Hello social media followers, LinkedIn, Facebook, and everyone tuning into our show. Welcome to Beyond the Offer podcast. I’m your host, Rosanna Snediker, joined by my cohost and friend, Bill Gates. Thank you for tuning in as we tackle the latest trends and challenges in talent acquisition and human resources.
This is a very special episode for me as we’re joined by my personal and close friend, Sonya Heer. Sonya is currently the manager of talent acquisition operations at Delta Dental. She’s been in the recruiting space for over 16 years working at companies like Delta Dental, ADP, and Northwestern Mutual.
Sonya is a successful TA leader and someone I’ve been lucky enough to call a friend for 20 plus years. We are thrilled to have you join us today on the podcast, Sonya. Welcome to Beyond the Offer. Thank you so much for having me. This is pretty fun. I just, I’m having a reflection back to college and graduating and you getting your first recruiting job.
And here we are, so many years later talking about this market, right? And it does not feel like it’s been that long. I also feel like you probably met Bill fairly quickly too, because I met him in 2010 and you met him through personal connections. So we’re all connected for some time now. Absolutely.
We’re in the recruiting, we’re in the recruiting cocoon, I suppose here- but the good and the bad. But thanks for joining us, Sonya. Yeah, we’re excited to talk with you. So I’ll kick it off. We ask our guests this question so everyone can kind of just get to know you. Tell us about your background and how you got into recruiting. Absolutely.
So, I in college got an internship. It was a sales internship with Northwestern Mutual. They had a top 10 internship and real life experience, got licensed, all of the things. And I remember going to the career fair at my university and saw the recruiter at the time. She had a booth. She was recruiting students and full time people.
And I remember stopping by and seeing some friends walk by and recruiting them over to have conversations about our program. And she’s like, do you want to do some campus recruiting with me? And I’m like, okay, sure. So that’s kind of how things started with recruitment. It was because of a sales internship, that they just noticed my engagement with folks and bringing people over, like, let’s do this.
And it’s pretty fun looking back at how that came to fruition because shortly thereafter I graduated, got offered a full time position and I’m sure you guys hear this a lot with recruiting, kind of fell into it, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and you’ve spent, as Ro mentioned before, you spent some time leading recruiting in, you know, three completely different industries, insurance, HR services with ADP, Northwestern Mutual and financial services as well.
Do the industries and how they approach HR, do they vary based on industry to industry and how they attract talent? So I want to say yes and no, right? Recruiting can really vary across industries due to the nature of the work. Regulatory environment, right? So Delta Dental is a heavily regulated environment.
The financial services also is. There might be specific talent requirements within each sector. Companies in general might be looking for different core competencies or, you know, use different various tools. I think that the thing that remains constant, though, and you could probably align with this is from a recruiting perspective, we’re sourcing, we’re attracting, we’re interviewing, we’re having standardized processes, we’re connecting and working with leaders, hiring leaders.
So, yes. But then also, there is a constant when it comes to recruiting. Interesting. Yeah, for sure. It’s always interesting to see the industries and just how they vary from manufacturing to financial services, and how they approach it in general, for sure. Yeah. Well, and for you, like you said, you were doing right out of college people at first with campus stuff versus a more professional services type of role.
Then you go into more of a corporate role where you’re recruiting higher level senior people. But the message and like you said, the process is pretty consistent. So, I think a little over four years ago, is that when you moved into more of the TA operations type of role? Okay. Right when COVID hit, which was kind of interesting timing.
Yep. Perfect time to make a career change. So you moved into more of the operations side. Tell us just about that transition, what you’ve learned and especially having experience on both sides, the hands on recruiting, the TA operations. How it differs and just kind of how now you use that background to be successful in your role.
