Building HR for Scale: Insights With Pam Perry

[00:00:00] 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 co-host and friend Bill Gates. Thanks for tuning in as we tackle the latest trends and challenges in talent acquisition and human resources.

[00:00:16] Today we are sitting down with Pam Perry. Pam’s been a HR contact of mine over the past three years and has an extremely impressive HR career. Over the years, Pam’s worked in corporate hr, PE-backed organizations, HR consulting, and has also started her own HR company, HR Equity. Pam, we’re very excited to have you on the podcast.

[00:00:34] Welcome to Beyond the Offer. Thank you for having me. Yes. How’s your day going? It’s great. It’s great. It’s a good day. Very good. Good. Well, we jump into this question with all of our guests, so would love just to hear kind of your story of how you started your career in hr.

[00:00:50] So it was a long, long time ago, so 40 plus years. So we’re gonna go way back here. I graduated from UCLA, but my last two years at UCLA, I worked [00:01:00] for a company called Metromedia, which was KTTV, which is now Fox. So interesting story there, and I was a free intern in their HR department for two years.

[00:01:11] Then right out of my graduation, I got hired on full-time. So it was a great story and yes, there was a time when interns could work for free, which they cannot work for free anymore. Does not happen in 2025. Not happening now. And then really, from there, I just pursued my career and took the next role in the next role, in the next role.

[00:01:29] I wasn’t one to sit. I usually stayed between three and four years. I purposefully tried different parts of HR, so my background always varied. I tried to take jobs in comp and then payroll and operations, and then employee relations and training and development. So I wanted a broad swath of the HR experience.

[00:01:46] And then lastly, I made sure I always picked different industries. Because HR can be the same if you stick within the same industry. You’re solving the same problems. But as I went from manufacturing to real estate, to medical, to [00:02:00] hospitalization, to pharmaceutical, to just software, ultimately landed in software, but ultimately it was that type of growth trajectory where I pushed myself into uncomfortable situations that actually got me where I am today.

[00:02:13] Absolutely. Well, speaking of industries, Pam, well first off, thanks for joining us. Of course. But, you know, tell us a little bit more about, your company HR Equity. I mean, how did you, how did you decide to start your own business? You know, what services do you offer, et cetera. Yeah, well that’s an interesting question because, one of the private equity firms that I know knew me from the past and reached out to me because they wanted me to be an operating advisor for them.

[00:02:39] And in order to do that, I needed to start my own company. So I had a big push, wasn’t like Pam had an epiphany, entrepreneurial moment. I’m gonna start my own firm. So ultimately I left the full-time job, which was fantastic at the time. And started my own firm and did consulting for that particular PE firm.

[00:02:56] But then HR Equity just kind of caught on. I got a lot of [00:03:00] referrals, a lot of referral business. I work with PE clients, I work with non-PE clients. I got my own clients, and then we just pretty much expanded into a lot of project-based work. I also did a number of interim stints for people who were either in process of hiring a head of HR or didn’t know what the head of HR looked like, and had me come in and work with them for a while until they could kind of define what they wanted.

[00:03:22] And then ultimately I grew into recruiting, surprisingly, in the great resignation when all of the recruiting firms were overwhelmed and couldn’t take customers. I ultimately ended up doing a lot of talent acquisition like. But between 2020 during Covid, up until about 2024, not my favorite side of the business.

[00:03:41] I’m glad you guys are all here because it wouldn’t be my preferred place to run. but ultimately, pretty much stuck with ultimately software companies and PE firms, and love the advising role of high growth software companies. Yeah. Was there a commonality really in that, or like a general, like during the, you know, just starting [00:04:00] your own thing and, and company from that standpoint, has there been a commonality in specific problems that PE firms or software companies that deal with on a regular basis?

[00:04:10] That’s been one or two, maybe specific projects that’s a common theme over the last four or five years. Yeah, I would say there’s a couple. I would say most software companies that are going through scale really do struggle with organizational design. Okay. Which then leads to kind of compensation structure, title, structure, and ultimately I think that comes up quite a bit because they might be small.

[00:04:33] Then as their scaling or they’re hiring at a velocity that’s double their size, they don’t know how to build that structure. How to make sure they know how to title jobs, how to redefine jobs, and how to benchmark those jobs and really set themselves up for scale, ’cause some of them, a lot of them are doubling in size in 12 months.

[00:04:51] To 18 months. Right. So I would say that’s probably the highest demand. In addition to what is the roadmap for building an HR department for scale, A [00:05:00] lot of these firms are small, one person, maybe two person teams, and all of a sudden they’re gonna go from a hundred employees to 400 employees. Well, how do I even build out this operational structure, performance management structure, the employee journey.

[00:05:14] All of that is, is kind of unknown to people. And so ultimately I would go in and do basically a full on analysis for them and give them pretty much a department roadmap. And this is the order of operations that you should try to do things. Yeah. Duration wise, like were, did they range in terms of length of project?

