaling one, which is kind of funny. And I, and I think it just has to do with sort of, you know, a lot of people kind of talk themselves out of jobs, or they taught themselves out of careers, or they taught themselves out of journeying, you know, forward. And I just love the quote that she has, which is that you don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something, but especially not yourself. So don't let someone else, you know, tell you that. Nevermind your own self, tell you that. And her advice is that you just go conquer the world and remember sort of why not you, you've made it this.

Nasser Oudjidane

very inspirational. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for your time. This has been incredible. Thank you, 

Michelle Randall-Berry

Michelle. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.