Absolutely. I think it was a really- not everyone that goes into TA operations maybe necessarily has a recruiting background, but you also see a lot of people that do. And I think it’s helpful having that firsthand experience in recruiting because you can kind of understand the daily challenges that recruiters face, whether it’s managing high volume, navigating complex systems, maybe keeping up with shifting priorities and the goal in TA operations is to streamline processes, provide the right tools, make it easier for recruiters to do what they do best. And I talked to my team all the time about this. We’re removing the roadblocks so that recruiters can go and connect with top talent. So it’s really surreal to be in a position to help design systems and resources that reduce kind of the friction that help recruiters stay focused on building relationships and delivering quality hires.
So it’s been a pretty exciting shift. I really love the operational side and just the impact that our team can have on this function. Do you miss any of the other recruiting aspects and being more out of the analytical and HR operations side and less talking to candidates or coaching the recruiters on how to manage the process, et cetera?
I love that you asked that. So I am an extrovert, extrovert by nature. And so, you know, you think about in the recruiting space, you’re on the phone, you’re talking, you’re engaging, and there’s a big impact right in recruiting where you’re creating this new career progression or direction for someone and landing them their dream job and just the impact within the organization.
So there’s definitely that win and that you know how you’ve helped somebody in recruiting. But there is something about the ability to make the impact behind the scenes that and I tell my leader this all the time. This is like my favorite job. Everything is, every day is different. There’s a new problem.
It’s very ambiguous work. Whether it’s creating a new process or being involved in project management, it is my favorite job. Gotcha. Yeah. Well, to that point, you’d mentioned like coaching recruiters and, you know, different environments. Have you noticed like one mistake that’s most common for that full life cycle recruiters make routinely?
I think this could, you know, the answer could probably vary depending on who you’re asking. But I think one of the big things and I talked to my colleague quite a bit about this is, I think one common mistake in full life cycle recruiting is the hesitation to engage in difficult conversations with hiring leaders.
And I think some organizations are designed where there’s like maybe a hiring manager survey and they don’t want to get a bad, you know, report from a hiring leader because it impacts their metrics or whatever the case is. That’s not the case for us. We don’t do that. We certainly measure the quality of hire and are tracking the talent that’s coming in.
And we want to hear feedback, but this is a level playing field, right? Talent acquisition partners. We are an extension of business. We’re extension of the leadership group, right? So when we think about our role as advisors, we should be talking about supply and demand and what’s going on on the market.
And is there something that’s happening from a profile? Is it a wildly, I think we talk about purple squirrels, like, you know, does this exist in the marketplace? Let’s have a real conversation. Cause there’s an impact to the business when someone’s not driving that role, right? It’s not about time to fill because that looks good.
It’s about your business and the impact of having that vacancy. And so I think one of the common mistakes I see is make sure that you are the partner and that you can challenge the leader. I feel like we see that being on the agency side too. Like that is our job is to advise them and help the process. So back to kind of some TA operations best practices that you have helped put in place. What are some of those that have helped the recruiting process just run smoother? And I guess how closely is your operations team working with the day to day recruiters on a regular basis, I guess, when a search kicks off or what does that involvement look like?
Yeah. Best practices- man, there’s a lot of them. I, and this might be kind of silly to say out loud cause it kind of depends on how mature your recruiting function is. I have worked with organizations that don’t have robust applicant tracking systems. So if you don’t have one of those, let’s start there. So best practice having and leveraging either an applicant tracking system, maybe a CRM, a client relationship management tool.
There’s things that those kind of tools help with. Right. Whether it’s automating messages, making sure candidates are being touched, alerts. Communication is key throughout the process. You know, having a understanding where people are at in process. The compliance component, right? How many, are we following the right steps?
What’s going on from a feedback? Why did we choose this person? Consistency, standardized processes and documentation. We have a lot of things built out. There’s things that pop up all the time. You’re like, oh, we probably need to refine this. Some things have changed or there’s an issue over here. Let’s figure out what that process is going to look like cross functionally with this team or that team.
So to your question on the day in and day out, it’s branding and attraction and making sure our jobs are in the right visibility on whichever boards make the most sense, whether it’s technology, maybe it’s more operational. Hey, we’re having an issue with the technology.