[00:05:33] Like, you know, is there a minimum amount that you would do versus one of the longer projects you were a part of? Yeah, I don’t remember having a relationship with a client less than 90 days. Yeah. Just because it takes quite a while to get things off the ground, and typically in my case, they don’t really know what they’re looking for.

[00:05:51] So a lot of it in the first three months is just really presenting optionality to them, thinking through priorities, what problems are we solving? [00:06:00] And then really the last 90 days to a year. Is really then helping them facilitate getting that in motion for them. Typically after a year, not there so much after that really.

[00:06:13] Do you typically help them build out their HR team and then kind of pass on? Yeah. Which is exciting. Yeah, it’s really fun. I mean, obviously you hire the head of HR first and then that just becomes, you become a support mechanism to that person and then you help them support building out their teams. But typically, sometimes they don’t have the money to do that.

[00:06:31] So I’ll stay in as a fractional role. And then I’ll build out underneath me, you know, bringing in a head of people ops and maybe bringing in a TA leader and then bringing up maybe an I&D or an employee relations person. So help them kind of build out that next level of leadership. And then when they’re ready, they can either report to a CFO sometimes, or by that time I get that built out, then they’re ready for a chief people officer or a VP of HR to come in and take the group.

[00:06:57] Yeah. You talked about earlier in your career, [00:07:00] just, you know, touching a wide array of industries and getting experience. Most recently being focused in the PE space. What’s kind of kept you there? What excites you about that? You know, look, I like the growth pain. Like, let’s just, yeah. I mean, I really do enjoy the growth story from a, from a $10 million startup founder up through $150 million.

[00:07:22] Like, it’s just, it’s a lot of change. It’s a lot of. Complex problem solving in terms of the people equation. ’cause the business is evolving so quickly that the dynamics change, the culture changes, the expectations change. They’re learning their new markets, the markets change, the sales structure changes, the product delivery changes.

[00:07:42] Like they’re really just trying to push that 20 to 30% growth rate. And so the business is just evolving very quickly. Once they hit like a 100 to 150 million, it just intuitively, it just starts to slow down. Right. They’ve kind of got it mastered and at that point I’d love to hand it over to someone who loves to take it [00:08:00] to a half a billion.

[00:08:01] Right. Because it’s just a very different mindset to do that. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, when you’re working with these CEOs and founders, you know, what do you see as kind of one of the main HR challenges that they seek guidance on? That’s a big question. So founders CEOs who are founders, are the most passionate people you will ever meet.

[00:08:26] Their passion for the customer, their passion for the product, their commitment to culture is bar none. The best, like that is the most wonderful thing about a founder.  They know usually exactly how they want their culture to, to be. They know what the DNA of the culture was and what they want to preserve as they scale.

[00:08:46] So coaching them kind of through, how do I keep the sentiment of my business as I go from, let’s say 50 employees to 500 employees. It’s not an easy thing to do. Right. And then founders Are typically, they’re the ones who started the business, right? So they’re [00:09:00] used to doing all the problem solving and all the thinking and all the strategy and all the customer interactions.

[00:09:05] And so where they face the biggest challenges is with scale. Where do I, where do I lean in and where do I not lean in? Right? What is the best time to hire talent that can help me grow the business? Founders are very, very loyal to their people. And sometimes that can be tough. They have to make tough challenges, right?

[00:09:23] The tough decisions to bring in a different level of talent to help them scale. And that’s probably the toughest transition for them, is I’ve gotta bring in talented people who’ve seen the movie before. I’ve gotta bring in people who can develop my people because they’re being asked to stretch so quickly, they’re not really ready for these, this larger scope role.

[00:09:45] And knowing that it’s okay, your job’s going to change too. Supporting them through that change process like. Pick your head up, look out to the markets, look out to your addressable markets, look out to the competition. Get ahead of the competition. Like your [00:10:00] job now is to steer this huge cruise ship forward and trust that you’ve got the people running the engine room and taking care of your customers, and your guests are doing their job.

[00:10:09] And that’s the hardest transition for them is to really build that team that can run the cruise ship at the same time as they need to pick their heads up and know where they’re going. We don’t want to hit any icebergs, right? So. Have you ever seen as like a consultant Pam at all, like, I’m thinking of, where a CEO has like, you know, basically the companies may become too big and the board’s kind of pushing them out,

[00:10:31] completely like flash to the movie, with Mark Zuckerberg where he moved out or you know, the whole Steve Jobs thing back when, they had brought Scully into the fold and kicked him out or, the Uber founder that basically got pushed out. But have you ever been apart or have ever seen those, because those seem like some of the most

[00:10:50] difficult things to navigate, right? ‘Cause you have your loyal followers or people that have been there with them for so long. Other folks that have not been there necessarily as long, [00:11:00] have you ever been kind of a part of that where there’s a CEO transition and how did that kind of come to fruition?

[00:11:07] Yes, and they are hard and painful, but I would say that when I’m involved, I really try to work with the CEO on his timing. Sure. Because they all kind of hit their timing. Right. They all start to see the business change so much and they all start to, lose some of the joy. Now a lot of them are very capable of going all the way right.