We’ve got to do some problem solving and some troubleshooting. My team handles all the tech pieces. I think also the other piece. And again, there’s so many important pieces of streamlining the recruitment process to make sure things are smooth and effective. But, thinking about data, right?
Thinking about, and this kind of goes back to the ATF, but ensuring that you have a ability to go pull what’s going on so you can see trends and forecast for the future. Hey, we just did a branding campaign. Let’s go look at the applicant volume following that event, right? Are we being effective? So that’s just probably just a little bit of a touch, but there’s a lot that goes into recruiting, as you guys know.
Have you seen, data is obviously what everyone talks about these days. But, you know, utilizing the data and the employment branding piece obviously continues to feed that funnel of candidates, depending on what you’re focusing in on as well.
But have you seen that evolve and change through technology or AI and things like that, that have surfaced that have made it a lot easier for recruiters to operate? Absolutely. And I recognize not all organizations have the infrastructure to invest in tools that might be able to capture things that maybe you’re looking at the time to fill.
Maybe you’re looking at the application volume per roles. Maybe you’re looking at, hey, one of the big, big, big things in recruiting is candidate experience. Are candidates getting stale in process? Have you had an abundant of, so this is something that we keep track of, right? Is every 30 days, are candidates getting touched?
Are they being, looked at, reviewed? It doesn’t feel good to apply to a position and have no idea where that went to die. Where I haven’t heard one way or the other. I don’t care. Just close the loop. Am I qualified or not? Am I moving forward or not? And so candidate experience is a big deal. And that’s one of the things that we use data to tell the story and make sure that people are having a great experience because that goes back to our brand as well.
Well, now with social media and just so many people active on LinkedIn, if your candidate experience is bad like you risk someone putting something out there and all the different reviews. I mean, even from when we all joined the workforce, I feel like that’s become such more of a common practice for candidates to speak out about that.
So you have to be aware of that as well. Absolutely. And you know, you’re probably not racing to social media to say, I had this phenomenal steak. You race to social media to say my state was overdone. I don’t think I’m gonna go back there. Right. It’s like we always tell people Glassdoor, you know, take it with a grain of salt.
Especially people come into the workforce, now that’s what they’re tied to. Tiktok, social media like they go to there to find their information. And something we’ve asked actually past guests on this before too as well. And it’s been a- well, it’s been a common topic, but most notably during COVID, but the remote environment aspect. You’ve obviously worked in a remote environment before and seen people transition to working maybe back in the office.
How have you kind of stayed connected with remote based teams that you’ve managed over the years while they’ve been working remotely? It is an interesting topic and I will say that I have worked remotely prior to COVID even rolling out. But there is something very surreal about being in person, but we know we can be effective remotely as well.
So some of the things that we do or I do, which may not be necessarily unique. But staying connected with my team is really important. So we do have weekly connects, one on ones. And yeah, we’re talking about what’s going on? What works in flight? What projects do you need some feedback on? Maybe we’re talking about career development, but something that’s really, really important to,
and I wouldn’t say I’m unique in this right. This is something I think it’s very Delta Dental focused. We’re really focused on our people and I love my team. And so a lot of times it’s just catching up. Like what happened this weekend? What’s going on with kindergarten? What’s going on with- right? So I think putting the person first in those weekly connects.
I do have a TA ops specific just because my team does so many different things, bringing them together outside of the broader talent acquisition team. But then we have those as well. I think some of the kind of more fun, unique things that we’ve done as a talent acquisition function is we have something called recess monthly.
And we actually have a recruiter that runs with that. And it’s like, the 1 rule is we’re not talking about work. We’re not talking about work. We’re going to do something that’s either maybe we play cahoots, maybe we play a game that just gets people laughing and engaging, or maybe it’s just we’re connecting and we’re chit chatting what’s going on personally, but no work talk.
We’ve done some things like coffee chats or happy hours- virtual happy hours. It gets a little tricky with the time zones. So those are just a couple of things but I think at the end of the day, it’s you know, putting people first and genuinely caring. And that helps with eliminating that face to face, right. Which I do prefer to do a lot of video meetings with my team, just because there is that
kind of eye contact and connection, but. Yeah. Well, like you said, you were doing it and I remember actually being jealous of you as a personal friend, like you’re working remote. One of our other girlfriends was pre 2020. So I do feel like you kind of knew how to jump into it a little bit more whenever we were all thrown into it.
It’s like, how do we make this work? This isn’t related to recruiting, but I do remember getting off of work and just like going to Walmart once in a while, just getting out around people. But I think, yeah, and then in the remote environment, a lot of people kind of develop what is it that they need?
And maybe it’s a water cooler chitchat on the phone, right? With one of your coworkers. Yeah. So at Delta Dental, you’ve been involved in getting various benefits, perks added to employees. Can you just tell us a little bit about that journey you’ve been on and how that’s helped recruiting talent to your organization?
Absolutely. I did have a unique experience. I think when you’re out in the market as a recruiting function, you hear a lot of questions. And working cross functionally, a lot of this feedback does make its way back to the appropriate whether it’s, hey, we’re seeing lots of salary issues.
We’re talking to compensation. Hey, we’re hearing- why don’t we offer this benefit? We’re bringing back the benefits. And so over some time we’ve been hearing from our own employees and from the market, hey, what about a paid parental leave program? When’s that coming? And I will say Delta Dental, we have amazing benefits.
We’ve got a diabetes benefit that’s kind of unique, a fertility benefit, that’s very rich. We’ve got tutoring. Like we’ve got a lot of different really neat benefits. But we were kind of missing that paid parental, right. That very inclusive, for regardless of your gender and, you know, different backgrounds, very inclusive background.
I had a unique opportunity to stretch in earlier this year and help stand up this program. And being very passionate about- I’ve got 2 girls. You can see them behind me. Being very passionate about family. Being very passionate about the ability to take that special time to bond. And you know what-
what are people in the market doing? What does like really exceptional look like when you think about some of these high tech companies and what is kind of like, okay, you’re doing all right. Where can we sustain and be more longterm? So really landing on the who, the what, the length, all of that. And it’s, it’s live. It was such a rewarding experience to work on because you’re talking about benefits, you’re talking about FMLA and you’re talking about- right. Just like real legality of taking leave and different states have different laws and. So yeah, I don’t know. I’m sorry. Now I’m thinking back to what the question was.
I get really passionate about it because it’s really exciting, but it’s also exciting full circle to be able to say, hey, we’ve got this now. Right. So in the marketplace, we’re able to be very holistic in how we really support the employee. Yeah. Yeah. And it was more just learning the journey and kind of how that’s helped you recruit talent, which I’m sure it has.
I mean, that has to be- curious, I guess, what are some of the benefits that you hear from the potential employees of like what they want to hear about paternal leave. Any other ones that stick out? I think, I do think fertility is a hot topic. People are working longer before starting a family, right? Establishing themselves. So I think fertility is a big one. I think we hear a lot about pet insurance. I think that’s unique. Gosh, I’m trying to think of some of the others. Paid parental is definitely up there. I would say unlimited vacation. You’re just like, how is your vacation set up? Because a lot of organizations are doing unlimited now. So, we’re not quite there yet. But we hear it. We hear it in the marketplace. Of those benefits just in general, maybe not just at Delta Dental, but thinking of, you know, whether it’s medical, dental, vision, 401k, as you said, PTO or paid parental leave, do you feel if a company doesn’t offer like one or two of those and it isn’t competitive essentially in the market there’s just a huge drop off in the type of talent that you can attract even if their compensation and bonus structure is aligned with where that company is in terms of size and revenue? I think that’s a great question.
I think it depends on the individual and their motivators, right? And I know that there’s a lot we’re not going to get into Gen Z today, right? But it depends on kind of, sometimes it depends on where you fall with that. But also, some people are motivated by 401k, probably not Gen Z.