[00:11:27] A lot of them are very, very capable. And, and those are, you know, those are probably a tidbit, more rare, but mostly because they just don’t enjoy the big company as much. I mean, they’re entrepreneurs, right? They started their own business. They have all these ideas and they’re just fascinating people to work for, and they just have such a passion that as it scales, it becomes more work.

[00:11:46] It’s all about the people. I hate to tell you, I mean, I’ve told the CEO, the toughest part of your job is gonna be your people. And I’m so sorry, but that’s what it is and, and it is, it’s a reality, right? Your job as a CEO is to put the right teams together to put, [00:12:00] create the right cultures to maximize productivity from your people.

[00:12:03] And that’s very different than focusing on what do I wanna build, right? How do I wanna build it? What markets do I wanna go outta? How do I wanna talk to customers? So usually they know. Yeah, they know that it’s coming. I don’t think there’s too many that are caught by surprise, and I think the ones who are more self-aware and the ones who take more coaching probably go longer, but the ones who are truly passionate about what they do, they just don’t enjoy it anymore.

[00:12:30] So I would say I’ve never been a bad of a bad situation or anything like that. Like they’re smart people. Yeah. And they’re probably ready to get their hands into their next project. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And they’re ready to sit on the board, they’re ready to be the chairman of the board.

[00:12:44] They’re ready to put their hands into a different role and then start somewhere else. You know, they’ve had a couple exits, maybe multiple exits, so for them it’s really about timing more than anything. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve seen a lot of roles over the past few years in the HR space, [00:13:00] specifically where they are looking for PE experience.

[00:13:02] You know, it’s becoming more popular and it just, is a skill set. I tell people if they can get in, you know, they should. What would you say, just given your, years of experience, HR function in PE, how is that different? How does it vary, compared to, you know, an HR role in a non-private equity backed company?

[00:13:20] Well, I think this is super interesting question. sometimes people. Identify PE as one type of firm. Right? And usually they get scared when you say PE because they think, oh, this is an EBITDA play and you’re gonna come in and cut costs. Right? Yeah. And there are those firms that, that is their business value proposition model, right?

[00:13:39] They particularly look for assets because they feel like they can consolidate resources and they can create a really good, profitable business. But there’s lots of other PE firms that don’t come from that methodology. So what I would say is it depends on the PE firm. Right. It also depends on the fund.

[00:13:55] Within the PE firm there are venture funds which are more high growth and more risk [00:14:00] orientation, and then there are your much larger funds, right, which is a much more stable, kind of predictable long-term growth or maybe public sector. They’re going IPO funds. So really it’s just about what kind of personal experience do you enjoy?

[00:14:14] Right, so I can really only relate it to me, which is as I’ve worked for different PE firms at different sites, companies, for me personally, I like the growth story. I like to start at 10 to 25 million, and I love to take it to a hundred to 150 million. That’s just my story. It’s what I love. And some people are like, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:14:33] I wanna go in at the larger investment level. I wanna go in when they’re 200 million and I wanna take us to IPO. Right. So you know, you start with 200 employees, or you start with 2000 employees, right? It’s a very different model, and there’s PE firms that run all those trajectories along that continuum, including VC, who starts very, very small, which I’ve also worked with some VC firms who they can’t even afford HR departments, right?

[00:14:57] So it’s like, how do you work with them? With them in a fractional way [00:15:00] to help that CE grow to even 5 million or 6 million, right? Yeah. In fact, one of my longest term clients I met at 6 million, and I’ve had him as a client for I think we’re going on seven or eight years now and he’s at 60 million. Oh, wow.

[00:15:13] And he’s had multiple investors. So it’s like you see a CEO continue to go through that journey. Right. And it’s very exciting to watch them grow through that journey. But it is dependent on what type of PE firm you have a partnership with. How involved they are and that type of thing. Speaking of, so PE too, like in terms you’ve been a part of a lot of growth, but do you,at all different stages, and I know you’ve talked a lot about revenue, but a lot of the times employee head counts a bit more pertaining to the HR

[00:15:41] function. Not always, but it’s usually a little bit more of like, how big of a scale, do you think of when you look at, the stages going from 50 to a 100 to 250 employees to a thousand, do you sense or do you ever see like a stage where it’s like the most,

[00:15:56] from a transformational perspective, is there kind [00:16:00] of a, a number from an employee perspective where you feel like it’s the most difficult for a company to transition from a cultural perspective? That’s a really hard question. Right? So, I would say that, depending on how fast the growth is, right, bill, ’cause if the growth is solid, 15 or 20% growth, you have time to kind of catch up.

[00:16:23] As, as your leaders mature into the role. And, so what I would say the most difficult  is when you take a $25 million business with maybe 50 employees, and you invest a ton of investments into their sales and marketing, because you’re going to have a strong go to market plan and you’re taking that business from 40 or 50 employees to 150 to 200 employees.

[00:16:46] That’s really painful from my perspective, because you have no infrastructure to support. That amount of new hires, the velocity of those new hires, the onboarding of those new hires, the management team to [00:17:00] even grow and develop and get these employees effective and up and running. You just are lacking a lot of that.

[00:17:06] So you’re building basically, right? You’re building the car while you’re driving. I mean, it’s just one of those things. But then as a bigger company, when I had big firms, you could go from a 3000 person company, which I did. We got a, we bought a company twice our size, and so now we went from 3000 to 9,000 in a minute of an M&A environment.

[00:17:27] I mean, that was brutal, you know, so. So it really just depends. I think it’s the pace at which you have to double in size that makes the difference. Yeah. And dependent upon how well you planned for that. Now, I’ve gone into some organizations that are, let’s say, sitting at a hundred million and they really didn’t build themselves for a hundred million.

[00:17:48] They’re still operating like their 25 million. Right. So when you go in, even though they might only be a 20 or 30% growth rate, and the employee count as maybe you’re growing a hundred a year to 150 a [00:18:00] year, well now you’re dealing with a company that everything has to be unwound. And rebuilt. And that can be even more painful, right?

[00:18:07] ‘Cause you’re breaking things apart. Now you’ve gotta redo them. You’re, you’re more connected to the other departments. So when you break your piece, you’re also breaking their piece. So it’s a much more complex change management situation where the coordination across departments is that much more critical.

[00:18:24] Versus had you done it at 25 million and prepped yourself for a hundred, you wouldn’t maybe be going through that same level of pain. So it just. I know you’re not gonna like my answer, but it just depends. Well, when, in regard to like culture there too, I mean the culture piece is so critical too, and I’ve heard from multiple, you know, everyone’s got their own perspective.

[00:18:44] You’re one example about going from 3000 employees to 9,000, obviously, you know how that company integrates, like my opinion. Yeah, it’s gonna change. Obviously it’s much bigger, but going from like a hundred to 150. There’s a bigger transformation because now [00:19:00] you’ve got managers who’ve never managed before.

[00:19:02] You’ve got right. You know, the scaling piece in the feel from a cultural perspective can feel a lot different, you know, in those early stage organizations, and you have some people that are resistant to it. Some people are like, oh, this is the greatest thing ever. You know? How do you manage the, the cultural aspect through those transformations?

[00:19:20] Because, whether it’s a mergers and acquisition or it’s organic growth, I’m sure you’re gonna be dealing with multiple different challenges and different employees feel feeling differently about, the identity or culture of the company is. Well look when you go in, when it’s small and they started small and they know each other from day one, and you have this very intimate working environment where they’ve been basically bootstrapped from day one and there’s 25, 30, maybe 40 or 50 of them, and they know each other’s families and they know each other’s children and you know, you can’t replicate that.

[00:19:54] And anyone who thinks they can. Well, will fail miserably in cultural transformation, right? So [00:20:00] really the question is, what part about the culture can survive that, right? How do you lean into those, legacy employees and make them a very important ambassador to that culture story, right?

[00:20:13] How do you use them as mentors? How do you use them as ambassadors of the business, right? How do we help them carry that forward? Now, some of them have a hard time with the intimacy being gone. And that is something that I would always tell any HR leader, like, you can’t replace that. You can compartmentalize it.

[00:20:28] You can create your groups, your subgroups, your clubs, your, you can do whatever you need to do to create a place for people to feel like they’re valued. But you will never know everyone across the company and you’ll never know everyone’s name again. Right? That isn’t going to be what it is, but you balance that with, but this is who we are.

[00:20:48] This is our identity. We’re going to carry that identity forward no matter who you are, we’re going to hold people accountable to that identity.  We’re going to communicate and build programs around that identity so that everywhere you turn from [00:21:00] recognition to compensation to sales mentality, to the way businesses talk about themselves, we’re going to carry that thread, that DNA that’s so important to our business through the culture.

[00:21:09]  And that’s really the hope you can have when it comes to that. But it is still also an evolving story. Right. And anyone who tells you it’s not right. I’d love to hear that story and how they went from a hundred to, you know, 3000 employees without it being an evolving story. Right? But, I think you hold onto your values and you hold onto your DNA, and you try to build as much around the employee journey and the experience as you can to continue to reinforce that message.

[00:21:38] Yeah, that’s really good advice, ’cause that, I mean, that is the hardest transition, I feel like, when you’ve got that tight knit, everyone knows everyone, and then you wanna scale and try to keep that culture, but things have to change and then adding remote work. Yeah. It becomes even like, it becomes X factor.

[00:21:54] That’s all I can tell you. Right? Like if you’ve all been in a building and now to get the talent, you’ve gotta go across the [00:22:00] United States or across the globe. Well, that’s even. Much more difficult. So the intentionality around relationship building, which is really difficult because as you get pressure from investments to grow and operationalize and scale, guess what gets compromised?