They’re not thinking about retirement yet. Some people are motivated by wow, low premiums, low benefits. Well, I’m on my spouse’s or I’m in, you know. So I think, again, it just depends on the motivators and we’re very transparent on what we offer. We have it on our career site down to dollars. It’s very, we’re kind of on this journey of being really transparent.
So you know when you’re applying, if we have what you’re looking for, if you take the time to look. So yeah, going back, maybe it’s working on a really cool project. Maybe it has nothing to do with the salary or the benefits. Maybe it’s just like, what am I going to be doing that’s going to keep me engaged?
Absolutely. Well, it’s a lot of different levers to be pulled, right? I mean, you’re right. It’s so individually based where on where they come from, what they’re used to with their current organization and what’s important to them because everyone’s going to be a little bit different. But transitioning a quick bit to kind of just back to a little more on the recruiting side.
We talked to a lot of folks, and I know there’s a good amount of listeners here that may or may not want to be getting into recruiting out of school or transitioning into recruiting from other professions. What advice would you give somebody looking to get into recruiting or into a recruiting role and how to be successful in handling the highs and lows of the profession?
The advice I’d give them is do it. Recruiting is so fun. I mean, jokes aside, it is an awesome, it is an awesome profession to go into. And I don’t know how many people know about it, right? And you kind of hear all these stories, but like, oh, something found me. Maybe I was in sales before. Maybe I was doing something else and somebody approached me or coming out of school.
I think that was kind of the original, maybe coming out of school or transitioning. But you’re right. I mean, recruiting has its ups and its downs. I would say, there’s definitely that win that success when you find the perfect candidate. And there’s the disappointments when someone declines your offer, or drops out unexpectedly. But adaptability, resilience, and being okay with rejection. That just comes with the territory.
But knowing that the role that you play. Talent is one of the top, I mean, everything’s important in a business. Everything’s important. But you got to have talent, right? So it is a very instrumental position to play within an organization. I feel like I always tell people when interviewing, like the highs are high, the lows are low, but you kind of have to stay in the middle.
Cause if you take the highs too high and the lows too low, this job can just be very difficult on an hourly, daily, weekly basis. So kind of to wrap up here, you’re a working mom of two. Two adorable girls, as we saw in the back. So we’d love just to hear your perspective on kind of how you’re able to manage, you’ve been working in very demanding jobs over the past years, but also raising two young girls.
How do you manage that? You know, busy schedules at home, demanding commitments at work. We’d love to just hear your advice there cause I’ve always looked up to you and thought you were someone who’s done it very well, so. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
What’s interesting is at the end of the day, it comes down to you, yourself and your prioritization. And I am fortunate that our senior leaders within our organization, my direct leader, right- they put a priority on the individual, the person. And they’ve given the permission, right?
You get your work done, but we want to have this flexible environment. And I know that it seems like, hey, to get everything done, we’ve got to work at night and early in the morning at past five and all of these things. I have a strict it’s five o’clock, we’re off to ninjas. It’s five o’clock,
we’re off to soccer, right? And if there’s something I need to catch up on later, I can do that when I get the kids to bed. We also rolled out something called no meeting Wednesdays. So we know, especially going into 2020 with all of the virtual meetings, it’s meeting after meeting after meeting something that could have been just walk down the hall, have a 2 second conversation is now a meeting.
So there is this meeting fatigue and you guys have probably felt it or heard about it. So we rolled out this no meeting Wednesday. Is it perfect? Does it always happen? No. But the permission is there. That’s your time to get work done. So you don’t have to do it at night and on the weekends or whatever the case is. But I think a lot of it comes back to you as the individual giving yourself permission to stop what you’re doing and come back later.
Absolutely. And just prioritizing, like you said. I love the no meeting Wednesday. I’ve heard of people doing it on Fridays, but kind of midweek’s also a good reset if you can. Yeah. Depends on your industry and kind of what you’re in. So. Absolutely. That’s a good point.
So we like to wrap the podcast with our unfiltered HR question segment. So it’s basically just a question where we ask our guests a little less formal of a question, a little bit more uncomfortable question.
So being in the recruiting space for 16 plus years, what do you think the biggest misconception is about recruiting? That’s a good question. Honestly, I think people think recruiting is easy. It’s just about finding people. In reality, recruiting involves, there’s the actual work itself, right? More than just sourcing candidates.
It’s strategic thinking, it’s relationship building, negotiations, understanding market trends. There’s a lot of moving pieces that you’re constantly keeping moving forward, whether it’s, again, sourcing, interviewing, scheduling, meeting with a hiring leader, pulling market data, looking at, you know, where people are at in process, making sure things are moving forward and then some.
That’s the actual work itself. But then we kind of talked about this earlier. There’s also the emotional perseverance. I’m super excited. I just met Bill. He’s going to be awesome. My hiring lead is going to love him. We’ve gotten him the offer and he didn’t accept it for whatever reason, maybe a counter offer from where they work today.
That’s, that’s the hardest one. I think, right? Like, you know, you found a good one whenever the existing employers like nope, we’re gonna keep you. We’re gonna keep you. We’re gonna give you some more. Please stay here. So just being able to navigate the roller coaster that is recruiting is the mental component of it, I guess, if you will.
Yeah, 100%. There’s always a lot of those, you know, difficult hiring managers that do think recruiting is just easy in general, right? And it’s just a matter of talking to them and sending their resume over and everything just works out, right? I like that you said that because it makes me think about too, how recruiting can be very what did you do for me today?
Right. And if you haven’t talked to them in a minute, you’re not doing anything. So keeping that communication with the leaders, even if there’s not a true update, because you’re in the process of screening 20 candidates. Like, this is what’s happening. That’s why it hasn’t hit you yet. Right? That’s why we don’t have someone scheduled.
So that’s it. So you brought that up. It made me just think. It can be very what have you’ve done for me lately. Back to your point, Sonya, about data, right? And that’s something we use a lot of the times with our clients regularly, especially on executive searches is, you know, what did you do for me today?
You know, we’ll have an intake or kickoff conversation or learn more about an executive search. And we really tell them right out of the gates, we’re not going to have candidates for you in the first two weeks, gives us time to do some research and understand what the market is based on what they’re looking for.
But if you don’t have that data, they just, as you said, they assume you’re just kind of sitting around on your hands and feet doing nothing. So it is very important, I think, to make sure you keep that communication, even if you don’t have a candidate to present to them, right? Right. I love how you said you got flooded expectations.
Sorry, Rosanna. Go ahead. Oh, no. I was just gonna say, like, showing them the data of, like, here’s who we’ve reached out to. Here’s who’s declined. Here’s who isn’t a fit. Because I think they think, applicant = conversation. And there’s all these steps in between. Yes, absolutely. There’s two sides of it. Once you’ve developed a relationship with the hiring manager, you’ve built that trust with, they know you know what they’re looking for. You may not necessarily need to show the data anymore, but there’s the ones on the other side where you haven’t worked before, maybe a new hiring manager, maybe a new client that you’re working with to find something.
And it takes a lot of time to build the trust to really make sure that, you are listening to what they’re saying and producing what they are looking for, even though sometimes it might be unrealistic. Right. Purple squirrel. Yeah. Purple squirrel. And people are very unpredictable.
So like you said, you got the perfect person and then it’s not a, you know, a product. We’re not selling a software service, you know, we’re selling a person, so. Yeah. And that, that kind of makes me think about- there’s so much out there to help automate and streamline and make things easier, but we can’t forget the human element, right?
That touch. Because people, even after offer are still having conversations with another company. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Well said. Well, that’s all the time we have for today. Thank you for tuning into this week’s episode of Beyond the Offer. Today we met with Sonya Heer and discussed her career, the switch from recruiting to talent, acquisition operations,
how to balance a family with work. We will be back again next month with a new special guest. Quick reminder again, on how you can support Beyond The Offer podcast, you can find all of our content on our Hirewell social media platform, which you can find through hirewell.com
Take care everyone. And thanks for tuning in.