[00:22:19] Relationship building. So it’s a tough balance to continue to push relationship orientation while still getting results, while still getting people connected to each other. And it all falls to one thing and it’s communication. Right. Yeah. And if the CEO and the exec suite is not great communicators or they don’t spend a lot of time communicating, and then the next layer down doesn’t spend a lot of time communicating and developing relationships, it’s kind of, that’s when you seal the fragmentation.

[00:22:48] But easier said than done. Yeah. It’s really difficult when you have to deliver on business results. And you’ve gotta really move quickly through your issues and your productivity to the end of the day to produce the business you’re expected to [00:23:00] produce. And the remote layer. I mean, that’s a whole nother attitude.

[00:23:03] It’s a whole nother building relationships in a remote environment. You really have to be intentional. It’s not the same as being in an office and getting to know people. So you also have to just accept that factor. Yep. And it’s important when you hire and you bring people into your culture. I remember with one company, we advertise, we, you know, and a lot of people are doing this now, right?

[00:23:22] With remote first, and it’s like, why do you wanna work remotely? And if they would talk about the relationships and how important relationships are to them in business, we would tend to shy away and really push them. Say, okay, well this is a remote environment. It’s gonna be very difficult unless you spend the time really reaching out and making relationships with people because people are here because they have balance in work they want.

[00:23:46] So they wanna get in, they wanna do their work, they wanna go through their meetings, and they wanna get out and they wanna go see their kids or do whatever they wanna do. Right. So. The culture mindset also has to be different when you’re hiring. If you’re hiring someone who really, those relationships are [00:24:00] critical to their happiness, I would say don’t go work in a hundred percent remote environment because it’s really, really difficult to get them to get other people’s time committed to building a relationship for you to find time

[00:24:11] ’cause there’s all these expectations, and everyone’s trying to cram what they can into that 8, 9, 10 hour workday. And it’s probably not gonna be relationship building is the priority. So a hundred percent. It has to be an intentional choice too, as an employee and HR people should be factoring that into their interviewing process for sure.

[00:24:30] Right? Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, that’s all great. I mean, we love talking about the PE stuff, but to kind of shift gears here, just looking back on your career, would love for you to share just some advice, some, you know, examples of things maybe that you’ve went through. So we’d love to hear about either like an HR project or plan that maybe didn’t go as you had expected, and just kind of what you learned from that experience.

[00:24:52] If there’s anything that comes to mind. That’s always a tough question for me. Right? No one wants to talk about their failures. [00:25:00] I would say that one, I was exceptionally good at planning and exceptionally good at saying no. And so when you’re not good at saying no, and I never said no. I just said, well, I can do this, this, or this.

[00:25:19] So I never put me or my team in a situation where I overpromised and under-delivered and set myself up for failure because I don’t like failure. So I think it’s more about my mindset when I go into something. If you really want a specific example, I can tell you I was going through Y2 compliance and we were implementing PeopleSoft during Y2 compliance for those of you know what that was.

[00:25:41] And we had a situation where we ran three payrolls a week. It was a lot. The due diligence required to make sure those were done accurately in the testing phase was phenomenal in terms of how we tried to do that. And we didn’t [00:26:00] test one integration that we needed to test, and we double paid our commissions three times, which was multimillion dollars of mistakes.

[00:26:10] Oh wow. So if I make them, I’m going to make a big one. And we spent six months. Trying to collect money back from salespeople as if you can imagine if you triple paid them in commissions, how difficult it would be to take, ask your high performer salesperson to pay you back half a million. Yeah, that’s a tough, very tough task.

[00:26:31]  We did it, we hired an entire temp team. I mean, we did it, but it was probably the biggest mistake of my career, but recovery, right? It’s all in the recovery. It’s all in the ownership that you, you did make this mistake. You identified the mistake, you fixed the mistake, you never did it again, and you were able to recover, you know, for the business, what you needed to recover.

[00:26:54] So really was about just that mindset around not panicking, okay, we did it, we [00:27:00] gotta own it. Now how do we go about projecting this to your CEO and your CFO about how you’re gonna fix the problem? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, I think the moral of the story just go bigger or go home if you’re gonna make a mistake.

[00:27:13] Yeah. That, and then have a plan on how to fix it and never do it again. Never do it again. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, yeah, speaking of not like making mistakes, but looking forward in a very evolving workplace. Right. We talk, you talked a little bit about earlier remote, hybrid, what do we do? You know, there’s a new expectations for Gen Zers of the world.

[00:27:36] There’s our AI that’s coming into to play from that standpoint. But from an HR perspective, like how do you see that affecting or, you know, influencing or changing kind of the HR people strategies, space for HR leaders, and just the whole HR ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:56] I’ll be honest with you, AI is a massive, [00:28:00] massive pivot to business. Yeah.  And I look at it as a really huge opportunity for HR leaders to step up in a very different way. So a lot of HR leaders can stick within their particular departments and look at a, do I fix the hiring process and use AI tools?

[00:28:17] Do I fix my HRS systems to fix these I would say you’re, you should be leaning into the business and you should be becoming the best business partner you’ve ever been in your whole entire life. Figure out where CS is going to use AI and figure out how you’re gonna help them build that talent.

[00:28:34] Evolve that talent. Lean into the IT team, figure out how are you gonna build the technology? How is that gonna impact  the downstream impact to employees? You know, what types of tools are we bringing in? Why are we bringing in those tools? How are those tools gonna impact the business? What’s gonna change?

[00:28:49] Same with your product, same with your sales, right? Sales jobs are gonna change and evolve. They’re all gonna change any jobs. So as an HR leader. Yeah, you can kind of fix your own shop along the way, [00:29:00] but I’m seeing a lot more HR leaders stepping in and almost leading some of the AI change transformation, right?

[00:29:06] Because they’re asking talent questions. Okay, you’re gonna deploy that AI agent, okay what are you anticipating the impact’s gonna be on your people? Okay. How do we model out this job over the next six months? How do we model out this job over the next 12 months? What’s it gonna look like when this is efficient and now we’re going to the next level?

[00:29:23] And AI agents are managing AI agents, right? So how does that level evolve and do we need more talent or do we need to upscale and make sure that this talent is ready for the next level? Because we’re gonna need more strategic thinking people and more complex thinking people engineering world for sure.

[00:29:39] Right. the other day I was talking to someone, it was a great example and they said. Engineers don’t need to know code anymore. They can know any code as long as they know code, but they’ve gotta know all code. Now because Grok or any of the other cursor and any of these other tools coming out for engineers are writing the code.

[00:29:59]  So you don’t [00:30:00] need to know front end, you don’t need to know backend, you need to know all of it. So we’re gonna need engineers who can actually now go front end to back end, back end to front end, you know, and they can read the code. And they can identify the code, and they can know Java, they can know c plus plus, like they’re gonna have to know a lot of it, right?

[00:30:14] Because maybe you change the type of code you’re writing in, maybe you don’t. But that’s a massive evolution, right? You’re not gonna have QA teams anymore. So HR has to really, really up their game and be much more attentive to the business impact that AI is bringing to their business, and then think through how that’s gonna change the employee experience and the types of jobs that you will have in the future.

[00:30:39] And they need to be leading that charge. They need to be leading that conversation, and they need to be pushing the business. Why aren’t you using AI? Like what are you talking about? There’s a place to use AI, so massive pivot point, I would say, back to the.com era, right? Yeah. The software era where paper was gone and you had to get on the ship.

[00:30:59] Right. It [00:31:00] wasn’t going away. I think the same thing’s true with AI. Yeah. I was gonna ask you is since like the internet basically is the kind of the biggest pivot you’ve seen in your- 100%. Yeah, that’s what I figured. Bigger. Yeah, bigger because it’s moving so much faster. Faster, right. But think about the internet and software being three decades old, you know, since kind like Y2 compliant the mainframe, like back maybe, maybe four decades old.

[00:31:22] Well, this thing’s gonna look like massively different in two years, it’s gonna look even more different in four years. Right. And none of us can anticipate exactly, exactly how it’s gonna happen, but it isn’t gonna take four decades. Right. Right. For this evolution. So it’s an interesting opportunity for HR leaders to really, really take the lead in the business more so than ever.

[00:31:45] Yeah. I know a lot of folks are worried about the AI kind of taking jobs. It’s interesting though. I haven’t necessarily seen, I mean, I know you got a. You know, think forward and ahead, but within each function of HR, whether it’s benefits comp, talent acquisition, talent [00:32:00] management, you know, it’s still, I mean, on the HR front, you’re dealing with people.

[00:32:03] I mean, yes, tools that are out there. You’ve mentioned recruiting, some of which we certainly use from that standpoint, but I haven’t necessarily seen anything out there that’s gonna completely eliminate the HR jobs or anything like that. Now, maybe I’m wrong, maybe there’s a Comp P tool or an analytical tool that.

[00:32:21] But have you seen, and we’ve seen it already on the tech side of course, right? Like there’s way less developers being hired or they’re being offshore because as you said, like they’ve, they don’t need as many developers because, or QA testers, right? You just have someone that knows that whole full life cycle because AI has replaced a lot of those jobs.

[00:32:41] Do you see or anticipate any of the functions in HR? Going away for, you know, somewhat of an AI tool or- Well, I think the TA side, you know, for all of you who are in the TA world, I think that’s where you’re gonna see it first, right? You’re not gonna need sourcers because software is [00:33:00] gonna start sourcing candidates, right?

[00:33:01] They’re gonna be going out, the AI tools, are going to be able to sort through resumes and you’re not going to need manager time to sort through resumes. But I look at it like the time to hire’s going to be faster. Yeah. So, you know, we’re going to accelerate time to hire because we’re not waiting on a person to do the 300 resumes that came in yesterday.

[00:33:17] Right. Like the system’s gonna do it for you. Right. So I think you’ll see accelerated time to hires, but I don’t think you’re going to see like just a sourcer sitting there and doing sourcing anymore. Right. Yeah. But that does, you know, that does kind of bring up then does the Full Cycle recruiter come back?

[00:33:31] Somebody who’s running it. The whole search from beginning to end versus having to compartmentalize due to velocity. Look, every department’s going to be impacted. The question is, how quickly can we evolve the skill sets of our employees? Sure. And how quickly can we get them to adopt the AI mindset?

[00:33:50] And I think what we don’t know is how much jobs are going to open up to create so much more opportunity, because there’s free time now. [00:34:00] What are the things we could go do that we couldn’t go do before? How many projects did we say, Nope, that’s too many projects. We’re at capacity. We can’t do that anymore.

[00:34:09] Well, now we are going to have a lot more opportunity to bring more value to the business at a faster pace. Now that’s true. Everything’s coming at employees at a fast pace. So I think you’re still gonna have to balance consumption by an employee. Like how much can they handle? How much change can one person consume in a particular period of time?

[00:34:26] But I don’t see job descriptions will go away. Right. Will jobs go away? I don’t think so. Will jobs change? Absolutely. Will people need to be open to trying new things and being flexible around, the types of things that they learn? Absolutely. For sure. Regardless of the department that you’re in.

[00:34:48] For sure. People just need to look at their day to day and what can AI do for you, right? What can you take off your plate? What do you not enjoy doing that AI can take off like, so you can lean into more things that [00:35:00] are strategic or that you can enjoy. So I agree. Now everyone’s now become their own manager, if you think about it, right?

[00:35:06] And managers spent their time saying, okay, what do I delegate? What do I delegate? Like how do, who do I give it to? Well, not every employee gets to do that. Yeah. Right. Every employee gets to learn the challenges of being a manager where they don’t have enough resources. So a manager says to an employee, employee says, I can’t get that done.

[00:35:21] I’m like, why? What? What part are you not asking Chat GPT about? Right. What? What? What do you mean you haven’t asked Chat GPT. Oh, I didn’t think about it. Go ask Chat GPT. We’re all managing chat GPT, right? So it’s like, so like an employee now gets to kind of be their own manager and their own, like, how quickly can I make the resource work for me to make my job easier?

[00:35:41] Or to give myself more opportunity that I didn’t get to have before ’cause I didn’t have capacity, so now I’ve freed up my own personal capacity. It’s a very different model, right? Yeah. Than a manager trying to figure out how do I move the puzzle pieces around? Yeah. It’ll make some people probably not wanna go into people management.

[00:35:59] I can [00:36:00] manage AI agents a lot easier than I can manage people. No question. Yeah, they don’t talk back. they’re very nice. It’s hard to get them into an argument. I’ll tell you. I’ve tried. Well, last formal question for you Pam. We were just curious, you know, ’cause you do have such an excellent career, lots of experience, and you probably have this question come to you from more junior HR professionals that you network with or that you meet who want to become a CPO a CHRO one day, what advice would you give them?

[00:36:27] Be brave. Be brave. Take on work you don’t know how to do, fake it till you make it. Yeah, like just be brave. Just have confidence and even if you don’t have confidence that you can do it and raise your hand. The more you can make yourself uncomfortable, and I think this is true in life, the more you will learn and the faster that you will grow.

[00:36:47] It doesn’t really matter where you do it. With who you do it. The question is just take care of what you can do, which is to raise your hand. Don’t wait on somebody. If you’re not getting the opportunities at the job you’re at, go find a new [00:37:00] one. Right? Like, don’t sit around and wait for somebody else to make it happen for you.

[00:37:03] Like, and this is not new advice, right? But it’s interesting how much people still don’t take the reins for their own career and their own career advancement  and set goals. Like I had a goal, I’m going to be a vice president by 30 years old. I’m going to be a VP by 30. And at that point in time, we were not giving away VP titles.

[00:37:21] Like we give away VP titles today. Yeah. But it was a goal. Right. And so I couldn’t sit in the same job for five years. I would never get there. Right. Right. So I think between the age that I was 18 in college, to the time I got my first VP job, which was at 30, I probably had six jobs maybe. So in 12 years I had six jobs.

[00:37:44] Well, I had more stories to tell in the interviewing process. Sure. Yeah. Right. I had more experience to tell after 12 years than someone who sat in the same job maybe for eight years or six years, you know, and kind of waited for that nod. Yeah, the tap. [00:38:00] So be brave. Just be brave. And when you put the goals out, I mean, I think putting a timeline on it, like you said by 30, I wanna do this.

[00:38:07] Not just, I wanna be a VP one day. What’s the timeline here? What does that look like? Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Advice, be brave. Surround yourself with, you know, smarter people than you that you can learn from. Be uncomfortable. You start getting your own rhythm and you don’t feel challenged or, excited.

[00:38:25] Like, you know, Hey, what’s next? How can I seek out other opportunities internally, externally, it’s good advice for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Don’t be bored. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re bored. If you’re bored, move. My dad always gave me some really good advice, Rosanna, he said,  and he didn’t live very long.

[00:38:40] He said, movement is money, and if you don’t move, you are not going to make more money. So I’ve taken that advice to heart and you can’t expect someone else to justify your worth. Your worth is what you put out into the market and the market determines what your worth is. So when in doubt, [00:39:00] put yourself out there doesn’t mean you have to move, but movement is money.

[00:39:04] And opportunity really. Man. I like that. I’m gonna use that. I’m gonna steal that from I do too. I haven’t heard that. Thanks for sharing that. That’s Well, my dad makes my dad’s contribution to the world. I love it. Well we like to wrap with just a little bit more of kind of, informal questions. So a few questions for you.

[00:39:19] Just anything, podcast, book, show related that you would recommend to disconnect or that you’re into right now when you wanna just. Forget about the world and, and relax. Oh, well, personal or business? Both. Or either. Whichever you wanna share. So, so for those of you that have not read, I always forget the name of the book.

[00:39:41] Isn’t that terrible? I’ve read it twice. A thorn of Thorn of Glass. A Throne of glass. Have you read a Thorn of Glass? It’s Throne of Glass. I always say it wrong. Anyway, throne of Glass. Okay. Throne of Glass. it’s an 800 page. Eight book novel that I’ve read now twice. It is fascinating. It’s a very strong woman.

[00:39:58] Through the whole stories, I think [00:40:00] there’s multiple strong women in the story. I don’t read too many books over and over again, but I probably read a third, fourth, and fifth time. Okay. It’s not an easy read, but you can look at the Throne of Glass and it’s fascinating series. In terms of personal, I would say, look, I’ve always referred back to one and I would say that’s the Patrick Lencioni

[00:40:18] podcast. His books, the Advantage and the Motive are my two favorite. You’ve probably read The Five Dysfunctions, which is one that most people know about. Not my favorite. But I have used the Advantage framework with exec teams and CEOs multiple times, and you know, organizational health is a key structure for any HR.

[00:40:37] Leader to trying to profess and I think there’s just some really important fundamentals that the table group, which is where Patrick Lencioni’s, company is. I think it’s Lencioni. I always say a little bit wrong. But look, on my entire career, I would say in the last 20 years, I’ve heavily relied on his theories and his concepts, and he talks a lot about the how, not the why.

[00:40:59] [00:41:00] Okay. And I would say the advantage. Is the best How Leadership book I’ve ever read, ever. It’s not theoretical. It actually paints a picture of how you need to run a company and run an exec team. And it’s a great book and I’ve used it for years. What was the other one you said? The Advantage and the, The Advantage is the book and then The Motive is a great book.

[00:41:21] It’s a Southwest read, that really compares two CEOs, one that stays kind of in his operational expertise, but tries to manage his exec team as if he is the expert. And the other one who of course is more successful is managing people. Empowering people to achieve their heights and how much more successful his business is versus the other one.

[00:41:48] And it compares and contrasts those two stories and ultimately says, if you’re not in leadership to develop people, you shouldn’t be in leadership. Yeah. And it proves out that point. Great book though. Okay, [00:42:00] great. Last one. Yeah. Let me fire this one away. Yeah, go ahead. What’s a current vacation spot slash type of trip that’s been on your radar to plan?

[00:42:15] Not a travel buff? That’s a tough question. I would International. Yeah. International parks. Look, I think the one place I would go would be New Zealand. I probably wouldn’t do it in the way other people would do it, but I would rent a house on a mountaintop somewhere over the ocean, and I would drink wine for a month, and I would occasionally go out and sample the food.

[00:42:41] But what I would be spending my time doing is taking in the vistas and drinking some New Zealand wine and just chilling after my decades of hard, hard work. Because I am an Ocean fan, but there’s something about the landscape of New Zealand and the water of New Zealand that I just feel [00:43:00] like, not the bugs and the snakes not, no, that’s probably why it wouldn’t be as adventurous, but just being in that very kind of calm, serene surroundings with not a lot of noise would probably be my choice.

[00:43:14] Sounds great. After your decades of work, I think you deserve it, Pam. Yeah, exactly. Get it booked. New Zealand, I’ve heard from many people is a beautiful place. Yeah. Yeah. And I probably don’t know how much I’d even sprinkle over to Australia or not, you know what I mean? I just kind of be on that mountaintop and just enjoy it, you know?

[00:43:32] Yeah. Take it in for a month. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode. Today we met with Pam Perry and discussed HR in the PE space, how to evolve people, strategy advice, and up and coming HR professionals and much more. We’ll be back again next month with a new special guest.

[00:43:54] Quick reminder again on how you can support Beyond the Offer podcast. You can find us in all of [00:44:00] our content on Hirewell social media platform. Which you can find on hirewell.com. Pam, thanks for joining and take everybody. Thanks, Pam. It was a pleasure.